Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
This story just makes me laugh. At a museum in Tallahassee, Florida, there is a display of a confederate flag hanging from a gallows; the piece is titled The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag. Sounds like a provocative and entirely justified artistic statement to me, pointing out the long legacy of racial lynchings in the South after the Civil War. But to the "southern pride" folks, apparently, anything calling attention to history amounts to persecution:
A Confederate flag hanging from a noose on a 13-foot gallows will remain on display despite protests from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who call it an affront to Southern heritage."The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag" by black artist John Sims is "offensive, objectionable and tasteless," Robert Hurst, commander of the local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Friday.
Now call me crazy, but it seems to me that slavery and the long history of lynchings that accompanied it and continued for a century after it ended is offensive, objectionable and tasteless; a piece of art that calls attention to that history and the injustice of it is perfectly reasonable. And I love this notion of "Southern heritage", which is really a code word for "white Southern heritage." The vast numbers of black slaves upon whom the entire South built that "heritage" certainly have a right to give voice to their own history, do they not? But here's the really messed up part:
Hurst said he has discussed the possibility of taking legal action.Florida statutes say it is unlawful to "deface, defile or contemptuously abuse" the Confederate flag, but say it is also illegal to prevent the display of the flag "for decorative or patriotic purposes."
A law that is clearly and unquestionably unconstitution under Texas v Johnson; good luck with that legal action, pal. And please don't hand me that nonsense about the Civil War being about "state's rights"; the only "right" they sought to protect was the "right" to own human beings and force them to labor. Go tell Frederick Douglass about the "state's right" to make his life belong to someone else rather than him. And do I even need to mention that the STACLUless have their panties in a bunch over it? JonJayRay writes:
To many Southerners the Confederate flag is a memorial to the brave men among their ancestors who fought to defend their hearths and homes against Northern tyranny. Even Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg address did not refer to the war as fought in the name of ending slavery. And one assumes that even Southerners can be allowed to have feelings. But their feelings don't count, apparently -- unless they are black or homosexual of course.
Gosh Jon, who said Hurst doesn't have a right to feel whatever way he wants about the display? He can feel anything he wants about it - anger, rage, confusion, sadness, you name it - and he can express those feelings all he wants, even in a major media outlet like Fox News. Is someone trying to stop him from doing so? Of course not. Hurst, on the other hand, would like to prevent the artist from expressing his feelings through this piece. Perhaps your silly claims of persecution are just a bit misplaced here?
And I don't know which Gettysburg Address you've been reading, but the one I've read certainly does speak of ending slavery. What on earth do you think Lincoln was referring to when he spoke of the nation being "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and said that the war was necessary for America to have "have a new birth of freedom"?
It was slavery that so obviously violated and made impossible the founding premise that all men were endowed with an equal right to life and liberty, and it was slavery that had to end in order for that founding premise to become a reality. And the confederate flag was and is a symbol of those who fought, first and foremost, for the preservation and perpetuation of that evil institution. Those folks in the South who want to cling to it as a symbol of their "heritage" may, of course, continue to do so all they want. But those who were victimized under that symbol also have every right to express their rejection of it and to continue to point to the legacy of violence and brutality that is symbolizes. And if you want to try and make yourself out to be the poor victim of persecution when they do so, you only make yourself look incredibly foolish.
Comments
It's rather interesting that many of the same people who persist in waving the Confederate Flag of treason were the first to object to anti-Vietnam war demonstrators waving the Vietcong flag.
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2007 9:35 AM
The Stars and Bars are a symbol of treason.
How is that not obvious?
Posted by: Lettuce | March 20, 2007 9:42 AM
Oh, Ed. You're in for it now. Yankees just don't realize how deep the Lost Cause mythology runs in the heart of Dixie. The interesting thing to me is how much it informs today's right wing. The God-ordained hierarchy, the heroic soldier and pater familias defending that, a martial sense of honor, women and slaves "protected," and the good and decent ones loyal, freedom (for the free man), and states rights, mostly the "right" to enact all sorts of oppressive law to maintain this hierarchy.
You're right, of course. Which is why you're about to suffer the slings and arrows of those offended. ;-)
Posted by: Russell | March 20, 2007 9:44 AM
Personally, I don't think Sims went far enough. The REAL Proper Way To Hang a Confederate Flag is with a damn red-neck Confederate conservative in the noose.
Posted by: J-Dog | March 20, 2007 9:45 AM
Don't belittle our suffering during the War of Northern Aggression.
Posted by: Chris F. | March 20, 2007 10:14 AM
The War of Northern Aggression??? Didn't the south fire the first?? Someone explain how shooting cannons on Fort Sumter was not agression? I think one could say it was the War of Southern Aggression.
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 10:19 AM
Tulle, apparently you aer not up on the latest history. The first shots on Sumter fired by a northern instigator. Lincoln provoked the south into firing the first shots.
The above was said in all seriousness by one of the afore-mentioned redneck confederates on the 'Thoughts from Kansas' blog.
Cheers.
Posted by: fastlane | March 20, 2007 10:28 AM
The confederates were traitors, and they're lucky Lincoln didn't string up every last one of them. Hanging enlisted men as traitors would have been a stretch (so to speak), but certainly the officer corps of the Confederate army and the political leadership of the CSA could have been hanged.
A few hangings after the Civil War might have prevented a century of terrorist lynchings.
I'm against the death penalty in all cases but treason (making war on one's country), by the way.
Posted by: Chuck | March 20, 2007 10:36 AM
Your suffering during the war?
That war ended 142 years ago pal. You're entitled to whatever feelings you might have towards what took place and you're entitled to defend that flag which in the eyes of the most of the world symbols slavery. But if you choose to belittle the suffering of those kept in slavery (which you're also entitled to do), by not recognizing all of the symbolism attached to the confederate flag, expect to get called on it.
I foresee that words such as racist, bigot, ignoramus and possibly ones refering to certain parts of human anatomy might be used.
Posted by: Ernst Hot | March 20, 2007 10:47 AM
I'll repost something that I said on another blog.
As I watched the debate of the battle flag in my home state one thing became clear to me, the anti-flaggers were incapable of putting forth arguments that could persuade even moderate flaggers. Couple this with the fact that the anti-flaggers that got the most air time were not from Georgia, and a large percentage of persuadable people were turned off.
Basically yankees had zero insight into how to make a persuasive argument to southerners. Anti-flaggers focused more on condemning, deriding, and misreading the south then they did on uplifting it.---One may even think that this was on purpose, because if the south actually changed, who would they have to insult?---Zig-Zag Zell, before he went crazy in his attempt to save the now dead GA Democratic party, actually wrote a good opinion in the NY Times about this phenomenon.
Arguments against modern southern politics that focus on deriding the south are going to encourage moderate southerners to become defensive and defend policies that they probably wouldn't defend otherwise. Insulting a people makes it difficult to persuade them.
Here are two different talking points about the battle flag, can you guess which one is more likely to be effective?
"The Confederate flag is a symbol of slavery, hate, and murder and should be removed from the state flag."
"The Confederate flag is not an inclusive symbol. The state flag should represent all citizens of the state, not just some citizens."
You can get into plenty of arguments as to whether the Confederate flag is a symbol of slavery, hate, and murder. But I have yet to encounter someone who would argue that it is inclusive.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 10:50 AM
Surely the reason it is not inclusive is because of what it symbolises - ie a war fought to continue slavery. Sure it's slightly softer rhetoric, but it's just obfuscation. What would you say to someone who asked why it's not inclusive?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 20, 2007 11:19 AM
A clever rationalization.
Can you iterate the reasons it is "not inclusive"?
Posted by: rpsms | March 20, 2007 11:21 AM
A clever rationalization.
Can you iterate the reasons it is "not inclusive"?
Don't troll. It's not appreciated.
Posted by: gwangung | March 20, 2007 11:28 AM
Arguments against modern southern politics that focus on deriding the south are going to encourage moderate southerners to become defensive and defend policies that they probably wouldn't defend otherwise.
Such as...?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 20, 2007 11:37 AM
gwangung: I appreciate your favoring my request for expansion of his idea over the same request from Ginger Yellow.
Its is clear the flag is "not inclusive" because it is a symbol of slavery, hate, and murder. Or rather, state sanction of such.
Mr. Cartwright ought to elaborate on what his alternative "uninclusive" argument ought to include, rather than the obvious slight-of-hand.
Posted by: rpsms | March 20, 2007 11:49 AM
I doubt that "inclusiveness" will strike any chords with the people arguing for display of the Stars and Bars. That's another lefty multi-culti concept that has no currency outside that milieu.
Posted by: Reality Czech | March 20, 2007 11:52 AM
I would say that as a symbol for white southerners, it excludes black southerners. I really think it is pointless to argue what the CBF symbolizes, because as an emotional symbol different people will see it different ways and trying to argue using reason has no effect on an emotional argument. But I think that most people will agree that it is a symbol for white southerners, regardless of what it "truely" symbolizes.
Well the "old" Georgia flag is one such instance.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 11:55 AM
Actually, that's "Dr. Cartwright".
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 11:57 AM
This post is not really about whether state or local governments should fly the confederate flag (though they certainly shouldn't) or about whether an individual has the right to fly that flag (though they certainly do); it is about the ridiculous argument that using that flag in a manner that southerners don't like makes it offensive and thus potentially illegal (and it's certainly not). On a higher level, it's about the notion of universal victimhood.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 20, 2007 12:13 PM
So the idolaters are at it again, this time with the Confederate flag. The Confederate flag cannot be desecrated? Why not? It's just a piece of cloth. It represents a people who were racist and bigoted. To use it today shows that you are racist and bigoted. There are no redeeming qualities to what it represents - the politicians who seceded from the Union did so to ensure the survival of their "peculiar institution" - they said so themselves at the time. The Confederate flag - the Stars and Bars or the battle flag - was the flag for the army that fired on the Union flag. This flag was the flag for the KKK and other organizations to keep the freed slaves in their place. If those who are so proud of their "Southern heritage" had not been those who were so intent on denying the freed slaves their civil rights, then there might be some mitigation and respect for the flag. But using the flag as a member of the KKK then and now say you just want your Southern heritage respected is a disconnect. That Southern heritage and flag are wrapped up in the white sheets of the KKK. The Confederate flag has suffered the same fate of the swastika - it will always be remembered for the burned crosses, lynchings, race riots, bombings, and murders of the terrorist organization KKK.
Posted by: bc | March 20, 2007 12:42 PM
I think however that almost everyone who would reject the idea that the Confederate flag is a symbol of slavery, would dismiss "not inclusive" as pointless political correctness.
Posted by: Stephen | March 20, 2007 12:56 PM
Huh? Black people and others don't want it removed from the flag because it's not inclusive. Countless flags around the world are not fully inclusive. The Welsh, for instance, are excluded from the Union Flag. People want it removed because it no matter what it means to an individual white southerner, it by definition glorifies a racist secessionist movement. You can't possibly begin to have a sensible debate about the issue, or indeed this art censorship issue, without looking at what it symbolises. Indeed, how can you have any discussion at all about its use in a work of art without considering what it symbolises?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 20, 2007 1:04 PM
The Confederate flag is a symbol, and symbols do not have objective, unchanging, and verifiable meanings. A symbol can mean one thing to one person, and something completely different to another, and no amount of argument will prove one side and disprove the other.
That said, I think the "work" of "art" in question was tasteless, juvenile, lazy, and unworthy of anyone's attention.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 20, 2007 1:10 PM
You'd be surprised. The point of talking about "inclusiveness" is that it is a better way to frame the debate and more likely to convince moderate southerners, who despite better judgment, still react defensively to people whose entire argument is about how whites in the south are pieces of shit.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 1:11 PM
Reference please?
It seems counterintuitive that the majority of southern people that died in the war were slaveowners.
I submit that the redeeming value that it represents is the value placed by descendants on the dead of that conflict and the values that the dead attempted to uphold -- similar to the type of emotion someone may display or feel when the stars and stripes is burned, urinated or shat upon. Some might say that the southern dead are piled at the altar of states rights and property rights and that the constitution was interpreted by the north to such a degree that secession was legal and moral as a battle over the tyranny of the northern majority.
I myself get quite verklempft whenever I think upon the southern nobility of character.
Posted by: Ted | March 20, 2007 1:12 PM
Back to the art itself, I think that I like the work of art. It is very creative and thought provoking. The most objectionable part to me is the use of "proper" in the title.
I'm just waiting for other artists to respond with their own versions, using the American flag, the UN Flag, the Iraqi flag, the "Christian" flag, etc.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 1:15 PM
On one side, the confederate flag IS a symbol of slavery and oppression, treason and murder.
On the other side, the confederate flag is an insult to the memory of all of those Union soldiers who died to destroy the rebellion.
The Confederate states were formed by treasonous members of the United States government. Their armies were led by treasonous members of the United States army. They all took oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, they all broke those oaths.
The confederate flag is, or at least should be, an insult to southern blacks, northern blacks, AND northern whites. Hell, it should be an insult to any patriotic American since it is celebrating treason against our Constitution, and everything it stands for.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 20, 2007 1:23 PM
That said, I think the "work" of "art" in question was tasteless, juvenile, lazy, and unworthy of anyone's attention.
Are you serious? Remind me never to take advice on art from you.
Posted by: Will | March 20, 2007 1:24 PM
Raging Bee, if you find it tasteless or not, it is still a work of art. Art is to evoke emotions. Good art will give you a response unique to you. I find this work clever, you find it tasteless. I think the artist suceeded. As my sister (an artist) said when I asked her what is art, "Art is what an artist does".
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 1:25 PM
Reed, others copying it with other flags would not have the same emotional impact, as other flags are not associated with lynching as strongly as the Confederate flag.
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 1:29 PM
It is true that our culture connects lynching with the Confederate flag, but a couple years ago I looked at some statistics from a lynching history project and was surprised how common lynchings were across the nation. Native Americans and Asian Americans were also victims of lynching, sometimes at rates as high or higher than African Americans.
Despite public perception lynching of minorities was an American problem, not just a southern problem.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 1:35 PM
I hope Ed does not mind if I show off some of my art. I hope it effects each person in their own personal way. I took the photo and did the image processing myself.
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 1:36 PM
Raging Bee,
Personally I find it a powerful display. Consider the frustration disenfranchised southern African Americans felt for a century. Think of the fear inspired by lynchings of "uppity niggers" who wanted to change the status quo.
If you look at the picture of the exhibit, it's quite subtle and at the same time shocking. I look at it and it almost immediately puts a wry smile on my face.
After hearing about the Florida law, the words "ROAD TRIP!" popped into my head. Anyone have a zippo I could borrow?
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 20, 2007 1:37 PM
I agree with you Reed, but art is all about perception.
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 1:38 PM
So, Tulle, your comment was more about the difference between decent art and hack art? I can agree with that. Of course, I'd love to watch how people react to a UN flag in a similar piece of art. (Assuming, people would even recognize the UN flag.) I'm am surprised about the number of people who really believe that the UN is going to fly the black helicopters into the countryside and take their guns away.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 1:44 PM
I actually know John Sims a little, although just in passing. I used to rent office space in an art gallery here in Sarasota, Florida (where he's from) and we had a show of his works when I first moved in. John is really interesting guy and, as you might expect, enjoys provoking people. I imagine as an African American this particular piece is close to his heart, but he also had several other flag themed pieces that were equally interesting, like an Iraqi flag done with USA colors and some other pieces I don't recall now. I'm quite sure he's loving the attention on a sate wide and national level - it certainly provoked some talk here as well when he showed it earlier, although since Sarasota is mostly inhabited by rich snowbirds from the north, there wasn't anyone claiming that Confederate flag was being desecrated.
I'd never heard that there was some antiquated Florida law against desecrating the CSA flag, and I don't know if John knew either, but I'll bet he'd be all over a little Confederate flag burning. As would I come to think of it...
Posted by: Rick Dakan | March 20, 2007 1:57 PM
Reed, no my point is what you "see" in any artwork is a reflection of yourself. Your experiences, learning and even some your genes reflect off the artwork and that is what you "see". No two people will get the same perception of an artwork. The better the art the more of yourself comes back into your perception of it. Hmmm... I guess you are right, but I see it as more of a continuous function between great art and hack art. I tend to be toward the hack side, that is why I am a software engineer and not an artist.
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 2:05 PM
"Of course, I'd love to watch how people react to a UN flag in a similar piece of art."
It wouldn't really make any sense, surely. When did the UN lynch anyone? Now you might be able to construct a serviceable piece about Rwanda with say a machete wielding child and the UN flag. Is that the sort of thing you mean.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 20, 2007 2:25 PM
Of course, I'm a damnyankee, except in baseball fandom, yet...
(1) The Civil War/War Between the States is indeed about more than slavery.
(2) It has been [insert history book reference] suggested that there was a single Anglo-American war whose major phases have been (a) English Civil War; (b) American Revolution; (c) American Civil War.
(3) The Civil War/War Between the States succeeded in uniting the balkanized country as much as Lincoln hoped. Before it, there were, de facto, 3 nations: (a) the industrialized North, (b) the "West" that supplied cattle and crops to the North, and (c) the cheap labor/aristocratic South. Afterwards, the econoimies and transportation infrastructures were unified.
(4) Vice President of the Confderacy: Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate, by Eli Evans "Judah Philip Benjamin (1811-84) was descended from the Sephardics, Spanish Jews who flourished for three hundred years on the Iberian peninsula in the "Golden Age..."
(5) As a First Amendment Absolutist, I defend to the death the rights of artists to exhbit "offensive" art.
(6) "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" decision expected from the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2007.
(7) Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater, Charlie Daniels Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, William Faulkner, together again at last!
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | March 20, 2007 2:29 PM
To you and me it wouldn't make a lot of sense, but to a lot of people it would. There are a sizable number people in the US who believe in wild conspiracy theories about the "evil" UN.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 20, 2007 2:31 PM
Ed, I have to disagree with you a bit in your implication that the Civil War was primarily about slavery. Like it or not, the Civil War actually was about "States' rights"; specifically, it was in reaction to taxation of state productivity by the federal government. Now, admittedly much of that productivity was achieved on the backs of slaves, but that doesn't mean that the war was, by proxy, about slavery.
After all, the Northerners weren't all that much better - there is a reason the Underground Railroad ended in Canada, don't you know.
Posted by: Brian | March 20, 2007 2:33 PM
Creedence?
Posted by: Ted | March 20, 2007 2:39 PM
Brian,
Where are you getting the cause of the Civil War being about taxation of state production?
As for the Underground Railroad ending in Canada... First, that's not quite true, it wasn't a uniform route, many branches of it ended in northern states. Also, due to legislation and court decisions, it was no longer safe for the Underground Railroad to end in the north. The fugitive slave act effectively forced northern law enforcement to aid southern slave hunters to find runaways (though often then "help" was questionable). The Dred Scott decision made it very dangerous for escaped slaves to stop in the north. It basically declared all northern anti-slavery laws unconstitutional. The war came before a slave owner had a chance to challenge one of the state laws, but given that decision, I believe the effort would would have been inevitable.
But really, I'd like to hear how the Civil War was actually about taxation of state productivity.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 20, 2007 3:27 PM
Re Chuck
I agree with Mr. Chuck to the extent that the top leaders of the Confederacy should have been hung. I would have hung Robert E. Lee, in actual fact one of the most incapable commanding generals in history, from the highest yardarm.
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2007 3:29 PM
Of course the Civil War was about state's rights-- the supposed right of states to enslave human beings.
Posted by: Will | March 20, 2007 3:47 PM
>>in actual fact one of the most incapable commanding generals in history
Upon what evidence do you base this assertion?
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 20, 2007 3:50 PM
Gee, I always thought the Civil War was about Lincoln's platform of no NEW slave states. When elected he had no intention of freeing existing slaves. I never understood why the south suceeded. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Posted by: Tulle | March 20, 2007 4:16 PM
Tulle,
There were a variety of reasons why the south seceded, many of them were symbolized by Lincoln. One huge one was their loss of political power. This may have been emotional, rather than rational, for most southerners, but the election of Lincoln signaled the end of an era of southern dominance. For the first 75+ years of our nation the south had dominated our government, enjoyed representation far beyond their numbers in the house, artificially delayed non-slavery friendly expansion through the doctrine requiring one slave state for every free state and through that managed to gain great power over the senate; dominated the presidency and the supreme court. The election of Lincoln, while in and of itself would have been a dead-end day one lame duck presidency, signaled the end of that domination.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 20, 2007 4:36 PM
Oy, dogmeat, now I'm gonna have to go dig through my old sources from college...
Just so you know where I come from - I'm a Yankee by way of California, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, and finally upstate New York (for 15 years, interrupted only by a year's stay in South Carolina). I am generally annoyed by Confederate Flag wavers, and was dismayed to find the Confederacy alive and well during my stay in SC (Charleston).
At any rate, I mostly take issue with Ed's implication that this is somehow a black & white, cut & dried issue. There wasn't some magic line drawn above which good folks viewed slavery as unconscionable. The abolition movement was modest in the North at best (and was supported mostly by business owners, who recognized that flooding the job market with freed slaves would drive wages down).
I'm less making an assertion about the issue, and more calling for perspective - the North wasn't an innocent bystander in the slavery issue.
Posted by: Brian | March 20, 2007 5:52 PM
Re dogmeatib
My comment about Robert E. Lee was taken from the following volume.
"Grant and Lee - A Study in Personality and Generalship," Major General J. F. C. Fuller. The quotation is on page 8 of the Preface. General Fuller after retiring from the British Army became a well known military historian, most renown for his 3 volume "A Military History of the Western World." However, General Fuller is also well known as one of the first to advocate the use of tanks in warfare and to devise the tactics for their employment therein. As a top military adviser to the British high command in the First World War, he was responsible for the development of what is known as Plan 1919, which would have been put into effect if the war had lasted into 1919.
General Fullers' criticism of Lee is mostly based on two observations.
1. Lee was totally incompetent as a quartermaster general; as a for instance, his troops went barefoot while 30 miles away in Richmond, warehouses were bulging with shoes.
2. Lee was no strategist. His focus was entirely on the Virginia sector of the Civil War, even though he was supposed to be Jefferson Davises' top military adviser. He had nothing to offer as to what should be done in the Western sector of the war. Further, his invasions of the North accomplished nothing, except to subject his command to extravagant casualties which it could ill afford. I would add that his acquiescence in the removal of General Johnston by Jefferson Davis and his replacement by the incompetent Hood probably cost the Confederacy any change of emerging independent from the Civil War as it is possible that Johnstons' defensive strategy might have staved off the capture of Atlanta by Sherman. Had that happened, it is likely that Lincoln would have lost the election. The reelection of Lincoln ended any chance for a negotiated settlement.
Now if Mr. dogmeatib doesn't like British criticisms of American Generals, I would suggest he consult, "Robert E. Lee - the Marble Man," by Thomas Connelly or any book on the Civil War by historian Grady McWhinney (personal note - I took a course in American History from Prof. McWhinney when he was a visiting assistant professor at Berkeley a million years ago)
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2007 6:31 PM
A flag is a piece of cloth. If there is a right to make a statement using the US flag, guess where I stand on the Battleflag. Use is, abuse it, stick in their faces, how they feel is their problem. People will put whatever meaning to it they want, thats what makes it art.
Posted by: Jufulu | March 20, 2007 6:32 PM
Brian wrote:
But I never said nor implied any such thing, nor does your statement change the truth of anything I said in my post.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 20, 2007 7:16 PM
Ha, if all of you yankees and yankee-minded idiots who have no power of deduction, believe that yankees fought a war and died by the thousands to free slaves, I have a bridge that I'd like to sell to you. And if you also believe that Sims is an artist, I have another bridge or two that I'd like to sell to you. Go ask the Native Americans what a benelevolent people they believe the yankees to be. After all, Custer was a Union officer. Too bad the natives didn't get to teach a few more yankees some manners!
Posted by: Connie | March 20, 2007 7:34 PM
"Dear Mr. President:
"At the Republican Convention I heard you mention that you have the pictures
of four (4) great Americans in your office, and that included in these is a
picture of Robert E. Lee.
"I do not understand how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person
to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should
do so is certainly beyond me.
"The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best
efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that
you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of
being hailed as one of our heroes.
"Will you please tell me just why you hold him in such high esteem?
Sincerely yours,
Leon W. Scott"
Eisenhower's response, written from the White House on August 9, 1960, reads
as follows:
"Dear Dr. Scott:
"Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed
admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to
understand that at the time of the War Between the States the issue of Secession
had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character,
public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed
over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was
adopted.
"General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted
men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional
validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America;
he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with
captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle,
and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many
trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God.
Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I
read the pages of our history.
"From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's calibre
would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that
present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his
devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the
nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of
danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom
sustained.
"Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great
American on my office wall.
"Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower"
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 20, 2007 7:58 PM
"Let me begin on a personal note. I am a 56-year-old, third-generation, African American Washingtonian who is a graduate of the D.C. public schools and who happens also to be a great admirer of Robert E. Lee's."
http://vaudc.org/lee-defense.html
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 20, 2007 8:02 PM
Connie wrote:
This is a nonsense answer. No one here is claiming that "yankees" are perfect, nor is anyone arguing that those in the North were motivated solely by slavery to go to war. Nothing you said changes the simple and irrefutable fact that the Civil War was necessary to bring slavery to an end and that there is a legacy of brutality, including slavery itself and the long post-Civil War history of lynchings, that is aptly protested by the piece of art discussed above.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 20, 2007 8:03 PM
BRIG. GEN. JOHN S. BROWN, USA Ret., was chief of military history at the U.S. Army Center of Military History from December 1998 to October 2005. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War and returned to Kuwait as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, in 1995. He has a doctorate in history from Indiana University.
Robert E. Lee at 200
By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, U.S. Army retired
_http://www.ausa.org/webpub/DeptArmyMagazine.nsf/byid/KHYL-6WGJKT_
(http://www.ausa.org/webpub/DeptArmyMagazine.nsf/byid/KHYL-6WGJKT)
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 20, 2007 8:04 PM
Brock-
I do not doubt that Robert E. Lee had a great many laudable personal characteristics; that has precisely nothing to do with this post, nor does the assertion of that fact in any way dispute the truth of anything I've said.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 20, 2007 8:04 PM
Robert Edward Lee, My View
Robert Edward Lee, in my estimation, was the greatest man this nation has ever produced. He graduated from the United States Military Academy without a single demerit, a feat that has been unequaled to this day. He also was second in his class and achieved the coveted cadet rank of Adjutant. He served over thirty years in the United States Army and General Winfield Scott stated that Lee's exploit before the Battle of Contreras in Mexico was "the greatest feat of physical and moral courage" he had ever known. General Scott marked him for high command and thought the cost would be cheap if the United States could absolutely insure Lee's life at the cost of five million dollars a year. He proclaimed that Lee "was the very best soldier I ever saw in the field."
In 1856, as dark clouds loomed, Lee stated that "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil."
When war finally came General Scott offered him command of the Union Army, but Lee, after pacing the floor all night, decided he could not fight against his own people. Lee's final written words to General Scott were "Save in defense of my native state, I never desire again to draw my sword."
After leading the Army of Northern Virginia to many victories against overwhelming odds, he surrendered and asked his men to go home and be good citizens. A while later he was offered $50,000 for the use of his name by a northern insurance company, but Lee politely informed them "Sirs, my name is the heritage of my parents. It is all I have, and it is not for sale." He also stated that concerning his previous actions "I could have taken no other course without dishonor, and if it were all to be done over again, I should act in precisely the same manner."
In 1868, the New York Herald proposed nominating Lee for President, but Lee was by then President of Washington College where he had but one rule and that was "every man must be a gentleman."
Theodore Roosevelt characterized Lee as "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." Winston Churchill stated that Lee was "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived."
In closing, I think the words of General/President Eisenhower would be appropriate concerning a question as to why he kept a picture of Lee in his office. He stated that Lee "was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history......From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul."
Brock Townsend
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 20, 2007 8:11 PM
"......the simple and irrefutable fact that the Civil War was necessary to bring slavery to an end....."
Ed:
Not my view. Slavery was ended without violence in other countries, and was not THE cause of the War as evidenced by the Corwin Amendment.
"In 1861 President-Elect Lincoln worked in support of and wrote letters to state Governors asking them to ratify the _Corwin Amendment_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_amendment)
which would have forever protected slavery as it then existed. In December, 1862, he offered gradual compensated
emancipation with slavery lasting until 1900. Neither Georgia nor any other Confederate state accepted either offer because the war was being fought over economic exploitation of the Southern agrarian states, not slavery."
37thtexas.org
Brock
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 20, 2007 8:20 PM
The marriage of convenience between Dixie Democrats and Republicans in the 60s required moral compromises on the part of Republicans. The legacy of those compromises includes the politics of belligerent resentment of 'the other,' an obsession with using government to promote parochial white southern evangelical Christian culture and a disdain for courts becasue they don't advance southern white culture while supressing other cultures the way corrupt police, small minded citizens and kangaroo courts routinely did in the south.
We aren't supposed to notice or mention that the south is still very close to its roots in a culture that featured the intermingling of Christianity and a deep pride in social and institutional racism embedded in a vigilante, lynching culture that idolized the small mind. This still matters to some of us because the culture of the small southern mind is still very much at war with a just American society.
Posted by: Dr X | March 20, 2007 8:22 PM
No one was tried for treason after the War because the best legal minds advised against it, as they thought the US would lose which would show that, in fact, states did have the right of secession and the War had been fought on a false premise from the beginning. That is way Jefferson Davis was let go, pure and simple.
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 20, 2007 8:25 PM
SLC,
I'm not sure why you seem to take such offense to my inquiry, I disagree with your assessment and your source. While I am now familiar with the author, I haven't read the work. But I can state the following:
First, his shortcomings as a quartermaster hardly impact his strengths as a tactical battlefield and theatre commander. McClellan was an incredible quartermaster, honestly, who would you rather have lead your troops in to battle?
Second, I would partially agree with the assessment of the invasions of the north. The 1862 campaign may have had major strategic implications but for poor security. The 1863 campaign was a waste, a win at Gettysburg would have done little more than lengthen an unwinnable war.
Third, I find it hard to blame Lee for the strategic failings of the Confederacy as a whole given the limitations of communication, the convoluted chain of command, and the fact that Lee was, for much of the war, limited to commanding the Army of Northern Virginia.
I am personally neutral towards Lee, I don't particularly admire him or dislike him.
Posted by: dogmeatIB | March 20, 2007 9:08 PM
No Ed, you're wrong. Who said Northerners aren't racist, then or now? Do you think good old Saint Abe liked black people?
Racism isn't a Southern invention. The Confederate Battle Flag didn't invent racism, didn't cause racism, and does not now perpetuate racism.
How naive and innocent to stoutly claim the North isn't racist!
Racism is alive and well because of big dumbos like you and poor little no-talent professional victims like Sims.
Posted by: Kathryn Sowder | March 20, 2007 9:23 PM
Kathryn Sowder wrote:
So where's the part where I'm wrong? Can you quote anything I've said that even suggests that I think any such thing? I bet you can't. I am amused as hell at the endless string of straw men being attacked here.
Wonderful. Now when you find anything I've said that even hints at those things being false, feel free to let me know.
You're right, that would indeed be naive and innocent. Good thing I never said anything even remotely like that. Are you getting tired of beating the hell out of that straw man yet?
Once again, we have people who insist on arguing with the Ed in their head rather than the actual Ed. I know that's a lot easier to do, but it makes you look quite absurd.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 20, 2007 9:34 PM
You rude obnoxious, liberal's are proving who has the anger and hate built in. Yankees are so entirely incongruous to Southern people that they and their descendants will ever be our natural enemies.
I hope y'all get "Mr." Hillary elected, she be y'all's downfall. : ^ ))))
Posted by: PoP | March 20, 2007 9:38 PM
HAHAHA!!! No way is there an Ed in my Head!!!!!
Posted by: Kathryn Sowder | March 20, 2007 9:44 PM
Re dogmeatIB
I am sorry if Mr. dogmeat1B took offense at my response to his inquiry as to what I based my assessment of Robert E. Lee on. I merely meant to provide him with the requested information. I can assure him that I did not take any offense whatsoever at his inquiry which was entirely reasonable.
1. I am entirely in agreement with Mr. dogmeat1B as regards McClellan. General McClellan was a totally incompetent battlefield commander which he proved on numerous occasions. As General Fuller states in the volume I cited, when his right was attacked on day 1 of the 7 day campaign, if he had had an ounce of generalship, he would have marched in and taken Richmond.
2. Another problem which was not cited by Fuller but has been cited by Connelly is Lees' apparent unwillingness to learn from his mistakes (quite unlike Grant in that regard). Case in point, the attack on day 7 of the 7 days campaign on Malvern Hill and the attack on Cemetery Ridge on day 3 of Gettysburg. In the first instance, he launched an attack on a strong Union position and absorbed 5,000 causalities in an hour, failing ultimately to take the position. On the second instance, he apparently learned nothing from the previous years failure at Malvern Hill and launched an attack with 15,000 men (Picketts' Charge)on a strong Union position along Cemetery Ridge. In this case, his forces took 7,500 casualties and again failed to take the position. The mistake made was the same in both instances; he failed to understand the power of the bullet, namely the devastating effect of rifled musketry on unprotected advancing troops in line and the advantage it gave to troops standing on the defense. I should mention that General Fuller, in other books he wrote, has pointed out that the failure of the British, French, and German High Commands to study and realize what happened in the American Civil war cost the lives of millions of their youth in the First World War (where rifled musketry was augmented by breech loading and machine guns). In addition the Gettysburg attack was poor tactics to begin with as, even if Pickett had succeeded in gaining a lodgment on Cemetery Ridge, the reinforcements to exploit such a breakthrough were too far away (> 1.5 miles), because of the failure of the Confederate artillery to silence the Union artillery which had been placed on the reverse slope of Cemetery Ridge.
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2007 10:27 PM
Re Brock Townsend
Mr. Townsends' link to the article written by General Brown is much appreciated. I have already made several assertions, supported by historians not cited by General Brown which are in partial disagreement with his article. At this point, I don't think that this is the appropriate blog for a further extension of this discussion, although I am certainly prepared to contest several of General Browns' claims and assertions. However, such a discussion would be several times as long as the original article and would involve a careful analysis of every battle conducted by General Lee. It is quite obvious that General Brown is from the Douglas Southall Freeman school of Civil War History; I'm from the Thomas Connelly school.
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2007 10:39 PM
Well, Ed, sorry, but I got the impression that when you wrote:
"And please don't hand me that nonsense about the Civil War being about "state's rights"; the only "right" they sought to protect was the "right" to own human beings and force them to labor."
you were basically saying Confederates were pro-slavery and Yanks were anti-slavery. Which wasn't entirely true, was all I was sayin'.
Posted by: Brian | March 20, 2007 11:44 PM
Let me see if I have it correctly: Yet another ignorant whiney product of the imperial federal propaganda machine is bellyaching about the bad ol' Confederate flag. So what else is new? What isn't new, but is conveniently ignored by sheeple such as the author of the article and the sheeple who agree, is the following about the U.S. flag:
The U.S. flag flew over many slave ships. The Confederate flag flew over none.
The U.S. flag flew over nearly nine decades of slavery, including in the North. The Confederate flag flew over four years of slavery, but was in the process of being phased out.
The U.S. flag flew over atrocities committed against Southerners AND Northerners during the so-called Civil War, and flew over the rape and pillage of the South afterwards, euphemistically referred to as Reconstruction.
The U.S. flag flew over the attempted genocide of American Indians.
The U.S. flag flew over the abandonment of prisoners of war in Vietnam.
The U.S. flag is flying over approximately 45 MILLION murdered unborn babies (and counting) since abortion became legal.
The U.S. flag is flying over illegal immigration which is destroying America.
That was just a partial list, so don't feed me garbage about the Confederate flag. It doesn't wash. I suggest that the author and those who bleat in agreement get a real history lesson and learn the truth. Of course, that would require having the guts to stop sucking up to political correctness. No, sheeple don't like hearing the truth.
The knee-jerk reaction to those of us defending the truth is to accuse us of being members of the KKK or whatever white supremacist group. Wrong. I'm not a member and don't want to be, but go ahead and grasp for something; you'll find a false label to apply to us. That's what you people do, isn't it?
Posted by: Rodney Combs | March 20, 2007 11:52 PM
Yankees fought for democracy,Confederates fought for Representative Republic.Yankees are the treasonors NOT the Confederates.Read the "Declarition of Independence" that is the document that the Constitution was fashioned from.Yankees need to get a real education on TRUE history instead of repeating democratic propaganda.
Posted by: Vindiciamus | March 21, 2007 12:09 AM
In 1866 (just after the war) the new regular army formed some regiments of former slaves. Along with the rest of the segregated army these "buffalo soldiers", with their new found freedom helped annihilate upward estimates to one million Plains Indians. All in the name of manifest destiny.
It's ironic how the North was supposedly so antislavery but so pro-genocide.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 12:19 AM
Posted by: Baratos | March 21, 2007 12:36 AM
Indeed, I hear the Confederates would have no part in that nasty slave trade!
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | March 21, 2007 12:43 AM
Wow, we have a collection of half truths, twisted facts, omissions, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and outright lies to support the Confederacy. Truly an impressive collection.
Rodney, you can't selectively remove the culture that created the Confederacy from its role in the United States importing slaves and then point to it as "proof" that the Confederacy was somehow superior. Also the genocidal campaign against Native Americans began long before 1865 and INCLUDED that same confederate culture. Point in fact, the southern hunger for land to increase the available land for cotton production played a major role in the 1830 Indian Removal act and the Trail of Tears. At the same time southern slave owners were debating whether the Cherokee should be removed today, or should have been removed last week, in the north there was opposition to removal. The core of this failed movement eventually became the core of the abolitionist movement.
Vindiciamus, what precisely is a treasonor? While the DECLARATION of Independence is one of our most important founding documents, it isn't the law of the land. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, "When in doubt, refer to the Declaration of Independence." Finally, I find it truly amazing that you would suggest someone else needs "to get a real education."
MarkL, a million Plains Indians? You're joking right? As I pointed out to Rodney, the genocidal campaign against Native Americans began long before the post civil war period, it began long before the United States was even created as a country. To blame the north for continuing the genocidal campaign of others, in the defense of the south, is again, laughable.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 21, 2007 12:49 AM
PoP wrote:
I love it when folks like you show up to put your ignorance and stupidity on display. You can't even put together a coherent sentence, as the above clearly demonstrates. There is no need for the comma, nor is there a need for the apostrophe in "liberal's" (apostrophes show possession, not plurality). If you want to shake the stereotype of the South being defended by a bunch of semi-literate hicks, you might want to try taking remedial grammar.
Incongruous? Never use a large word when a diminutive one would suffice. Especially if you don't know what it means.
I don't have the slightest desire to see Hillary elected; the chances of me voting for her are slim and none. And slim isn't feeling so well. Your presumptuousness only makes you look even more foolish.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 1:01 AM
Brian wrote:
And what I said was accurate. As someone pointed out above, the CSA constitution was virtually a carbon copy of the US constitution. The only real difference is that in several places it guaranteed that "the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress." So you tell me, what right did they want established that was not in the Constitution other than the right to continue to hold slaves? Of course there were those in the South who were against slavery and those in the North who were not, but this doesn't change the truth of what I said a bit.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 1:08 AM
Vindiciamis wrote:
This is gibberish. The Constitution of the CSA was identical in structure to the US Constitution. The only significant difference was that it guaranteed that the institution of slavery would continue. There is no difference whatsoever in the form of government, only in whether those rights would be denied to slaves.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 1:10 AM
Holy shit Ed, your a nut magnet lately. Who'd of thunk that biggest can would open in a post about the confederate flag? I'm going to have to check out who's linking some of these posts, because they are certainly bringing out the crazy and the stupid - or at least those lacking in reading comprehension.
Posted by: DuWayne | March 21, 2007 1:24 AM
Ah, the U.S. made slavery unconstitutional AFTER the so-called Civil War. I see. Why after? Why not during? Why not before? Why did Lincoln support slavery? I could cite more than one of his quotes to support that. Why was the CSA offered slavery if they'd only stay in the Union, but was rejected because slavery wasn't what they were fighting for? Why was the state of West Virginia created so they could keep slavery? (I just answered my own question.) Why did Mr. Wonderful's Emancipation Proclamation free slaves ONLY in Confederate States? Why not the North, too? Why did UNION Generals Grant and Sherman have slaves and not free them until it became unconstitutional? Confederate Generals Lee and Jackson had no slaves; those inherited by Lee were immediately freed. Why were blacks treated worse in the North than in the South? (The movie Roots isn't a valid arguement.) Why did the Union army commit atrocities against blacks, too? What does the Bible say about slavery? Why is slavery judged by today's standards? Why isn't slavery that exists TODAY a problem for you people? Naw, you just like to trash the Confederacy because it's the culturally Marxist thing to do, like good imperial sheeple.
I dare all of you to read The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. I dare all of you to read The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South (and Why It Will Rise Again) by Clint Johnson. You won't have to fret about those imagined "half-truths, twisted facts, omissions, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and outright lies to support the Confederacy" because there aren't any. Go ahead; read them. You'll find that the Confederacy isn't what you've been taught by those who won the war. Bigoted idiots who display the Confederate flag in recent years don't count any more than bigoted idiots who've displayed the U.S. flag (KKK).
Well, I've wasted enough time trying to educate the uneducable. Wallow in your myths if you like.
Posted by: Rodney Combs | March 21, 2007 1:53 AM
So if I read The South Was Right!, then can I burn all of your Confederate flags and the trucks that display them? I'm impressed that the artist here found a less aggressive expression of his take on the Confederate flag than the first thing that comes to my mind.
BTW, if this is really all about southern heritage, why is it the Confederate battle flag that people care about so much and not the political flags of the CSA?
Posted by: DavidD | March 21, 2007 2:29 AM
Ed,
Who made you god of which answers make sense and which don't? You live in denial of absolute fact and yet you think you are some sort of master of answers. I've dealt with your kind many times. You have an opinion, a lousy opinion, but an opinion, none the less. But an opinion is all that you have. You are not interested in truth, just in an audience for your particular bigotry. There is nothing but utter nonsense in your statement that the War Between the States had to be fought to end slavery. If nothing else, slavery would have died for simple economic reasons. If you were just a tiny bit clever, you could figure that out. I am absolutely sure that there was brutality involved in slavery. I thought there was a great deal of brutality in the attack by a big black man on that hundred-plus year old woman that I saw on the news a week or so ago. Brutality didn't begin or end with slavery, and it wasn't and isn't limited to the South, or to whites. Post-war violence is not related to any Confederate flag since the surrender at Appomattox ended the war and the Confederacy. Mr. Sims has proven that those who fought under and those who revere the Confederate flag don't control those who misuse it. Although I absolutely do not consider Mr. Sims an artist, I suppose we should thank him for making a point about the Confederate flag. Despite its reason for existing, it has been badly misused by many people over the years. There is no artistry and no honor in Sims' "display." And you are no journalist!
Posted by: Connie | March 21, 2007 2:35 AM
Ed, wrote:
"I love it when folks like you show up to put your ignorance and stupidity on display. You can't even put together a coherent sentence, as the above clearly demonstrates. There is no need for the comma, nor is there a need for the apostrophe in "liberal's" (apostrophes show possession, not plurality). If you want to shake the stereotype of the South being defended by a bunch of semi-literate hicks, you might want to try taking remedial grammar."
Gosh Ed, did I touch a nerve? Yankee's tend to react just as you have, with slander, arrogance and that better than thou attitude.
Thank you so much for the grammar lesson and proving my point.
Posted by: PoP | March 21, 2007 3:44 AM
There's this little thing called an amendment process, which requires 3/4ths of the states' approval.
I'd like very much to see that.
Politics.
Because the Northern states already all outlawed slavery. It was the handful of border states that didn't.
Interesting question. Here's a better one: why were there a total of 20 slaves in the Union states in 1860 and 3,520,660 in the Confederate states?
Worse?
Armies of all sorts commit atrocities, and the Union was not without racists of its own. So what?
Who cares?
As opposed to the standards by which it's all right?
Wow, that snippet there oughta earn you Mr. Brayton's coveted Idiot of the Month Award.
Wow, a bunch of random words that you don't like strung together to make insults ("trash[ing] the Confederacy" is "Marxist"?). I'm deeply impressed.
Posted by: Skemono | March 21, 2007 4:05 AM
Wow, confederate trolls are almost as fun as creationist trolls!
Posted by: Will | March 21, 2007 8:09 AM
Re Will
And the HIV/AIDS denier trolls over at Tara Smiths' blog.
Posted by: SLC | March 21, 2007 9:02 AM
Connie waxes defensive:
I've dealt with your kind many times. You have an opinion, a lousy opinion, but an opinion, none the less. But an opinion is all that you have.
This is how grade-school kids respond when they're proven wrong: "That's just your OPINION, and we all have a right to our own opinions." In philosophy, this is known as "crybaby subjectivism." Or just "postmodernism."
There is nothing but utter nonsense in your statement that the War Between the States had to be fought to end slavery. If nothing else, slavery would have died for simple economic reasons.
Which could be one reason why the Confederates had to go so far as to enshrine slavery in their Constitution. Changing times call for desperate reactionary measures.
I am absolutely sure that there was brutality involved in slavery. I thought there was a great deal of brutality in the attack by a big black man on that hundred-plus year old woman that I saw on the news a week or so ago.
Ah yes, one man's brutal crime is comparable to ALL of the evil and brutal acts committed in the practice of slavery over a period of about 87 years. Nice perspective you got there, Connie. I'm not sure, but I'm beginning to think the words "flaming racist" may be applicable here.
Brutality didn't begin or end with slavery, and it wasn't and isn't limited to the South, or to whites.
A fact which no one here denies. So, Connie, are you engaged in political action against such brutality in the modern era? Or do you only mention it when someone disses Dixie? Who did you vote for in 2004?
PS: Apologies to anyone I might have offended by my offhand brush-off of the "artwork" in question. A cross in a jar of urine, Stars 'n' Stripes in a toilet, Stars 'n' Bars in a noose...this sort of "art" is starting to blend together in my mind, so it's pretty much lost its "shock" value. Of course, if it provokes a lot of self-important hicks into showing their ignorance and bigotry, as they've done here, then maybe it's not so lame after all. But I still prefer the Dixie Chicks...
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 9:58 AM
Yankees are so entirely incongruous to Southern people that they and their descendants will ever be our natural enemies.
Ah, tribalism -- the easy, soothing response to a harsh and changing world; easier than working, taking responsibility, or changing one's ways of doing things. So much for the myth that Southerners are more patriotic, eh?
In all fairness, I have to point out that the southerners I've met are perfectly capable of understanding their fellow Americans to their north (and west). But then, I try not to hang with losers...
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 10:09 AM
PS: Apologies to anyone I might have offended by my offhand brush-off of the "artwork" in question. A cross in a jar of urine, Stars 'n' Stripes in a toilet, Stars 'n' Bars in a noose...this sort of "art" is starting to blend together in my mind, so it's pretty much lost its "shock" value. Of course, if it provokes a lot of self-important hicks into showing their ignorance and bigotry, as they've done here, then maybe it's not so lame after all. But I still prefer the Dixie Chicks...
Why do you keep putting art in quotes?
Posted by: Will | March 21, 2007 10:19 AM
It's ironic how the North was supposedly so antislavery but so pro-genocide.
I must have missed the bit where Confederate soldiers drove white settlers off of Indian land and allied themselves with Indian tribes in order to preserve their freedom.
I do remember one bit where the Union fought a battle to deny the South access to the frontier (Pea Ridge?), presumably because the South wanted (more) Indian land as badly as the North, for the same reasons.
I also remember a bit about a Confederate plan to conquer Mexico and partition it into about 25 slave-states.
How were Southern settlers any less "pro-genocide" than Northern settlers?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 10:20 AM
In response to various questions/statements.
1. Lee went to Gettysburg hoping to win a decisive battle which could have very well resulted in the recognition of the Confederacy by England and France. He also hoped to furnish his army with sustenance in the North, and allow the breadbasket of Virginia to recover.
2. The Battle Flag is so revered by the descendants of Confederates soldiers, because that is the one they actually fought under in many cases. It has also been called the Soldier's Flag, and became the official emblem of the SCV in 1896 at the convention which my great grandfather attended. The Betsy Ross and the Battle flag fly over my cemetery where lie my g,g,g grandfather who fought as an Ensign and saved the flag at the Battle of Brandywine, and three great uncles among others who fought in the WBTS, two of whom died. My relatives who fought in the WBTS fought for precisely the same reasons as did my g,g,g in the Revolutionary War with an additional rationale of protecting their homes from an invading enemy.
3. West Virginia was admitted as a slave state in 1863 after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation which freed nary a soul.
4. "I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen---even in Mississippi and Alabama---mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I've seen in Chicago," a shaken King said later. "I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."
(Below repeated in response to a question posted after my original one.)
5. Corwin Amendment
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_amendment)
"In 1861 President-Elect Lincoln worked in support of and wrote letters to state Governors asking them to ratify the which would have forever protected slavery as it then existed. In December, 1862, he offered gradual compensated emancipation with slavery lasting until 1900. Neither Georgia nor any other Confederate state accepted either offer because the war was being fought over economic exploitation of the Southern agrarian states, not slavery."
37thtexas.org
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 21, 2007 10:35 AM
Will: I put "art" in quotes here because I'm an old-school kind of guy who respects actual work as a sign of inspiration and dedication, both of which I consider essential to the creation of art. Van Gogh took a lot of time painting "Starry Night;" the Pre-Raphaelites took a lot of time getting every detail right in their often mind-bogglingly intricate paintings (including such details as the reflection of trees on a knight's armor); Rodin took a lot of time and trouble carving "The Kiss;" Dave Sim took a lot of time drawing "Cerebus;" and Neal Stephenson did a lot of work writing the Baroque Cycle. Sheer quantity of time and labor do not, in themselves, make a work "art;" but, in general, they earn more respect from me than something as easy as tightening a noose around a flag. Just my opinion; YMMV.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 10:48 AM
Raging Bee, I think you're are mistaking craftsmanship for Art. Yes we can appreciate the craftsmanship in those things, and in many cases it is the craftmanship of the peice thay sets it as superior to its contemporaries. However what the work in question may lack in craftsmanship (any fool can wrap a rope around a flag) it makes up for with its provacative message. People look at it and some think well I could have done that and technically they could have. But the impressive thing is not the physical aspect of the flag hanging from the rope, its the fact that it carries a powerful idea behind such a simple interaction of a few objects that speaks whole volumes of history and emotion. Thats what makes it art.
Posted by: Robert | March 21, 2007 11:06 AM
And for the record, I do think the cross in the jar of urine is simply shock value. It's meant to offend those with religious sensibilities. It may have a purpose (to point out that your beliefs, no matter how sacred, are not above ridicule), but I think its more likely that the artist was simply thinking "I'm gonna piss some people off!"
Posted by: Robert | March 21, 2007 11:09 AM
How were Southern settlers any less "pro-genocide" than Northern settlers?>
Your missing the point..... I was only adding some perspective for those with the warm and fuzzy notion that the North was an army of morally superior freedom fighters that marched south to end slavery; but then, marched west to annihilate another race.
It's an oxymoron.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 11:15 AM
3. West Virginia was admitted as a slave state in 1863 after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation which freed nary a soul.
Utterly irrelevant to anything. The Emancipation Proclamation meant that if the Union won the war, slavery was going to be abolished (as history attests). It simply didn't open an unnecessary front. If the Confederacy had won, read the state constitutions and Articles of Confederation to see the likelihood of slavery being abolished (i.e. nil).
In short, the Emancipation Proclamation was as fine a piece of Realpolitik as there has ever been (for one thing, it made it politically impossible for the British Tories to support the Confederacy or they'd have been lynched) and simmilar in France and for another although the immediate effect was weird (it gave a few years to the few Union slave states), it effectively abolished slavery.
5. Corwin Amendment
It is well known that Lincoln found slavery immoral - but was more concerned with the preservation of the Union than with abolition of slavery. To quote him below:
(It's worth pointing out that the version of the above that those in favour of the Confederates like is My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it - and also worth pointing out that he wrote "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong."
in the same letter - he was against it but in favour of Realpolitik)
And I agree with you about "Modern Art" lacking craftsmanship.
Posted by: Francis | March 21, 2007 11:15 AM
Hey Ed!
If you don't want us to come creeping out of the woodwork then stick to Science, which is, I think, the topic of your blog?
You ought to be thrilled that a few people other than your three or four Loyal Cronies noticed you!
Posted by: Kathryn Sowder | March 21, 2007 11:24 AM
Re Brock Townsend/Gettysburg
Mr. Townsend is quite right that Lees' objective in the second invasion of the North was to win a battle and somehow induce Great Britain to recognize the Confederacy and intervene to stop the war (France could only intervene with the approval of Great Britain which controlled the sea lanes). In this he was sorely mistaken. Any chance of British intervention ended with the Emancipation Proclamation (by the way, the EP was announced for that very purpose). After the EP, there was no chance that the British Parliament would approve such a course of action by the British Government. However, it should be pointed out that Lee sold it to the Confederate Government on the basis that it would relieve the siege of Vicksburg, which Grants' army had surrounded and cut off; the idea was that Lincoln would be so terrified by the presence of a Confederate Army north of the Mason-Dixon which could threaten Washington that he would recall units of Grants Army to defend the capitol and thus relieve the siege. Lee was as mistaken in this notion as he was about British intervention. When Grants' army crossed the Mississippi, he had 39,000 troops; when Vicksburg surrendered, he had 72,000 troops! Nothing is more devastating to an opinion then a number. Both of these erroneous ideas demonstrate Lees' incapability as a strategist. The correct move would have been to place the Army of Northern Virginia on the defensive (there was very little chance of the Army of the Potomac launching an offensive action because it was still recovering from the defeat at Chancellorsville) and detach a unit under Longstreet, using the railroads and the fact that the Confederacy had the interior lines to reinforce Johnston who was in the rear of Grants army (exactly what was done later in the year leading to the Battle of Chickamauga). Such a move very likely would have lifted the siege of Vicksburg and forced Grant to retreat, which, at that point, might well have lead to his being relieved of command.
Posted by: SLC | March 21, 2007 11:38 AM
Kathryn Sowder wrote:
No, the subject of my blog is whatever I choose to write about. Sometimes it's science, sometimes it's not.
3 or 4 cronies? Now that's just funny. Would you like to find one of your Southern nationalist cronies who gets anywhere near the number of hits that this blog does? The average of the last week is just under 8000 hits a day.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 11:41 AM
lol Sowder. Perhaps you noticed the name of the blog is "Dispatches from the Culture Wars"? Ed might not mention Southerners too often, but this post most definitely fits under the topic of Culture Wars.
I'm sure Ed's blog will do just fine without you, Kathryn... so feel free to troll elsewhere.
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 21, 2007 11:41 AM
I was only adding some perspective for those with the warm and fuzzy notion that the North was an army of morally superior freedom fighters that marched south to end slavery; but then, marched west to annihilate another race.
It's an oxymoron.
No, it's not an oxymoron, it's merely evidence that we humans are imperfect, but we try to do the right thing when we can. The fact that we fight to end one injustice without ending all other injustices, is neither an oxymoron nor evidence of hypocricy. Nor does it make chattel slavery, or the South's militant support of it, any less contemptible.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 11:45 AM
I love this absurd straw man that our intrepid interlopers have invented for themselves to argue against. They think that if they can show that Lincoln was not a plaster saint or that the North was not perfect they have defeated the undeniable reality that the predominant reason for the war was the institution of slavery. But no one here is arguing, nor has ever argued as far as I know, that Lincoln was perfect (I have criticized him strongly for his unconstitutional behavior during the war). And I have never made any statement even close to saying that the North is perfect, devoid of racism, and so forth. Yet they think that by arguing against positions no one here has taken they have defeated the actual positions that have been taken. Pretty standard behavior for zealots.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 11:47 AM
West Virginia was admitted as a slave state in 1863 after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation which freed nary a soul.
"Utterly irrelevant to anything."
It certainly is relevant. The point: why wasn't it admitted as a free state? Lincoln could have done as he felt proper with no repercussions.
Stating emphatically that there was no chance of the Confederacy being recognized after the EP was issued is an opinion not shared by all. As far as second guessing Lee, It is amazing how some are certain that what they state is beyond reproach and that they would have done better and known all the answers many moons ago. What say you about Chancellorsville? Just like in every battle, if you win, you are a genius and vice-versus.
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 21, 2007 12:05 PM
Here are two questions for people who hold your views:
--If the South was kind towards Native Americans, why did one general refuse to send his troops east because he feared the Native Americans would attack as soon as he showed weakness?
--If the Confederacy was so nice towards native americans, why am I unable to find mention of a single tribe joining their side in the Civil War?
Posted by: Baratos | March 21, 2007 12:23 PM
Waaay back in this comment thread, Reed Cartwright said
I'm just waiting for other artists to respond with their own versions, using the American flag, the UN Flag, the Iraqi flag, the "Christian" flag, etc.
Reed, this actually happened quite some time ago in Chicago, and I believe that the piece in question here may be a ripoff of that installation. In 1989, a student named "Dread Scott" at the Art Institute in Chicago created an installation called What Is The Proper Way To Display A U.S. Flag?. The piece was a notebook on a podium in which people could record their thoughts. On the floor in front of it was a US flag. In order to put entries into the notebook, visitors had to step on the flag. The cast of characters and specifics of the arguments differed, but the emotional response was similar to what we are seeing with this piece. The similarity of theme and title lead me to beileve that the Confederate flag piece was influenced by the Art Institute piece.
Posted by: DougT | March 21, 2007 12:35 PM
However what the work in question may lack in craftsmanship (any fool can wrap a rope around a flag) it makes up for with its provacative message.
Any fool can do or say something "provocative" -- and most fools have, especially since the 1960s, when "provocation" became the "in" thing to do. Back then, provocation for provocation's sake made sense, since many people and interest groups needed provoking, and weren't used to it. Today, however, provocation and insults come a dime a dozen, and it's all getting old and tired, especially since we're now so inured to it that "artists" have to be more shocking every year just to get noticed. (How's the next great artist-provocateur gonna top the Mohammed-cartoon episode of "South Park?")
I disdain this particular work, not only because it's an easy insult, but because it's an out-of-date insult: the overwhelming majority of the Confederacy's sons and daughters no longer want to secede, re-establish slavery, or go back to the days when lynching of black people was considered acceptable by the mainstream. This latest flag "provocation" is a superfluous shot in a battle that's already pretty much over, against an enemy that's already in decline on his home turf. The people rising up here to "defend" the South are trying to clog up the blogsphere precisely because they're largely irrelevant in the real world. And while it is amusing to watch these idiots make asses of themselves, we have more important -- and dangerous -- enemies to humiliate.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 12:48 PM
Sheer quantity of time and labor do not, in themselves, make a work "art;" but, in general, they earn more respect from me than something as easy as tightening a noose around a flag.
So then how do you value art? You seem to advocate time spent on a piece as a determining factor. I would say that art should be valued on the artist's intent, and how well that intent is realized. Time spent on a piece is irrelevant as long as the desired effect is achieved. Just because you think it was easy to set up the flag display does not mean the artist did not put thought and effort into it.
Posted by: Will | March 21, 2007 12:51 PM
the overwhelming majority of the Confederacy's sons and daughters no longer want to secede, re-establish slavery, or go back to the days when lynching of black people was considered acceptable by the mainstream. This latest flag "provocation" is a superfluous shot in a battle that's already pretty much over, against an enemy that's already in decline on his home turf.
Well, I guess you don't live in South Carolina.
Posted by: Will | March 21, 2007 12:52 PM
Re Brock Townsend
1. I think that the majority of historians have concluded that Great Britain was very unlikely to have intervened after the EP. Possibly if Lee had won a decisive victory at Antietam, such intervention would have been possible.
2. "As far as second guessing Lee, It is amazing how some are certain that what they state is beyond reproach and that they would have done better and known all the answers many moons ago."
That's the fun of revisionist history. There is of course no guarantee that if the course of action which I suggested had been taken that Grant wouldn't have turned around and defeated the combined Longstreet/Johnston army in battle and then re-instituted the Vicksburg siege before the troops therein could escape. All we know for sure is that the course Lee did take was a total failure.
3. Since the Battle of Chancellorsville was brought up I would like to comment on it. Mr. Townsend is absolutely correct, Lees' army won that battle and pushed the Union army North of the Rappahannock. However, I would argue that the battle was not a decisive victory because the Union army was still intact, other then Howards' corp which absorbed the brunt of the action on the Union side . The problem was that Lees' strategy required a long flank march around the Union right flank which turned out to be even longer then was anticipated because a detour was required to remain out of sight of Union pickets. The strategy was certainly daring and led to the subsequent victory. The trouble with it was that it took too long for Jacksons' wing to arrive at the point of attack; there was less then 1/2 hour to sundown when the assault finally occurred. Thus, insufficient time was available to obtain a decisive victory, that is destroying a significant part of the Union force and scattering the rest. Because of this, Jackson ordered a night attack which resulted in his wounding by his own men and his subsequent death. I think that even Lee would have agreed that the gain from the Chancellorsville action was not worth the loss of his ablest subordinate
Posted by: SLC | March 21, 2007 1:07 PM
Ed said:
Now, the amount of Civil War history I know is...not enormous by any means. But would you say that if slavery had not existed in the South when it seceded, the Civil War wouldn't have happened?
Posted by: Gretchen | March 21, 2007 1:12 PM
Once again someone is not only missing my point but adding words to it. My original post was:
It's ironic how the North was supposedly so antislavery but so pro-genocide. >
Now you can go way out of your way and read what you like into, but it's just a historical fact. American Indians served both sides. The south had the only native American general. Something the segregated army of the north would have never considered. The Cherokee nation joined the south.
The reason you have read nothing about it is that history is always written by the victors. That's begaining to change some.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 1:13 PM
I would say that art should be valued on the artist's intent, and how well that intent is realized. Time spent on a piece is irrelevant as long as the desired effect is achieved. Just because you think it was easy to set up the flag display does not mean the artist did not put thought and effort into it.
Yes and no. Since we can't read minds, the artist's intent can be understood ONLY by how well it is realized in his/her work. The better the realization, the better we understand and appreciate the intent. Generally speaking, the more and better work you put into something, the better the result. This is why paintings such as "Guernica" or "At the Slave Market" (?) have more effect, at least for me: the artists didn't just throw two objects together, they made visible efforts to paint a whole scene, and to capture, as exactly or starkly as they could, the injustices they wished to describe. Such paintings didn't just provoke, they informed; and that takes work, inspiration, and dedication.
This particular work just seems lazy to me, both in its execution (the lack of effort, which implies lack of real thought or dedication), and in its trite, throwaway message (the old Southerner-as-secessionist-noose-happy-bigot stereotype). Linking the Confederate flag to racist lynchings isn't exactly a new concept.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 1:15 PM
Raging Bee: You say its a superfluous shot in a battle already over, but there are still plenty of people who idolize the confederate flag, and its imagery is still potent enough to evoke powerful emotions. It is within the living memory of citizens today that lynchings were common, and even if that weren't the case its still a powerful reminder of the kinds of things that a progessive society needs to guard against.
Posted by: Robert | March 21, 2007 1:17 PM
Let me try that again (not sure what happened), My original post was:
In 1866 (just after the war) the new regular army formed some regiments of former slaves. Along with the rest of the segregated army these "buffalo soldiers", with their new found freedom helped annihilate upward estimates to one million Plains Indians. All in the name of manifest destiny.
It's ironic how the North was supposedly so antislavery but so pro-genocide.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 1:18 PM
It's ironic how the North was supposedly so antislavery but so pro-genocide.
It's ironic how so many people miss Ed's point.
Posted by: gwangung | March 21, 2007 1:24 PM
Yep, and I was only responding to some of them.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 1:41 PM
It's ironic how the North was supposedly so antislavery but so pro-genocide.
It's REALLY ironic how this "point" is made in defense of a Confederacy that was both pro-slavery AND pro-genocide. (Trick question: what happened to Native American tribes in the South?)
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 1:45 PM
Help yourself and explain it to us all what happened to the native people in the south after the war or even during. It's not likely you'll receive any argument from me. Good or bad you mistake me for someone that is zealously bias one way or the other. Truth is good for the soul which is why I enter these blogs.
You still have not explained to me my oxymoron statement preferring, instead to ask another question of me that misses the mark of my original statement.
Early on in this blog there were a lot of posters writing slanderous untruths and half truths do primarily poor historical education and a learned hatred for the southern point of view.
They reduced the WBTS as a simple act of good vs. evil.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 2:26 PM
Markl,
It's truly ironic that the Cherokee would fight for the south given that the people of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina were the ones who moved them to Oklahoma in the first place (killing over 4,000 in the process). Trail of Tears, ever hear of it? How about the Indian Removal Act? The south pushed for both, going so far as to ignore the Supreme Court when Jackson, a SOUTHERN president, ignored the ruling and allowed GEORGIA to round up the Cherokee and move them out. The Cherokee, Chocktaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole were all hunted down and forced to relocate to "Indian Territory." By northerners? No, by southerners who wanted their land for slave plantations. Again, you can't ignore the first 90 years of our country's treatment of Native Americans because it doesn't fit into your "the North was worse than the south" strawman.
It's amusing that you would claim that there were a million hunter gatherers on the Great Plains. Also the "buffalo soldiers" came in to existence during the war and the units remained in commission. They were also the actual units that made Teddy Roosevelt's famous charge. They, along with northern and SOUTHERN troops.
Truly amusing, nothing happened to Native Americans prior to 1866 when northerners and their segregated black units waged a genodical campaign against the million plains Indians. So what are you trying to say? If the south had still been around then the black units would have been slaves like they should have been, and none of that would have happened?
The fact is, the plains wars were the final chapter in a long (300 year) book of Europeans slaughtering Native Americans. The United States, NORTH AND SOUTH, is guilty; which is utterly irrelevant because it has nothing to do with the fact that the South was wrong, slavery was wrong, and the primary reason the South seceded was to maintain slavery in other words, "their way of life."
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 21, 2007 2:28 PM
You still have not explained to me my oxymoron statement preferring, instead to ask another question of me that misses the mark of my original statement.
And what was the "mark" of your original statement again?
Early on in this blog there were a lot of posters writing slanderous untruths and half truths do primarily poor historical education and a learned hatred for the southern point of view.
And the barely-coherent ravings of the South's defenders have done little to refute or correct these (alleged) misstatements.
You're starting to sound like a creationist raving about all the bad press his barely-disguised religious doctrine is getting.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 2:35 PM
I agree with Raging Bee, how does the current "contribution" of southern nationalists improve the discussion or disprove these "misstatements." I'd like to hear what these misstatements were, perhaps a coherent list?
Oh, and 'Bee, I have to disagree with you regarding the Dixie Chicks ... can't stand country music. ;o) And personally, I found the flag/gallows display interesting and moving, a symbol of a century+ of segregation and oppression; the other "art" you mentioned don't have the same value as far as I'm concerned.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 21, 2007 2:42 PM
...I have never seen...mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I've seen in Chicago," a shaken King said later. "I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."
Since then, it seems that people from all over the south have followed King's advice. Today, a huge portion of the hatred that is directed against gays, lesbians, Pagans, liberals, scientists, science-educators, atheists, women who want to control their own bodies, "activist" judges, etc. etc., seems to come from that alleged bastion of old-world good manners, the solid Republican South...bless their hearts...Did they learn all that from us stupid brutish Yankees?
Posted by: RAging Bee | March 21, 2007 2:47 PM
dogmeat: I'm no big fan of country music either. The only time I came close to liking it was when visiting friends in Wyoming, and finding that the country music on the radio had more genuine feeling than the pop (this was 1983).
Country music, for better or for worse, speaks of real experiences like bankruptcy, unemployment, failed marriages, good and bad love, hating our foreign enemies, friends and loves ones lost in wars against said enemies, etc. The Dixie Chicks' latest CD adds standing up to majority tyranny to that list, and I think they deserve support for that.
As for the flag 'n' noose, if it speaks to you, that's all you need to know. I just have different tastes in art.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 21, 2007 3:05 PM
Gretchen wrote:
Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Without slavery, there is no civil war. And without the civil war, there is no foreseeable end to slavery (the CSA constitution several times guarantees that black slavery was to be legally protected in perpetuity).
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 3:09 PM
MarkL-
I don't understand why you continue to press the point that the North was not blameless. DUH. Everyone knows that. Of course what the government did to the Indians was heinous. But how does that answer anything I've said? Does that fact make the artist's statement about the legacy of slavery and lynchings any less valid? Of course not. And if an American Indian artist put up a similar piece with the American flag, I'd say the same thing - it's a valid and justified allusion to a history of brutality and oppression. The "I know you are but what am I" argument is simply ridiculous; it doesn't answer anything. No one says that black slavery is the only bad thing that ever happened in this country, or that the North was perfect and blameless. I made three basic arguments:
1. The piece of art under discussion makes a valid and meaningful statement about a very disturbing historical reality.
2. Trying to censor that art is tyrannical and absurd and blatantly unconstitutional.
3. Yes, the civil war came about because of slavery; without slavery, there would have been no civil war.
How does "the north did bad things too" in any way answer those arguments? It doesn't. Again, you're arguing against arguments no one has ever made.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 21, 2007 3:17 PM
Ed said:
That statement can be taken two ways:
1. The South would not have seceded if not to maintain slavery, so the North wouldn't have felt the need to go to war.
2. If the South had seceded for a reason other than slavery, the North would not have gone to war with it.
Even if the former is true, that doesn't mean the latter is.
The original Constitution also denied voting and property ownership to blacks and women, yet those got changed. I don't see any reason to believe that slavery would have continued forever and ever simply because the CSA's constitution said it should.
Posted by: Gretchen | March 21, 2007 3:30 PM
Ed said:
Well, not necessarily. Some people do actually speak as if the South is some kind of rabid bulldog chained back only by the result of the Civil War, which would go right back to slavery and lynchings if given the opportunity.
Posted by: Gretchen | March 21, 2007 3:35 PM
Let people fly whatever flag they want, or put KKK crosses on their own property (which the ACLU defended), but they you should be reminded of what THEY represent - not the flag, but part of its symbolism; of the kind of minds they represent long after rights were afforded to those previously enslaved.
We present here are not at fault for the past, but we should certainly remember it, and remind others:
http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
Posted by: Observer | March 21, 2007 3:38 PM
Gretchen,
First, I believe Ed is arguing that without slavery there would have been no need for the south to secede, IE option 1. One need only look at the 1850s to see the role slavery played in the civil war. I agree with this assessment. The south was molded by slavery, their society was modified by it, their social system created by it. It came to touch every part of their economic, social, and political culture. You take the impact of slavery out, and the development of the southern economy would not have been stunted. You would have seen cities like Chicago, Cleveland, etc., growing up in the south. Immigrants would not have stayed away from the south (IE there would have been a need for labor), etc.
Without slavery --> no southern "way of life" --> no debate over slavery --> no abolitionist movement --> no secession crisis --> no war.
Slavery likely would have died out eventually, figure 20-40 years. Then figure Jim Crow goes on another century, so we'd be seeing the beginnings of a civil rights movement right about now.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 21, 2007 3:41 PM
Southern states seceded explicitly in reaction to the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. They saw his election as a watershed moment in the history of the country, in which the slavocrats would no longer be able to dominate the country thanks to the 3/5ths clause and the compound political interest slavery + the 3/5ths clause gave it. The South enjoyed a tremendously disproportionate share of power over the country in antebellum years, and the slow tide of demographics and economic realities were finally putting stresses on that dominance by the 1860s. The Dred Scott outcome is a perfect example of this: the Supreme Court was so packed with pro-slavocrat justices thank to a disproportionate number of Southern presidents being elected thanks to the whole system being rigged because of the 3/5ths clause and slavery.
The South seceded because finally an anti-slave party had been able to be elected, and the Southerners lost their wits. As the Corwin amendment makes clear, while Lincoln wanted to stop the expansion of slavery, he was not trying to ban it where it was legal. He just wanted the Federal government to slowly stop making slave states disproportionately powerful. When the South saw that the federal government might not for long be an instrument of slave protection and expansion, they seceded.
When the South seceded, Lincoln took measures to preserve the Union. He had a constitutional obligation to do so. The slave states had no unilateral right to secede, and when they took up arms against Federal troops at Sumter, Lincoln was constitutionally obligated to crush the revolt. What meaning does any government have if it cannot sustain its existence?
The war was not just about slavery, but slavery precipitated it, and part way through the war Lincoln recognized that by associating the Union cause with emancipation, the North would gain international legitimacy. The British Empire, for example, was sympathetic to the idea of a divided North America, but there is no way British public opinion would support a proslavery South against an antislavery North.
So, according to Gretchen the argument can be dissected into:
1. The South would not have seceded if not to maintain slavery, so the North wouldn't have felt the need to go to war.
That is true. The goal of secession was, ultimately, to secure the institution of slavery and perhaps continue its expansion into new territories, such as Cuba or Central America if not the West.
2. If the South had seceded for a reason other than slavery, the North would not have gone to war with it.
Lincoln was clear: preservation of the Union was the goal. If the South had seceded because it was sick of Northern accents, any president would be constitutionally obligated to preserve the Union. I doubt Ed was implying that the North would not have gone to war against the South if slavery wasn't the issue. It's not really a relevant speculation though, is it? The historical fact is that the great revolt against the Union was precipitated by the desire to protect and possibly spread the practice of slaveholding in a time when demographic and economic factors were working against the institution.
Posted by: Chuck | March 21, 2007 4:01 PM
Raging Bee,
Thanks for you analysis of my statements which were addressed to Ed for his childish method of discussion. Neither he, nor you are interested in truth or fact or a decent discussion, just verbal bullying. I'm surprised that people of your ilk would put down anyone for brutality. You both are the kind that foster it.
Who I voted for is none of your business.
You can label me anything that you want, I can do likewise to you. One form of bigotry is no less destructive than another. You aim yours at Southern culture. You take some sort of imaginary moral high ground for your attacks on mostly white, Southerners and seem to think that because I cited the horrendous behavior of a particular black man as an example of brutality, that I'm a "flaming racist." Well, there you go with your "crybaby subjectivism!"
Posted by: Connie | March 21, 2007 6:34 PM
1. Confederate Indians were innumerable, and the link below will start one on a long journey if they are truly interested. The Confederacy had the only Indian General of the War, General Stan Watie, who was the last General officer to surrender.
http://tinyurl.com/35kv54
(American Indian Confederate Heritage)
2. Lincoln instigated the firing on Fort Sumter. See below.
"You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Ft Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. "
Lincoln, Letter To Gustavus Fox on 1 May, 1861
"He (Lincoln) himself conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce giving notice of the fact to Gov Pickins of S.C. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter--it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could."
Senator Orville Hickman Browning's diary dated July 3, 1861
(Lincoln's personal and political friend)
3. James Buchanan's position on the right of secession.
His 4th Annual State of the Union message, delivered to Congress 3 Dec1860.
"The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the Constitution that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress, and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not "necessary and proper for carrying into execution" any one of these powers.
(Excerpt)
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 21, 2007 7:03 PM
Connie, why did you feel the need to identify that "particular black man" as being black?
Posted by: Trinifar | March 21, 2007 7:11 PM
This "artwork" is incredibly offensive. The Confederate Battle Flag represents all Southern, and even Northern, Confederates regardless of race or religion and is the symbol of less government, less taxes, and the right of the people to govern themselves. It is flown in memory and honor of our Confederate ancestors and veterans who willingly shed their blood for Southern independence.
People have become brainwashed by northern propaganda and the kkk into thinking it was racist. Heck I'm not even white and niether were my ancestors.
Posted by: Bear Paw | March 21, 2007 7:21 PM
Gee thanks Ed for acknowledging that the north was not perfect; however it's unwise to state that "everyone" knows that and Duh. Judging form some of the earlier posters it is not so obvious. Which is why I made the post in the first place.
To your credit I do appreciate your concern and at least you did not put words into my mouth as some others have done, and continue to do.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 7:50 PM
Connie, you aren't just a racist, you're an idiot too.
Yes, Connie, comparing a criminal act to the institutionalized, racist brutality of slavery in order to protect your precious image of the South is racist.
Second, this isn't about whites being "worse than" blacks, or Southerners being worse than northerners, you fucking idiot. It's about all of us having this this horrible thing in our past. Instead of valuing it as a proud part of of our heritiage and defensively pointing fingers maybe we should just let it go. Admit it was wrong and let it go.
The fact that you think it's more important to criticize others and point fingers at random criminals makes it pretty clear what your priorities are.
Last, to whoever is complaining about the Northern genocide against Native Americans. We don't have a *special* flag, you stupid fuck. And if we did, no one would fucking hang it in public and treat it as a hallowed part of our heritage and tradition.
Posted by: Leni | March 21, 2007 8:05 PM
It would be nice to see so of the pro-Confederate-flag people acknowledge that many people (including people of color) see the flag as especially offensive because of slavery in the South and the South's resistence to abolishing slavery.
One of the states-rights that the states of the South fought for was the right to enslave people. It was not a mere abstract constitutional principle. The people who were led so ably by Lee and fought and died so bravely did so in a cause that sought to retain the right to buy, sell, and own human beings. More than a few people -- not just in the North -- find that repugnant at every level. And, yes, some of us do see you as meanspirited, bigotted, and racist when you refuse to acknowledge this.
Posted by: Trinifar | March 21, 2007 8:09 PM
This "artwork" is incredibly offensive. The Confederate Battle Flag represents all Southern, and even Northern, Confederates regardless of race or religion and is the symbol of less government, less taxes, and the right of the people to govern themselves.
That's not the only thing it represents to Southern blacks.
You're obviously excluding them. Why?
Posted by: gwangung | March 21, 2007 8:32 PM
Re Brock Townsend
Not a good idea to quote James Buchanan who is generally considered by virtually all historians to be weak sister and one of the worst presidents in American history (at this point, only James Earl Carter and George W. Bush appear worse). His attempts to temporize instead of acting decisively to put down the rebellion by the Confederates has made him the laughing stock of American presidents.
Posted by: SLC | March 21, 2007 8:34 PM
Oh Poor Leni, don't you know the word "racist" did not even exist in the English language until 1933 and went basicly unnoticed until the late sixties. So be careful as to how you so freely fling the word around historically speaking. Oh, and I see you've self destructed resorting to name calling IE idiot.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 9:17 PM
MarkL: "don't you know the word "racist" did not even exist in the English language until 1933"
So.. because you say that specific word didnt exist during the civil war (and, frankly, I would need more than one persons work on it before I believed it) that the belief didnt exist? Or did I miss your point?
Posted by: jba | March 21, 2007 9:25 PM
er, work = word in my last post.
Posted by: jba | March 21, 2007 9:27 PM
jba, The belief existed in the form of white supremacy back in the day. It is fact that most all whites north and south felt they were superior to blacks back in the day. This includes Lincoln and so many abolitionist. The friction between white abolitionist and black abolitionist is well recorded. It was the temperance movement that later pushed for equality.
Posted by: MarkL | March 21, 2007 9:38 PM
Did "The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag" make anyone think of the line "Southern trees bearing strange fruit"? It wouldn't surprise me if that is a good part of what John Sims wanted to evoke.
I'll take a flag in a noose over a human being in a noose any day of the week.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 21, 2007 9:40 PM
Mark, dumbfuck. So racism didn't exist before 1933?
Anyway, I wasn't speaking historically, I was talking to Connie.
Posted by: Leni | March 21, 2007 9:50 PM
Leni,
Since I don't know in what part of the country your ancestors lived, I can't say what particular crimes against humanity they may be guilty of having committed. But if they were here before the War Between the States, they are just as quality of perpetuating slavery as anyone from the South. If you don't know enough about history to know how involved the northern states were in slavery, you should shut-up and go do some studying!
I am not the least bit interested in your rants about what you think I am. Your filthy language during your rants just shows that you a person of low estate and limited verbalization skills.
You and all of those like you can be as propagandized as you wish, that doesn't mean that everyone else is going to buy into your beliefs. By the way, your infantile argument would only hold water if the War Between the States was about slavery, which it was not. Ergo, your racism crap is just that, crap. I'm not proud of anyone for owning slaves. I'm just not stupid enough to go along with the "idiots"(back at you) who claim that the war was fought to end slavery.
If you want to pick on someone for being racist, take on the NAACP.
Posted by: Connie | March 22, 2007 2:30 AM
Trinifar,
He was black. What do you think that I should have called him? I was making a point about brutality not being exclusive to white Southerners, as indicated by some of those posting here.
Posted by: Connie | March 22, 2007 2:53 AM
Back for more, Connie? Bless your heart, more you shall have...
One form of bigotry is no less destructive than another...
If you're calling me a bigot, please remember I haven't enslaved anyone, nor am I tryiing to defend, excuse, or minimize the practice of chattel slavery anywhere, anytime.
...You aim yours at Southern culture.
I was speaking of Southern political acts, and the present-day defense of such acts by certain thin-skinned Southerners. YOU are the one labelling it "culture," and conflating the two very different concepts. (Look up "conflating" yourself, I can't do everything around here.) So tell us, are those past atrocities, and present excuses, the whole of "Southern culture?" You seem to think they are.
We might take you seriously if you brought more knowledge and less defensive flailing about to the table. So far, your posts here have had absolutely no grounding in historical reality.
Bear Paw wrote:
The Confederate Battle Flag represents all Southern, and even Northern, Confederates regardless of race or religion and is the symbol of less government, less taxes, and the right of the people to govern themselves.
The Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States was a straight lift from the US Constitution. The only significant changes I remember, were an article explicitly legalizing chattel slavery, and another article legalizing the acquisition of new territory by the CSA. Nothing about "less government, less taxes, and the right of the people to govern themselves;" and certainly nothing about the right of dark-skinned Southerners to govern themselves.
Brock: the two quotes you posted give no proof that US troops fired the first shot over Ft. Sumter, nor do they explain why, if the South were unwilling victims of aggression, they didn't simply stay clear of US troops in order to avoid trouble.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 22, 2007 9:31 AM
I must confess that I am intrigued by the mudslinging that
"... shows that you a person of low estate ..." implies.
And I'm curious about a few other things. Like how Lincoln could have instigated the attack on Fort Sumter by attempting to reprovision it unless the Confederacy already wanted war and were prepared to fire first. (Hint: Forts don't move. There weren't enough people in Fort Sumter to raid. Therefore any attempt to prevent the provisioning was a siege, pure and simple.)
Also, Connie and Gretchen, you really need to read the Constitution of the Confederacy and the various state constitutions if you think that the war wasn't about slavery - or at least the desire of the Confederacy to preserve the institution of slavery. There are a few changes in the Confederate Constitution that are meant to reduce corruption - but the substantial ones all relate to directly enshrining slavery into the constitution.
Finally, Brock, West Virigina was admitted under the condition that it place a provision to abolish slavery in its constitution (all slaves over 21 immediately, and then all slaves reaching their 21st birthday). The Emancipation Proclamation more or less said "help us and you've got a few years to sort your affairs out before we abolish slavery - oppose us and get broken by force with all your slaves trying to help us win".
Posted by: Francis | March 22, 2007 9:34 AM
Raging Bee - I have no idea who you have enslaved. You are, however, defending a government that did. Maybe, you think that Lincoln's ploy of freeing slaves in states where he was not in control, negates the US government's guilt in slavery, but I don't. I am not defending slavery. I simply do not agree with uninformed persons, such as yourself, who help propagandize other uninformed and uneducated people into believing that the northern states waged a war to free the slaves in the south.
You imply that all slaves were treated horribly. I'm sure that some were. Human beings are not all nice, no matter where they live or what their color. They do have a tendency to take advantage of people who are at a disadvantage, whether it be in class, size, strength, wealth or station in life. But whether out of the goodness of their hearts or just good economic sense, most people don't abuse something that they need and for which they have paid a tremendous amount of money. Ergo, while being owned by another person is not something most of us would care to endure, being owned does not equate to being physically abused. You are the one "conflating" Southern culture with slavery, not me. Since slavery was not exclusive to the South, I am not willing to stand by silently while you and hacks, like John Sims, falsify history, especially, Southern history.
As you said, I can't do everything! You are the one who is uneducated in this particular period of history. I study it all the time. I have not been lead around by the nose to believe the "so-called" history espoused by government controlled schools. Do some true studying about the war and its causes, then come back and we can have a true discussion.
Francis,
You need to learn how to read before you take that condescending attitude toward me. If you had bothered to read Leni's post to which I was responding, you might have the good sense to realize who was slinging mud. If you use the foul language that he employed in his post, then I hold you in the same contempt that I hold him.
If you are confused about Fort Sumter, then go back and study what the British did to Charleston. That should end all confusion.
I don't "think" that the war wasn't about slavery, I "know" that it wasn't. Your side is the one that has been brainwashed. Six of my great, great granfathers and three of my third great grandfathers fought in the War Between the States. Not one of them owned a slave. Most of them were farmers, they did their own slaving. They fought because Lincoln invaded their state with an illegal war against Southern people. By the way, black people of the south suffered right along with the whites. Yankees had no more mercy on them than they did on anyone else here. As a matter of fact, in many documented cases, they treated them worse.
Posted by: Connie | March 22, 2007 5:01 PM
and
Connie, you are either incredibly naive about slavery, or you're a closet racist. Otherwise, it's beyond my comprehension to understand how anyone might not understand that slavery is not only mentally and emotionally abusive, but that also the slaves live under the constant fear of physical abuse or even death if they were to try to live their own life in the way they see fit.
How in the world could a decent human being ever think of spinning slavery in such a positive light??
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 22, 2007 5:30 PM
Up until the British abolition in 1807, slavery was a universal fact of the human condition. Every civilization practiced it in some form. At what point and under what criteria can you honor some civilizations that practiced it, while political correctness requires reviling others who did? Acting like slavery in the US (which of course was not limited to the south) was some exceptional crime against humanity, when in fact it was merely a late manifestation of a phenomenon that has plagued humanity since the dawn of civilization seems disengenuous or naive.
If, for example, I can honor my Viking ancestors despite their record of raping and pillaging the British isles, what is it that is so objectionable about honoring the Confederacy? (despite the fact that for the analogy to hold there would have to be a sizable contingent of medieval Norse enthusiasts who maintain that the Irish actually appreciated being raped and pillaged).
One of the things that make American culture unique is its African heritage. But for slavery this would not exist - no jazz, blues, rock, country or bluegrass. Not that this is an ex ante justification for slavery, but there are unintended positive consequences.
Posted by: bwv | March 22, 2007 5:58 PM
bwv wrote:
But who is doing so? This is just another strawman. Go up and read my post and tell me where I said anything even close to what you're responding to. The issue is whether an artist who does a piece reflecting that legacy is being "offensive" for doing so, and whether those who are offended get to censor him or not.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 22, 2007 6:33 PM
Connie, I'm a female. Leni is a female name. Sometimes it's short for Helen, although in my case it is not.
Now that we got that out of the way, I'd like to continue berating you, if you don't mind.
They weren't, but they undoubtedly were as capable of commiting atrocities as any of us are. I don't see how this matters though, since no one here has said that only Southerners and their ancestors are capable of comitting atrocities.
For some reason you keep arguing that someone (me apparently? I don't even know...) has argued this. No one has and your mindless, pigheaded bleating to the contrary won't change that.
And I've noticed you've got a problem with cussing. Well, then I guess we're even because I have a problem with idiot rednecks.
How does any of this justify Confederate flag waving idiocy and racist apologetics you've visited upon this blog?
LOL! Go fuck yourself Miss Manners.
And I mean that in the nicest way.
(And verbalization? Connie, you jackass, it's verbal skills. Plain old verbal skills. Verbalization is a noun. I think Ed already mentioned this, but you needn't use a big word when a little one will suffice.)
Which infantile argument? Jesus Christ, Connie. Use the quote feature.
And propagandized is a verb, stupid. Did you mean to say 'propagandizationalized'?
Why bother with NAACP when we've got you right here?
Connie, you stupid whore. The reason I am being so abysmally unkind to you is not because I am a person of low estate, it's because I think you deserve it.
Notice, I could still be of low estate (fine by me) and think you're an asshole. But your deluge of childish and inane fingerpointing isn't worth anything more than total abject scorn, so that is what you are going to get from me. And if you think it sounds harsh, good. It's supposed to.
I don't think there is room to be polite to someone who thinks that we shouldn't criticize the brutality symbolized by the Confederate flag because some black guy in bumfuck Alabama killed a white lady. Not only is that absurd and stupid, but it's racist to the core. You are actually attempting to argue that the Confederate flag isn't a symbol of racism because a black man killed a white woman!
What else is that besides stupid and racist?
So Connie, if you don't want to be called a racist or an idiot then don't say stupid racist shit. It's really that simple.
And for the record, you are the only person I've spoken this way to on this blog. Because Ed and probably most of his regular readers don't appreciate the tone it sets and I don't ususally either. But in your case I feel totally different. I just have zero patience and zero tolerance for your bullshit and I do not feel like being polite or mincing words. In any case it's your lucky day, Scarlet. I think I'm done now.
Posted by: Leni | March 22, 2007 9:09 PM
Ed, I think this is performance art of a very high caliber. Mind you, performance art is not something I normally appreciate, but what the hell. And if Connie and Leni want to move on to jello wrestling and you can film it, I'll spring for the jello.
Posted by: kehrsam | March 22, 2007 9:35 PM
Leni,
I could care less if you are male or female. Either way, you are nothing but trash. You are exactly the kind of person who feels free to abuse others. You criticize as though you actually knew something about anything. Your personal attacks on me don't hurt me, but they surely do show you to be repugnant. Your filthy ranting at me still has not proven your ignorant opinion. You are the racist here, you just aren't intelligent enough to know it. I find you to be rather amusing. I love seeing you prove how vile you really are.
Posted by: Connie | March 22, 2007 11:05 PM
Used to be that blacks were the blank slate upon which everyone's fears and insecurities could be projected on. Leni shows us how far things have come in 50 years, which is that Southern redneck racists are everyone's nigger now.
Posted by: bwv | March 22, 2007 11:44 PM
So bwv, are you actually admitting that you're a redneck racist with that comment? What an idiot! There is some great irony in your complaint about being mistreated, while at the same time 1) using the n-word in such a derogatory manner, and 2) pointing out one of the many reasons why blacks are really the victims of discrimation when you wrote (accurately) that they're the "blank slate" that racists like you project your fear and insecurities onto.
Also, I applaud you Leni. And I really mean this, no sarcasm. When I was first reading your comments, I thought they were unnecessarily rude. But actually your mild rudeness really brought out the true sides of these racists.
And finally to you two, bwv and connie. I appreciate your willingness to express yourself so honestly, and exposing your true, racists selves to the ridicule that you really do deserve.
Shame on you both for your closed, bigoted minds. Or rather, as Leni put it so elequently... "Go fuck yourselves"!
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 23, 2007 12:19 AM
I could care less if you are male or female. Either way, you are nothing but trash. You are exactly the kind of person who feels free to abuse others
Don't project, dear. It's not polite in mixed company. Your mom should have taught you better manners than that.
Posted by: gwangung | March 23, 2007 1:57 AM
Doctorgoo, thanks for proving my point that leaping to the conclusion that someone is a racist Southern redneck (I am none of these) removes the obligation for civil discourse and allows for any abuse one wishes to inflict.
Posted by: bwv | March 23, 2007 2:41 AM
Dear Ed, you just proved the point made by my Southern Ancestors 1820-1860 - one reason why they wanted out of this union. You all are A bunch of Southern bashing, South Hating Hyprocrites!
Why not hang the USA Flag from a noose in the same way as sims did the Confederate Flag, there is no comparing the two because the USA Flag wins hands down the greater atrocities a thousand fold.
BTW Ed, do you know the number of lynchings in the South, black and white? What is the number in the other states of the union? My guess your states have more than the South because you are a hateful bunch of rats, and were meaner to the negro than Southernors would or could have ever been.
Posted by: Cajie | March 23, 2007 4:44 AM
Cajie you can educate yourself here:
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html#b
"The Southern states account for nine-tenths of the lynchings. More than two-thirds of the remaining one-tenth occurred in the six states which immediately border the South: Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas."4 Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama were the leading lynching states. These five states furnished nearly half the total victims. Mississippi had the highest incidence of lynchings in the South as well as the highest for the nation, with Georgia and Texas taking second and third places, respectively. However, there were lynchings in the North and West. In fact, every state in the continental United States with the exception of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont has had lynching casualties.
...
Lynchings occurred most commonly in the smaller towns and isolated rural communities of the South where people were poor, mostly illiterate, and where there was a noticeable lack of wholesome community recreation. The people who composed mobs in such neighborhoods were usually small land holders, tenant farmers and common laborers, whose economic status was very similar to that of the Negro. They frequently found Black men economic competitors and bitterly resented any Negro progress. Their starved emotions made the raising of a mob a quick and simple process, and racial antagonism made the killing of Negroes a type of local amusement which broke the monotony of rural life. Although most participants in the lynching mobs were from the lower strata of Southern white society, occasionally middle and upper class whites took part, and generally condoned the illegal activity. Many Southern politicians and officials supported "lynch-law", and came to power on a platform of race prejudice.
Posted by: bwv | March 23, 2007 4:59 AM
The only thing that Leni has "proven" is that she uses filthy language because she is too ignorant to argue her point effectively. Something which is also true in the case of doctorgoo.
gwangung - - You are not the one to preach about manners. You don't have the background for it. But if you do want to preach about manners, work on your cohort, Leni. She needs lots of help!
Gee, you guys have me really afraid calling me a racist! You're so lame.
Posted by: Connie | March 23, 2007 6:15 AM
Okay bwv, after reading a few of your posts, I concede that I don't have enough info to assume that you are a redneck or from the south. And for accusing you of those two things, I apologize.
As for calling you a racist, I stand by that statement for now. How else is there to interpret those two statements I pointed out above? No seriously, please answer... if there's a legitimately non-racist way to interpret what you wrote, I might apologize for that, too.
But just be sure that you don't make the argument that you aren't as bad as "the cross-burning racists of 50 years ago"; and claim that since you never did things that those 'real' racists did that your racist tendencies don't exist.
As for your comment about civil discourse... if it turns out that you are a racist, then I certainly feel justified in ending any civil discourse with you. While I strongly believe that everyone has a right to have and express their racist beliefs, I also believe that I have an equal right to criticize their beliefs just as strongly, and even to the point of being overtly rude and overbearing if I see fit.
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 23, 2007 8:28 AM
Go right ahead, cajie, I'm sure that there would be many people who would think it's making a powerful statement worthy of consideration.
Connie, you've exposed your racist beliefs several times on this thread, and I'm no longer willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you might just be naive about slavery. Nope, I'm pretty much fully convinced that the 'racist' moniker applies to you.
No, you shouldn't feel afraid of me, or anyone else here, since no one has threatened you at all. But just know that if you choose to hang out in this area of the blogosphere, that many people will remember your racist leanings and take anything that you say on the subject with a grain of salt.
After all, your biases have become apparent to all.
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 23, 2007 8:40 AM
I don't "think" that the war wasn't about slavery, I "know" that it wasn't.
We've provided documented evidence here, on THREE threads, proving that the Southern states seceded for the explicitly stated purpose of protecting their "right" to own slaves. Why did they have to do this? Because of the growing number of people in the US who wanted to abolish slavery. Further evidence shows that Southern politicians warned, as early as the 1830s, that attempts to abolish slavery would result in the violent breakup of the Union. No one has provided countervailing evidence to disprove any of this. If you haven't read the evidence, or refuse to acknowledge it, then you don't "know" squat.
At what point and under what criteria can you honor some civilizations that practiced [slavery], while political correctness requires reviling others who did?
Countries, and leaders, who abolish slavery on their own steam, after admitting it's wrong, tend to get more respect than those who fight to the bitter end to keep it, get crushed as a result, and then get hyper-defensive and shriek invective at everyone who points out the obvious.
You Dixie-defenders would get a LOT more respect if you'd just admit that what your ancestors did in the past was wrong, and that it got them in a lot of trouble; and then just get on with your lives.
At least one of my ancestors owned slaves, and two of them fought for the Confederacy; but you won't see me pretending no one has a right to criticize them for it.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 23, 2007 9:44 AM
Those people, as General Robert E. Lee referred to them, are so silly. We shouldn't hate them, though they hate us. Perhaps we should pity them for being self-righteous and arrogant, but mostly because they're learning disabled. In spite of pity for them, they certainly don't qualify for respect; maybe that's worse on their inflated egos.
Maybe what bothers them most is that we don't kowtow to their arrogance and agree with them, and that we don't want to be like them. I wonder if that's why they attack us and everything Confederate with their hate and their lies. Maybe deep down they know we're right, that the Southern states seceded to escape the Union's tyranny. I mean, after all, even Lincoln said, "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit." Lincoln also said, "In saving the Union, I have destroyed the Republic." And, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And, "I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District [of Columbia]..." And, "I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office... I am not in favor of Negro citizenship." And, "Amend the Constitution to say it should never be altered to interfere with slavery." To top it off, in 1867, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase said, "If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."
So what can we conclude about those people? I think it rubs them the wrong way to admit that the South was right, so they stubbornly cling to their myths and take out their frustration on those who tell the truth. Indeed, those people are so silly!
Oh, go ahead, Ed; you know you want to ban me! :D
Posted by: Rodney | March 23, 2007 8:37 PM
So what can we conclude about those people? I think it rubs them the wrong way to admit that the South was right, so they stubbornly cling to their myths and take out their frustration on those who tell the truth
I think the parallels with IDists is kinda evident. (The "South" was right? Including the blacks? Um. OK.....)
Oh, go ahead, Ed; you know you want to ban me! :D
Why should he?
Posted by: gwangung | March 23, 2007 8:44 PM
Why ban you, Rodney? You didn't say anything. Like everyone else who came here to argue with me, you didn't bother to engage anything I actually said. This claim that the South didn't secede over slavery but over "Northern tyranny" is just plain ridiculous. I've quoted from numerous leaders of the Confederacy and their list of complaints against that "tyranny" and all of them were related directly to slavery. No slavery, no civil war; it really is that simple. And nothing you wrote in any way answers that irrefutable fact.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 23, 2007 10:07 PM
If secession wasn't about slavery, why is that areas of the Confederacy where there were few if any slaves overwhelmingly voted against secession? 9 of 16 mountain North Carolina counties voted against, as did virtually all of east Tennessee. The counties where there were substantial numbers of slaves all voted to secede, those without voted to stay in the union; that's an odd pattern if we assume slavery was not involved.
Furthermore, once the war started, this strange pattern persisted. Buncombe County, where I live, had a substantial slave population, and was fiercely loyal to the Confederacy. Mitchell County, with no negroes recorded in the 1860 Census, was fiercely Union. "Bloody Madison" was split between the rich river bottomlands and the hardscrabble hollers and was, well, bloody.
I was involved in politics here for a number of years and can tell you there were a lot of old folks in the hollers who would tell me, "I vote the way my grand-daddy shot" and they meant it. We're being swamped by retirees from other parts of the country these days, but the WBTS is still going on out here, and the battle lines are between those whose ancestors could own slaves (whether they did or not) and those who couldn't.
I hope you're not banned Rodney, just because I eagerly await your answers to my quandries..
Posted by: kehrsam | March 23, 2007 10:46 PM
Connie wrote:
Actually, Connie, I used filthy languade and argued my point effectively.
So effectively, it seems, that it rendered you incapable of explaining what any of this has to do with a crime committed by black man.
Go ahead Connie, tell us why that is.
...
On a more serious note, I really agree with Raging Bee.(Which almost never happens!)
I don't get offended when Americans (like me), for example, criticize Germany because I am of relatively recent German import. I don't make excuses and try to say that the Native Americans were worse. (Or at the very least just as bad.)
Why would I bother? It seems like a far healthier, more honest and more productive move to just admit that it was wrong. If I went around saying things like "You know, I'm not proud of the Nazi's but those darn Jews. One killed an German once, you know. And oh, by the way, how do you like my big fucking swastika flag?"
The whole thing is just so colossally retarded. (As bad as throwing nazis into the mix is, I'm soryy- it doesn't seem so far from the mark to me.)
Posted by: Leni | March 24, 2007 3:58 AM
I try to deal with facts in a respectable debate which not everyone does here. In fact, I have never seen such a horrendous amount of disgusting words in any other forum.
To reiterate:
1. I believe my documented quotes concerning Lincoln's instigation are sufficient.
2. Buchanan followed the Constitution. Lincoln did not.
3. Lincoln admitted West Virginia as a slave state when he could have admitted it as a free one.
Posted by: Brock Townsend | March 24, 2007 12:20 PM
Really?? Not in high school hallways or on the street somewhere? If this is the worst you've ever seen, then you've really lived a sheltered life.
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 24, 2007 12:46 PM
Brock wrote:
Ugh, I know! Isn't it just terrible?
Well, the good news is that Connie's leaving, so we won't have to listen to her offensive filth any more :)
Posted by: Leni | March 24, 2007 10:38 PM
Well, Leni, in fact, since you seem to want to assign your egregious characteristics to me, I wouldn't dream of denying you the pleasure of my company.
As far as you using filthy language and arguing your point effectively, I'm afraid that you would be wrong in that assumption. I couldn't get past all of the filth to see your point.
You really are an offensive twit, aren't you? I'd be willing to bet that comparing slavery to what the Nazis did to the Jews, won't win you any Jewish friends.
Posted by: Connie | March 25, 2007 12:17 AM
>>Southern redneck racists are everyone's nigger now.
bmv, there is a HUGE and telling difference between the two ... Southern redneck racists, as you put it, choose to be racists, embrace being a "redneck" and happen to come from the south. It is ironic that you could condemn someone for not embracing a bigot while at the same time defending their right to be a bigot.
It is truly amazing that these people refuse to acknowledge the integral role slavery played in the entire existence of the culture that they seem to worship. The confederacy was about slavery, treason, and petulance. The south built an economy, a society, and a culture based upon slavery. They established classes of citizens, dominated a country; manipulated a government. When the fruits of their disgusting system came back to haunt them, when they lacked industry, when they failed to attract immigrants, when they began to lose control of the government, they forced their will upon the rest of the nation. The gag rule, fugitive slave act, postal censorship, the Dred Scott decision, all were southern states infringing upon the "rights" of northern states and citizens. Finally, when Lincoln was elected and they realized that it was only a matter of time before they completely lost control of the government, the committed treason, they tore apart the constitution that they had sworn to protect and opened fire upon former friends and compatriots. Then, finally after all of the death and destruction, what do they do? They skulk about in the middle of the night, lynching people, burning their homes down, scaring their children and murdering fathers and mothers. They establish a bullshit system of segregation and "separate but equal." They deny men, women, and children their basic rights for generations. They murder people to make certain that they "stay in their place." They murder decortated veterans for being "uppity." All of these "noble flags" come back out in the 50s and 60s ... not to fight civil rights, but to celebrate their "heritage." They murder Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and little girls in a church ...
But this is all something to honor.
The south will rise again ... because shit floats.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 25, 2007 2:02 AM
Dogmeat - - if you can post a remark like, "Southern rednecks racists are everyone's nigger now," you are no better than the people that you seem to despise. It's rather like hating yourself, isn't it? Be careful, people might realize what you really are!
"We hear that the Yankees at Winchester have the Negro men who lately went off from this place, working on the streets, guarded by soldiers, and that the women are begging from door to door. - - Friday night, May 12, 1865."
"The officers have told everybody that they did not wish the Negroes to go off with them, and would furnish to them neither transportation nor rations, but they were not at liberty to send them home. This afternoon, however, the soldiers began a system of treatment which must have been discouraging to American citizens of African descent. A number of tents had been taken from the military hospital to the Yankee camp, and some of them were spread upon the ground and used as blankets for tossing up the colored friends. Men, women and children were thrown up at the risk of cracking skulls or breaking necks. One woman having been tossed up several times fell on her head, and at last accounts was lying insensible. - - Monday night, May 1, 1865."
"The soldiers have been tossing Negroes in blankets at their camp, and it is reported that one was killed and buried yesterday. - - Thursday, May 18, 1865"
"Federal soldiers have been enforcing the order for Confederates to strip off military clothing. Some of them have stood at street corners with shears to cut off brass buttons, etc. Every Negro, even wearing an old Confederate coat or jacket has lost his buttons. - - July 2, 1865." - - "Annals of Augusta Country Virginia 1726 - 1871"
We know about the great love of Yankees for blacks. The evidence abounds from both then and now.
Posted by: Connie | March 25, 2007 1:53 PM
>>>Dogmeat - - if you can post a remark like, "Southern rednecks racists are everyone's nigger now," you are no better than the people that you seem to despise. It's rather like hating yourself, isn't it? Be careful, people might realize what you really are!
Connie, you might want to read a bit more carefully. I was quoting a statement made by bwv hence the next paragraph where I state:
>>>bmv, there is a HUGE and telling difference between the two ... Southern redneck racists, as you put it, choose to be racists, embrace being a "redneck" and happen to come from the south. It is ironic that you could condemn someone for not embracing a bigot while at the same time defending their right to be a bigot.
As for your quotes, what's your point? That they'd have been better off as slaves?
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 25, 2007 3:12 PM
I couldn't get past all of the filth to see your point.
No, Connie, you used the "filth" as an excuse to avoid the numerous factual points made here, in non-obscene English.
This is a blog, not a shouting-match. You know as well as we do that you're perfectly capable of ignoring the obscene posts (not that there were that many of them anyway) and respond only to the more mature posts. And you chose not to, probably because you know you can't.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 25, 2007 3:26 PM
Bee - - One filthy posts is one too many. But since you pointed out that you think I ignored numerous factual points made here, I think that is pretty much par for the course, here. I have seen a great deal of childish name calling and Southern bashing, but not much else. I have to wonder why, since the predominate opinion here is against all things Southern and supposedly, in favor of blacks, Brock Townsend, a black man, has been so ignored here. He doesn't quite fit in the convenient little mold that y'all have of the victimized black, does he? You can't quite use his messages to further inflate your great emancipator egoes, can you? Don't lecture me about what this blog is or isn't. Educate to your friends!
Posted by: Connie | March 26, 2007 7:15 AM
So, Connie, you acknowledge that there are, indeed, factual posts here, but you continue to ignore them, using "One filthy posts is one too many" as your one-size-fits-all excuse.
As for Brock, plenty of people responded to his posts, myself included. And Brock responded by repeating what he had already said and vanishing. And you "respond" with yet more name-calling, utterly incoherent and unconnected to any of the points we've made here.
You've had plenty of chances to counter the (very real) anti-Southern bigotry of which you complain; and all you've done is reinforce the very stereotypes (ignorant, bigoted, backward, racist, uncultured, still whining about that war you started and lost so long ago) that you pretend to condemn.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 26, 2007 11:11 AM
Bee - - you and others here are free to exhibit all of the anti-Southern bigotry that you wish. You just don't score any points for it.
Posted by: Connie | March 26, 2007 7:02 PM
Ben Jones, a former congressman from Georgia, played Cooter on the TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard." A Southerner of mixed heritage, a life member of the NAACP, and a veteran of the tumultuous civil rights movement of the 1960s. Ben made the following statement about Confederate symbols when discussing cancellation of a "Dukes of Hazzard" themed summer concert featuring singers John Schneider and Tom Wopat because of "racist overtones."
I understand that there are those who have convinced themselves that any display of any symbols of the Confederate effort is by definition "racist and offensive."
To me that is an elitist canard, and contributes to the kind of misunderstanding against which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently spoke.
The use of the rebel battle flag on the General Lee is all the proof one should need to realize that that symbol is not the sole province of the handful of haters who run around in bed sheets, desecrating the Christian cross, the American flag, and yes, the Confederate battle flag. Their bigotry is born of fear and ignorance, and they do not represent the values of the goodhearted descendants of the Confederacy any more than they represent Christians, Americans, or for that matter, all of us who sleep on bed sheets.
Hopefully, a genuine dialogue and some very real bridge building can be the result of this incident. In King's "I Have a Dream" speech, he said "I have a dream that one day on the red clay hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood."
I believe in that dream. And I believe that the time has come to make it happen.
Posted by: wing | March 27, 2007 5:45 AM
Connie,
My point about your complaint that Leni is of low estate is that it implies a class-riddled near-feudal look at society.
And no one is saying that the Union was made up of angels. What is being said is that the Confederacy first seceeded and then attacked the Union in an attempt to preserve the institution of slavery. This has been shown by quoting from the leading confederates and by quoting from the constitution both of the confederacy and of the confederate states. Or are you trying to deny that the most substantial changes between the constitutions imply otherwise?
No one is claiming that Lincoln or the Union was not racist (there are plenty of quotes from Lincoln himself that are overtly racist) - and no one is claiming that the Union states were angels. (I can't off the top of my head think of any successful and expansionist civilisation that wasn't massively racist). However, Lincoln was by the standards of his day pretty enlightened (he was an Abolitionist and even succeeded in ending slavery within the USA through means such as the derided Emancipation Proclamation) and the Confederacy was backward enough to want to go to war to preserve the institution of slavery.
And Brock, you are going to have to prove that West Virginia would have come willingly as a free-state without seriously weakening itself and hence weakening the war effort. Lincoln's overtly stated primary goal was not to abolish slavery but to preserve the Union. You are also going to have to show why the reprovisioning of a static object was instigation if the Confederates themselves did not want a war.
Posted by: Francis | March 27, 2007 8:10 AM
wing: I totally agree with you here; but such bridges must be built on an honest agreement about what happened in the past and why. There are plenty of descendents of slaveowners -- myself included -- who are perfectly willing to acknowledge both the good and the evil of what our ancestors did. We're the ones who can build those bridges you rightly call for; the revisionists and denialists have nothing to offer.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 27, 2007 12:20 PM
Francis--
You don't have a point if you make any attempt to defend a person who uses the language that Leni uses.
It think that it is hilarious that you yankee defenders want someone to "prove" what they post. Lincoln "proved" with his own statements that the war was not about slavery. You don't wait for a tick to dig in before you get rid of it. Fort Sumter controlled what went in and out of Charleston. Increasing union forces there was an absolute threat to Charleston. The tick was digging in!
Posted by: Connie | March 28, 2007 6:29 AM
Raging Gee, while I appreciate your comment about bridge building, I did not make that statement. Ben Jones made that statement. I simply posted it.
I don't have a problem admitting that today I am glad that there is no "recognized" slavery in this country. That doesn't mean that I think there is no slavery, period, in this country. It just takes different forms. But condemning my ancestors for fighting for their rights is not the way to build bridges. Those men fought with honor for what they believed was right. They were not trying to conquer another country, they were simply defending theirs. Even the yankee soldiers admitted how gallantly they fought.
Posted by: wing | March 28, 2007 6:55 AM
Connie,
You don't have a point if you make any attempt to defend a person who uses the language that Leni uses.
In case you hadn't noticed, I wasn't specifically defending Leni - I was pointing out what your angle of attack said about you. But I do find it hard to take seriously someone who pays more attention to who is polite than who is right.
It think that it is hilarious that you yankee defenders want someone to "prove" what they post. Lincoln "proved" with his own statements that the war was not about slavery.
No. Lincoln proved that he did not go to war because of slavery. The south seceeded because of slavery and the Union went to war because of the secession.
Without slavery, no secession. Without secession, no war. Therefore the war was about slavery. Direct causal relationship.
It wasn't about the Union freeing slaves (at least prior to the Emancipation Proclamation) as is generally claimed. It was about the Confederates perpetually enshrining their right to keep slaves. And the Union not wanting the United States to be destroyed.
You don't wait for a tick to dig in before you get rid of it. Fort Sumter controlled what went in and out of Charleston. Increasing union forces there was an absolute threat to Charleston. The tick was digging in!
Translation: The Confederacy seceeded because of slavery and was willing to fight for this and even to strike first.
And I'd like to see your source that Lincoln increased union forces at Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter was resupplied by Star of the West which was an unarmed merchant ship carrying only supplies.
Wing, when the main right being fought for is the right to keep slaves, I don't care how gallantly people fought. Neither do I care how bravely the Nazis fought. I have no particular hatred for current Germans based on the actions of their ancestors and none for current Southerners based on the actions of their ancestors. But I do have contempt for holocaust deniers in the present and I do have contempt for people who deny that secession (and hence the Confederate half of the Civil War) was about something other than slavery.
The South Africans after apartheid set up Truth and Reconcilliation committees - you need truth before you can have effective reconcilliation or the whole edifice is based on a lie.
Posted by: Francis | March 28, 2007 9:29 AM
wing: no one denies that the unjust and destructive exploitation of humans by humans can take many forms other than chattel slavery. In fact, most of the liberals who taught me about slavery, also made me aware of those other forms of exploitation, and showed how prevalent they are all over the planet, including the industrial North. (That is, in fact, why they were pro-organized-labor, anti-Communist and anti-fascist.) The whole point of this multi-post blog-debate, is that a) chattel slavery was among the WORST forms of exploitation at the time; and b) while the north may have been inconsistent and even a bit hypocritical in its opposition to slavery, the South was consistent, and militant, in its support of it.
But condemning my ancestors for fighting for their rights is not the way to build bridges.
They're my ancestors too: at least one slave-owner and two Confederate soldiers (TN or NC). The fact that my ancestors had a hand in slavery does not, and should not, make it any more defensible, nor does it change my moral duty to face the facts honestly.
Those men fought with honor for what they believed was right.
No one denies that either. From 1935 to 1945, German soldiers also fought with honor for what they believed was right. We don't have to deny this fact to admit that they fought -- and died -- for the wrong cause. And that was not their fault.
When I state this opinion about the Nazi cause, am I accused of insulting the memory of all those brave Germans? So far, no one has said this to me. In fact, it is Hitler who gets blamed for insulting their valor -- by wasting it in a needless war for a lunatic cause that did their country more harm than good. And saying so does not make me an anti-German bigot. So why can't we apply the same reasoning to the Confederate cause?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 28, 2007 9:34 AM
Connie: Francis did not say ONE WORD in defense of Leni's "language." Once again, you completely ignore the factual content of what someone actually said, and get the vapors over something that no one said. Are you dusted or something?
Fort Sumter controlled what went in and out of Charleston. Increasing union forces there was an absolute threat to Charleston. The tick was digging in!
Were US forces actively laying siege to Charleston at the time? Or is this just another of your hallucinations?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 28, 2007 9:45 AM
Bee - - Are you a control freak?
You can't dictate what comments I choose to make. Why don't you quit waging these petty attacks on me, if you are so interested in content? I know that even you are aware of how inane that last question about Charleston was, so I won't bother to reply to it.
Posted by: Connie | March 29, 2007 6:37 AM
Of course you won't bother answering a question of historical fact -- you know you can't, and you know your "case" is rubbish, so you're going back to crying about "petty attacks" and "control freaks" (like I can control what you say on a blog I don't own?), and running away.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 29, 2007 8:54 AM
"like I can control what you say on a blog I don't own?"
Bee- - That was exactly my point! You can't control what I post, quit trying to dictate what I choose to comment about. I'll reply to which crappy jabs I choose, if I choose. I thought you knew everything, so I saw no need to answer. But the answer is no, Charleston was not under siege. Union forces were beefing up fortifications at Sumter, clearly a threat to Charleston.
"As of Lincoln's election, the fort remained uncompleted and without readied armament. A crew of workmen directed by an army engineer was engaged in completing the fort under a recent congressional appropriation act. After occupying the fort on December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson set troops and workmen to the task of strengthening his position."
Bibliography: Meredith, Storm over Sumter, pp. 24-26.
Posted by: Connie | March 30, 2007 7:33 AM
So the US military was refurbishing and reprovisioning a US military installation on US soil, without interfering in any lawful civilian activity, and that was a "threat" to Charleston?
Let me guess -- them damn ingenious Yankees were actually installing an anti-gravity system in the fort so it could hover menacingly OVER Charleston, like those big saucers in "Independence Day," and frickin' lasers to zap the frickin' chains off the frickin' slaves...right?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 30, 2007 9:21 AM
Bee - - Now, you're just being a jerk! Even you are more intelligent than that.
"As, in consequence of a communication from the President of the United States to the governor of South Carolina, we were in momentary expectation of an attempt to re-enforce Fort Sumter, or of a descent upon our coast to that end from the United States fleet then lying at the entrance of the harbor, it was manifestly an imperative necessity to reduce the fort as speedily as possible, and not to wait until the ships and the fort should unite in a combined attack upon us."
G. T. BEAUREGARD,
Brigadier-General, Commanding
Sources:
U.S. National Park Service
U.S. Library of Congress.
Posted by: Connie | March 30, 2007 5:39 PM
Connie: And the President of the US does not have the authority to reinforce Federal enclaves, or to send the US Navy to provide security to US harbors? Last time I checked these were explicit Article I Federal powers.
Secession did not abrogate the Constitution prior to that secession. Ft. Sumpter was a valid US outpost, not unlike Guantanamo today.
Posted by: kehrsam | March 30, 2007 5:51 PM
Point in fact Connie, Lincoln made it publicly clear that the ship enroute to Fort Sumter WAS NOT carrying reinforcements, but instead supplies. This was the SECOND TIME Confederates had opened fire upon a resupply ship. The first, the Star of the West, was an unarmed merchant ship that was carrying both supplies and troops. The second effort to resupply the fort is announced as such:
"Fort Sumter will be reprovisioned and that if the effort is resisted the fort will be reinforced."
In other words the fort was FEDERAL land before the rebels opened fire on an unarmed merchant ship, it remained federal land when rebels opened fire upon the fort itself.
I know you'll ignore this post because it did not include vulgarity or "insults," just like you have virtually every other post of substance in this thread.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 30, 2007 7:51 PM
You guys are thick!
On December 26, 1860, five days after South Carolina declared its secession, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson abandoned the indefensible Fort Moultrie and secretly relocated his two companies of the 1st U.S. Artillery to Fort Sumter. Over the next few months, repeated calls for Union surrender from Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard were ignored, and Union attempts to resupply and reinforce the garrison were rebuffed.
With Fort Sumter in Confederate hands, the port of Charleston was a hole in the Federal naval blockade of the Atlantic coast.
What part of the threat to Charleston do you "not" understand? Why would they be "secretly" relocating to Ft. Sumter, if they weren't up to something? It was in "Charleston Harbor, not NY Harbor. SC had seceded from the union four months earlier. If Lincoln intended no threat, he should not having been trying to supply that fort. Your argument that "Lincoln had publicly made clear" holds no water. Lincoln was a liar, a man with no honor. He had no qualms about doing whatever it took to accomplish his goals. What fool would take his word?
If you are at odds with your neighbor and you find him standing at your open front door loading a gun, are you going to sit there calmly and wait to see what he's going to do? I really doubt that you would miss the implications of his actions. If he doesn't intend harm, he shouldn't give that impression and Lincoln shouldn't have, either.
Lincoln had no problem with "suspending" laws that favored the opposition, why should they have a problem suspending laws that favored him?
Exactly, who in South Carolina would Lincoln have been protecting from South Carolinians having control of a fort in South Carolina?
Posted by: Connie | March 31, 2007 5:08 PM
dogmeat wrote:
I could probably fix that for you, if you like :D
You probably know this already, but the reason she isn't responding to substantative posts is because she isn't interested in historical truth or accuracy. This is nothing more than a balm for wounded southern pride and a creepy kind of tribalism.
The same goes for VaSteve. Your efforts are all but heroic and I've enjoyed reading your posts, but they aren't listening. And won't. Neither of them even seem capable of responding to specific points, which only leads me to believe that they aren't really interested in that. She's a troll, dogmeat, not an intellectual or a historian.
So I'm sorry for the distracting cussing, but I doubt she'd have read your post anyway. She'd skim it just enough to know that your one of them propagandationalized yanks and then dismiss you without a moment's consideration.
Posted by: Leni | March 31, 2007 6:31 PM
Connie: You've pretty much admitted that there was absolutely NO explicit threat from anu US military action at or near Ft. Sumter that would have warranted an attack on it. You have not cited any unlawful action on the part of the US military, nor have you cited any action interfering with any lawful business of any US civilians in the general area.
That Confedrate attack on Ft. Sumter can be called an act of war pursuant to the political objective of secession. It can NOT be called "self-defense," nor can it be called an apropriate response to a provocation by US forces, since no such provocation had happened.
If you are at odds with your neighbor and you find him standing at your open front door loading a gun, are you going to sit there calmly and wait to see what he's going to do?
Here's a more appropriate analogy: if you are a US citizen in US territory, and you see a uniformed US police officer loading a gun, and you are neither committing nor considering any crime, what reason would you have to condider him a threat, let alone fire on him?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 31, 2007 10:02 PM
Thanks Leni, I keep bashing away, for some reason I can't stop myself when it comes to defending the truth.
Connie,
So, based upon your argument, then you would support Cuba attacking Gitmo and "liberating" it?
The forts you mention were FEDERAL installations, the state of S. Carolina did not have jurisdiction over them. The confederacy did not have jurisdiction over Pensacola and they didn't have the right to open fire on unarmed civilian ships. Of course you are willing to forgive anything the Confederacy ... aren't you. ;o)
[entering connie-ignore zone] bzzzt dogmeat vanishes
"Damn truthinator-5000"
Posted by: dogmeatIB | March 31, 2007 10:27 PM
Actually:
Actually, rather than stand there like a retard and get the tar shot out of me... I'd run like hell.
Of course, if I were stupid and lazy retard I would stand there, wait to get shot, and then spend 3 or 4 generations complaining about the injustice of it all.
Posted by: Leni | April 2, 2007 1:20 AM
Oh, Leni - newsflash, you are a stupid retard. A little "reconstruction" might do you some good.
Posted by: Connie | April 3, 2007 1:31 AM
"raging" bee and "dog"meat - I believe that the names that you have chosen for yourselves is a bit telling. What's the problem? Couldn't you find anyone else to play your game of "supposedly" defending the "supposed" truth? Sorry, I didn't have time to play with you two grade school bullies for a couple of days.
Before I bother with responding to your taunts, I want an answer from you. By what standard do you judge right and wrong?
Posted by: Connie | April 3, 2007 1:56 AM
"Connie" is a vapid retard and the confederacy was full of racist morons. Hey, this is fun!
Posted by: Fun! | April 3, 2007 7:59 AM
Connie, are you still here arguing? If you don't like "raging"bee or "dog"meat, I'm curious what you think of my nom-de-blog. lol
Anyway, you're a strange bird, Connie. The last time I replied to you I politely pointed out that, even though you honestly might not realize it, that you had a really terrible racist streak in you. And then you didn't deny it, you only thanked me for being polite and "decent"... then you ranted on about this being a free country, so you're free to be prejudiced against "any group of people". Link: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/03/slavery_and_the_civil_war.php#comment-383713
But now YOU are wondering what standards people use to judge right from wrong? I'm curious, what standard do you use? I know plenty of die-hard Southerners who aren't "Southern Nationalists" like you. Why is it that you keep trying to defend the indefensible? Why don't you just acknowledge your racist tendencies and try to change them?
Sure you talk a good game... a week ago, you kept complaining about the negative language that others use... But just a few hours ago, you did the exact same thing. What's up with that? You don't hold any moral high ground over a single person here.
This place reeks with hypocrisy because of you Connie.
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 3, 2007 8:05 AM
"The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State. Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire. Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.
It [the US] has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans' fundamental freedoms.
The present movement for secession has been gathering steam for a decade and a half. In preparation for Vermont's bicentennial in 1991, public debates -- moderated by then-Lt. Gov. Howard Dean -- were held in seven towns before crowds that averaged 230 citizens. At the end of each, Dean asked all those in favor of Vermont's seceding from the Union to stand and be counted. In town after town, solid majorities stood. The final count: 999 (62 percent) for secession and 608 opposed.
It's quite simple. The United States has destroyed the 10th Amendment, which says that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Once and Future Republic of Vermont
By Ian Baldwin and Frank Bryan Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page B01 - Washingtonpost.com
I guess you guys can blame that on slavery, too! Sounds like the Southern states aren't the only ones who believe in states rights.
Posted by: Connie | April 4, 2007 6:36 AM
Even Abraham Lincoln himself endorsed the right of secession in a speech in Congress on January 12, 1848 when he declared, "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."
Posted by: Connie | April 4, 2007 6:38 AM
Hey, docgoo, I think you need to check that post again. I did not thank you for being polite and decent. I simply stated that you made the only decent post that I had seen on that blog.
Whether or not I am a racist is not what the discussion was about. So, you ranting on about that is not scoring you any points. You're a bigot, why don't you try to change that? You're just a pot calling the kettle black.
Posted by: Connie | April 4, 2007 7:08 AM
You're a bigot, "Connie"!
Posted by: Pot | April 4, 2007 8:23 AM
I would disagree with that, Connie. While it isn't the central discussion, it is an important side-topic on all of these related posts that you've been a part of these past couple weeks.
Why? Because it gives us insight into why you keep using half-truths and misdirections to "prove" that the South was justified in the Civil War. I believe you're doing this for one of two reasons (or possibly some of both):
1. As a racist, a part of you romanticizes about and wants things to go back to the "good 'ole days" when your racism was considered the norm and perfectly allowable.
2. As a southern nationalist, you really do want the South to rise again. You were taught to have an "us-against-them" mentality on this issue, where any person--even any southern person--who disagrees with you on this topic, is just a damn yankee. And therefore you keep having knee-jerk reactions to defend yourself whenever some mean "raging" guy or some vicious "dog" challenges you on all your BS. lol
And Connie, I, personally, am not interested in all your little arguments. I don't care if you claim to have found a few details about the start of the Civil War that support an innocent South (and therefore a justified succession). Every single reputable historian would disagree with your premise to begin with, so why even bother listen to your revised interpretation of history?
There's not a doubt in my mind that you aren't interested in what real historians say, in as much as you feel the need to defend your "heritage" (as if it's different from mine or any other American's) at any cost.
Really? How am I a bigot?? I've taken some time to take the mickey out of you, so maybe you mean that I'm bigotted against you? Perhaps. But I certainly haven't shown any unjustified prejudices against entire groups of people like you have. As I pointed out previously, I'm originally from the south too. I certainly don't think all southern people are racists like you.
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 4, 2007 9:03 AM
Connie says:
Why...did those separationist Vermonters claim that slavery was the issue like the Southern secessionists did?
If they believed so ardently in states rights, then why did they oppose so strongly the Northern states rights not to assist them in tracking down and returning fugitive slaves?
Posted by: Dave S. | April 4, 2007 9:57 AM
docgoo- If you are not interested in my arguments, why do keep yakking at me?
Just because you married outside of your own race and see racists behind every bush, that doesn't qualify you as the final word on what other people are or are not. You are as much a bigot as I am a racist. You haven't taken anything out of me. You have no more proven your argument than I have. Oh gee, I forgot, you get to declare the winner.
You can believe whatever you like, that doesn't mean that you know what you're yakking about. You're the one who keeps trying to make this about race, not me.
My great, great grandfather fought in the same regiment as a black Confederate soldier. No where in their records does it mention that he was black. While searching cemetery records, recently, I discovered that he was black because he was buried in a Negro cemetery. He was probably fighting for slavery, too! Ooh, I bet he was a nasty old racist!
Posted by: Connie | April 4, 2007 4:24 PM
Even I think Connie is racist.
Posted by: Kettle | April 4, 2007 4:31 PM
Long answer:
Remember when I said that I enjoyed ironies and absurdities? Well, you kept me entertained for a while, but when you got boring, I stopped replying. And besides that, others were quite able to decimate your revisionist history, so why bother repeating them?
But then you started to peak my absurdity and irony meters again with your silly judgements of raging bee and dogmeat based solely on their nicknames.
So yeah, I'm genuinely curious where you were going when you asked:
And furthermore, I'm also genuinely curious how you judge my nickname, too.
I can only hope your answers are just as absurd as we all think they'll be. lol
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 4, 2007 5:18 PM
Short answer:
I keep yakking at you simply because you amuse me. ;-)
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 4, 2007 5:20 PM
docgoo- If you are not interested in my arguments, why do keep yakking at me?
Not to speak for him, but some of us are sadistic enough to enjoy battles of wit with an unarmed opponent.
Posted by: gwangung | April 4, 2007 6:03 PM
"Not to speak for him, but some of us are sadistic enough to enjoy battles of wit with an unarmed opponent."
You should try the "scurrying" thread then gawngung, vasteve is about as unarmed as you can get.
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 4, 2007 7:43 PM
docgoo-- I'm glad that I amuse you. I find you rather amusing, too. But you know that you really should make up your mind. First, you say that you are not interested and then, you say that I amuse you. Seems a bit contradictory, even for you. Are you as confused about that as you are about history?
Well, you know what they say about curiosity and the cat. I guess that you won't get an answer to that question of yours about where I was going when I asked dogmeat and raging bee about their standard for judging right and wrong, unless they answer my question.
Honestly, I don't care what your "name" means. I'm sure that it means something special to you since you keep asking what I think of it. I assume that all three of you are men, of some sort, who hide behind silly names. Even you admitted that you don't know me, but you keep trying to tell me what I am. Since I actually do know myself, while you pull judgments about people out of thin air for you own amusement, I don't worry one bit about your stupid ideas about me. I quit worrying about people like you when I was a child. As far as any of you being armed for a battle of wits, you might want to check on that, you don't shine as brightly as you apparently think that you do. Of course, I highly doubt that any one of you is equipped for real battle. Probably just a bunch of pansies who wouldn't be brave enough to run your mouths if we were standing face to face. You were right about one thing, people like you do hide behind your computers.
Posted by: Connie | April 5, 2007 12:52 AM
Still giving it the 'ole college try Connie? Okay, I'll bite.
Yes, Connie... I'm as confused about that as I am about history: i.e. Not at all. Perhaps you were just having a momentary brain lapse late last night, so I'll break it down for ya nice and gently...
Being disinterested and being amused aren't mutually exclusive. In your case, your Pro-South revisionist historical interpretations don't interest me at all because 99% of all historians don't accept your premise to begin with anyway, and then your "facts" and interpretations go downhill from there. But at the same time, your constant hypocrisy and your lack of internally consistent and/or logical arguments is mildly amusing, in a train-wreck sort of way. If we were to continue this debate much longer, I'm sure I could break down your arguments until all that's left for you is to start dishing out thinly-veiled threats.
Ahh yes. Cowardice is the real reason why we're having this conversation over the computer and not face-to-face. It couldn't be because were 500 miles apart?? Nah!!!
Such misuse of brainpower should be taxable by the government. Connie, all by yourself you could fully fund a child's education.
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 5, 2007 8:14 AM
My great, great grandfather fought in the same regiment as a black Confederate soldier. No where in their records does it mention that he was black. While searching cemetery records, recently, I discovered that he was black because he was buried in a Negro cemetery. He was probably fighting for slavery, too! Ooh, I bet he was a nasty old racist!
Yeah, and I'm sure there were lots of Germans who hid their Jewish ancestry to stay alive and have something resembling a career, and some of them got drafted and sent to the Russian front. All of which proves...what, exactly?
...I asked dogmeat and raging bee about their standard for judging right and wrong...
Well, that's a pretty complicated question. I guess I'd start by saying that democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech are right, and murder, slavery, genocide and oppression are wrong; and work from there into the grayer areas in between.
Even you admitted that you don't know me, but you keep trying to tell me what I am.
We know you, and judge you, by what you've written here. If your writings here are not representative of you as a whole, and our judgement is off as a result, that's your fault, not ours -- we're not forcing you to write this stuff.
I don't worry one bit about your stupid ideas about me. I quit worrying about people like you when I was a child.
Yeah, and we know this because you've spent an amazing amount of time telling us we're not worth your time, and feverishly continuing to try to put us down long after your revisionist/propagandist history has been thoroughly punk'd, junk'd, debunk'd and defunc't, and you've given up defending the points you originally came here to make.
...Probably just a bunch of pansies who wouldn't be brave enough to run your mouths if we were standing face to face.
Yeah, a bunch of pansies who continue to thrill and enthrall you so that you can't help returning to this den of iniquity even though you know we're bad for you and will get you in trouble. Question our manhood all you want -- we know what you need. ;-)
(BTW, where did you learn the old trick of questioning our manhood in lieu of proving your intelligence? A certain undernourished blonde Yankee brainstem from Manhattan, perhaps? Y'all in Dixie may not be as special as you seem to think.)
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2007 9:09 AM
"Florida statutes say it is unlawful to "deface, defile or contemptuously abuse" the Confederate flag, but say it is also illegal to prevent the display of the flag "for decorative or patriotic purposes.""
You know, that's almost enough to make me wish I lived in Florida. I own several large dogs, and I bet Confederate flags would make really nice decorative doggie-poop baggies.
Posted by: MJ Memphis | April 5, 2007 9:19 AM
And heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeres Larry!
Again, and with exactly the same points.
Showing a total lack of imagination in making fake names Larry. John Doe? C'mon. Even you can do better.
Posted by: Dave S. | April 5, 2007 1:41 PM
Larry, the premise you state in your first sentence is entirely incorrect:
Compare this to what was written previously in a related thread:
And heck, Larry... the rest of your screed was also previously addressed by Ed (and others) in this post and his other "Southern Nationalist" posts.
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 5, 2007 1:56 PM
Larry Doe: Just because a country or people didn't benefit from an act of war, does not mean that they didn't wage war for that benefit. It merely means they miscalculated in their decision.
I could re-word your thesis thusly:
"So you say that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to keep the US from waging war against them in the Pacific. Well, name one real thing that Pearl Harbor did for the Japanese. Just one."
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2007 2:15 PM
"Well, name one real thing that Pearl Harbor did for the Japanese. Just one. "Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2007
LOL - Proved that one day, the defeated would be back on top!
Pearl Harbor and the War Between the States are hardly the same, unless, of course, you want to admit that the Union was the aggressor in its attack on the South, just as the Japanese were in their attack on Pearl Harbor.
Posted by: wing | April 5, 2007 3:21 PM
Now what are the chances that both Larry and someone who now calls himself John Doe would label me "Raging S.O.Bee?" Much greater if both were actually the same person, I suspect.
It would make as much sense to claim that the South seceded and waged war for the right to hold NASCAR races or the right to eat cornpone and hominy.
No, it wouldn't, given the huge amounts of documentation proving that the people who led the secession actions were doing it, and explaining it, as being for the explicitly stated purpose of protecting the Southern states' "right" to own slaves. No one who mattered at the time ever mentioned cornpone or hominy, which is why no one thinks they were reasons for secession.
The Japanese were hoping that the attack on Pearl Harbor -- as well as attacks elsewhere in the Pacific and Eastern Asia -- would knock out the military power of the US and its allies in those regions. In contrast, the Confederates knew...
Thus begins a complete change of subject, which has nothing at all to do with the reason I mentioned Pearl Harbor.
Give it up, Larry, Curly, Moe and Doe. We know you're all the same mentally-ill retired engineer, we know you've engaged in sock-puppetry before, and we also know your lame-ass arguments and diversions have already been dealt with. You know it too, which is why you're not continuing them on the thread where the subject was originally brought up.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2007 3:33 PM
And if you want to try to tell us that the politicians who said it was about slavery were all lying, you'll have to show some proof that significant numbers of Southerners at the time explicitly objected to the statements in question (which were PUBLIC statements) and loudly said "Wait a minute, these people are lying, that's not why we're seceeding!"
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2007 3:55 PM
I'm surprised vasteve hasn't come over here to "larn" you folks.
Larry/Doe: Your arguments are just as shallow as they were under your last alias. As 'bee has mentioned, you'd have to show some proof that the speakers at the secession conventions in the southern states were lying and that there was some sort of public backlash, hell even editorials in newspapers at the time, that argued it wasn't about slavery but was instead about the tariff.
In 1939 Germany launched an attack on its neighbors. Why? Because they wanted more territory, a chance to regain their pre-Versailles glory, and the opportunity to eliminate the Jews. Did they accomplish those things? Nope. Why? Because they lost.
The South seceded from the Union, and attacked United States Army facilities throughout the south (fighting didn't actually break out in most of those instances), in order to protect slavery. The Corwin amendment is irrelevant because by the time it passed Congress seven states had already seceded. The first blows had been thrown, the first shots had been fired, it was too late. And yes, before you object, the first shots were fired in January of 1861.
In fact the Pearl Harbor analogy is quite fitting given that Florida rebels seized the arsenal at Apalachicola days before the state officially seceded.
Connie, I'm not used to you responding to me, except when you misquoted me as having made a racist statement and attacked me for it, you have pretty consistently been unable to respond to my points. Because of that I did miss your question to me and 'bee, which is amusing since I've asked you a number of questions that you haven't responded to, but you appear to be holding this one question against us? I would have to agree with 'bee regarding "right and wrong,"
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 5, 2007 7:43 PM
Good lord are these fannies still farting on about this? If ever there was anything more likely to show you up as a bigoted, myopic lunatic it's constant harping on about not being a bigoted, myopic lunatic.
We get it, Connie, John Doe, KeepDarkieDown etc.., you love dem niggers. It's okay, we all believe you.
I honestly am going to have to point everyone I know to this thread. Genuine comedy a go-go. I haven't had this much fun since Britney Spears shaved her head.
Do keep it up, it's like watching a drowning person splash spastically about, pretending that they can swim. Either that or gazing awestruck towards the podium at the world championship of deluded imbecility.
That is all. Cheers lads.
Posted by: Matthew Young | April 5, 2007 7:56 PM
Larry, no matter how many times you change your nickname, your comments are still going to be deleted. Give up, you fucking lunatic.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | April 5, 2007 8:27 PM
dogmeat - - The question was pretty simple about what standard you guys use to judge right and wrong. It didn't have anything to do with me. But if you don't have any standard, don't answer.
Posted by: Connie | April 6, 2007 4:42 AM
Bee - - I questioned your manhood because you're a man (at least, you say that you are). Throughout much of history men have considered women chattel, to be treated however men felt like treating them, with no recourse. In some ways, that was worse than being a slave. Since men were responsible for this, often times brutal, treatment of women and you are a man, I can't see how you could possibly be proud to be man.
Posted by: Connie | April 6, 2007 6:12 AM
Bee - - When I said that my great, great grandfather served in the same regiment as a black Confederate soldier, you made some asinine remark about German soldiers hiding their Jewish ancestry to stay alive... A black man has a pretty hard time disguising his ancestry. The reason there was no record of him being black is because the Confederate army didn't consider his race to be of any consequence.
Posted by: Connie | April 6, 2007 6:26 AM
Three-post mentalism!
Posted by: Matthew Young | April 6, 2007 8:35 AM
Oh come on, Ed, what's a Civil War thread without Larry the Confederate Information Minister?
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 6, 2007 9:08 AM
Connie: now you sound like a Northern feminist! There's hope for you yet. Are you sure you're not a New Yorker taking the piss out of the South?
The reason there was no record of him being black is because the Confederate army didn't consider his race to be of any consequence.
So the Confederate officers were smarter than the politicians who sent them to war, and the slaveowners who hoped to benefit from their sacrifice. Why does that not surprise me?
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 6, 2007 9:21 AM
Connie wrote:
You clearly need a flag, Bee. That is how people traditionally share their shameful pasts, after all.
Posted by: Leni | April 7, 2007 2:49 AM
Connie wrote:
Oh golly gee jeepers. I think I might cry.
After I barf on a burnt Confederate flag that someone shit on.
Posted by: Leni | April 7, 2007 2:55 AM
The following excerpts are from:
SLAVERY
AND
ABOLITIONISM,
AS VIEWED BY A
GEORGIA SLAVE.
BY
HARRISON BERRY,
THE PROPERTY OF S. W. PRICE, COVINGTON, GEORGIA.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA:
M. LYNCH & CO., PUBLISHERS.
PRINTED AT THE CRUSADER OFFICE.
1861
Page verso
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861,
By A. M. EDDLEMAN & BROTHER,
For the use of Harrison Berry, (a slave, the property of S. W. Price, of Covington, Georgia,) in the Clerk's office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee
IN offering this address to the public, I do it with the most profound humility, knowing it to be a task worthy of a better learned and more intelligent writer than myself. But when it is taken into consideration, the cause by which I was actuated may be an excuse for my presumption; for I am a Slave, and have been all my life, and, therefore, claim the opportunity, at least, of knowing what Slavery is, and what it is not.
You must recollect, fanatical sirs, that the Slave children and their young masters and mistresses, are all raised up together. They suck together, play together, go a hunting together, go a fishing together, go in washing together, and, in a great many instances, eat together in the cotton-patch, sing, jump, wrestle, box, fight boy fights, and dance together; and every other kind of amusement that is calculated to bolt their hearts together when grown up. You had better mind how you come here and jump aboard of our masters; for I tell you, though we sometimes fight among ourselves, if another man jumps on either, we both pitch into him. You must recollect that we are not oppressed here like your nominally free there. We can go into our masters' houses and get plenty of good things to eat; and we can shake hands with the big-bugs of the country, and walk side-by-side with Congress members on the side-walks, and stand and converse with gentlemen of the highest rank, for hours at a time. So, in short, we can do anything, with the exceptions of those privileges wrested from us in consequence of your diabolical, infernal, Black Republican, Abolition, fanatical agitation.
But, perhaps, you will say, in the face of all this, "our colored people are not subject to a separation from their families, as the Slaves are; for when they marry they have the same chance to live and remain with their families as we do, for we have no law to separate them." That all may be; but when we consider the many deprivations the colored man is subject to in a country granting him these lawful privileges, we would wonder that the colored man is held in such low esteem, were it not that we are posted on the social relations in which he stands in the non-Slave-holding States, it is a common thing to see poor, half-naked, and starving creatures, standing on corners, begging every one passing by for a penny. And it is not at all surprising, when we consider the prejudice existing there against them. As for myself, I would rather have the law against me, and prejudice in my favor, than to have the law in my favor and the prejudice against me. For the decisions of the law are always, in a greater or less degree, subject to prejudice. The colored man is a colored man anywhere. He is but the tool North, and the servant South.
Who are you, who hate your brother Southerner, and accuse him of bringing reproach and disgrace upon the Republic? when he is actually doing more for the protection of the country than you are, for, whereas, you employ men to work in your manufactories until you are overwhelmed with wealth, made on the labor of the poor men working for such small wages, barely sufficient to keep them comfortable while in the bloom of youth. What becomes of them when bowed down with old age, without a penny in their pockets? Are they not thrown on the public? Suppose this money, that is taken to support them, were paid into the public treasury, would it not lessen the national debt, which is now forty-five* * It is now, in 1861, some sixty millions of dollars? Who pays the physician's bill of a poor man and his family, if taken sick while working for you at a shilling a day? Do you take the money that they have made for you to pay their expenses? or do you drive them out of your house into a hospital, to be taken care of by the State until they sufficiently recover their health, and go to work for you again? Thus you receive all meat and no bones; for you get all the poor man's labor, without incurring any risk whatever, by throwing the expenses on the State. The country is impoverished at the expense of your aggrandizement; but, on the other hand, the Southerner only gets the labor of his Slave by paying all expenses during his youthful days, and when he is old and unable to work, he is bound, by the laws of his section, to take care of him with the same money he earned when young. Now, after supporting him during his health, if the Slave should happen to become insane, the authorities would grumble like thunder and lightning to have the insane Slave thrown on their hands. They would say, that the owner ought to take care of him. This looks like bringing reproach and disgrace on the Republic, don't it? If you would pay attention to the domestic affairs in your own States, it would be more beneficial to your section, and less annoyance to the South.
A governmental compact is binding as long as the laws are faithfully executed, but no longer.
Again, he [Lincoln] says that every member of Congress is sworn to support the whole Constitution, and he says the Fugitive clause is as plainly written as any clause in the Constitution. But yet we find him and his party resisting that clause. Now, I do not wish to say anything that would in any wise invalidate the President's nor his party's oaths, but it does look strange to me for men who had taken it, act directly contrary to the purposes for which it was taken.
I, therefore, hold that the seceding States are perfectly justifiable in seceding; and I also hold that if they had not done so, after they had endeavored for a quarter of a century to quell an evil, that they saw was sure to destroy their property, civil privileges, and the religious morals of their children, would have been, I hold, unworthy the name of free men. They, seeing this evil's infernal effects upon their lives and property, what more could they do for their children, than to separate as far as possible from this evil, which had been a hinderance to their onward progress for a quarter of a century; and, instead of it's getting better, was actually getting worse, so much so, that it had actually assumed a formidable position? I hold that had the Slave-holding States, under these inauspicious circumstances, remained in the Union, when every attempt to the claim of an equality in the Union had been contemptuously treated, would have subjected themselves, for a verdict to be given by their rising posterity, against the judgment and patriotism of their forefathers.
© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
Posted by: wing | April 7, 2007 5:04 AM
Great point wing! Slaves really loved being slaves. I mean there are plenty of people who even today readily volunteer to be slaves. You probably would love to be a slave yourself, wouldn't you wing. It sounds like a regular paradise. I mean look how well he writes. Obviously the slaves in the South all got great educations and lots of benefits.
Why, if slavery was so bad, you'd think slaves would be running away to the North, perhaps using some sort of organized system. It might even have a catchy name like the Freedom Highway or Elevated Traintrack. If they were running around like that, wouldn't the South have needed laws like a Runaway Slave Act and to catch them? And they'd need Slave Patrols to keep them in check too. And if the slaves really didn't love being a slave, then there'd be slave revolts and uprisings. And look at how they rose up and attacked the Northern forces wherever they were during the war, and how not a single former slave joined the Northern forces in any manner. And the booing of Lincoln....ahhh the booing.
I think we can safely say...QED.
Posted by: Dave S. | April 7, 2007 7:08 AM
If you define slavery as working to benefit someone else instead of yourself without a choice in the matter, then yes there are. The thinking is pretty much like Aesop's dog.
Posted by: Gretchen | April 7, 2007 7:38 AM
I can't imagine it would be difficult to convince a few slaves that slavery isn't bad. One of the themes of HBO's Rome was that every slave deserved their lot in life, simply because they chose to be a slave over doing the honorable thing and killing themselves.
And similarly, if the slave is treated relatively decently by their owner (for example, as an in-house maid who has regular meals and a roof over their heads), then I can easily see how some slaves would choose this over being free. Especially since they would have no opportunities (because of racism) to get a job to provide for these same basic necessities, without having to move hundreds of miles north and leaving their families and everything they've ever known and loved behind.
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 7, 2007 8:03 AM
Connie,
"I would have to agree with 'bee regarding "right and wrong,"
Seems an awful lot like an answer, doesn't it? That's really funny, because it's more than you've given me through the course of this discussion and you have the nerve to gripe?
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 7, 2007 11:14 AM
Dave, doctorgoo
I didn't write that, I just included a few excerpts from a pamphlet written by Harrison Berry, a slave. It's available on line, you should read it. The fact that a slave could write that well debunks much of today's popular propaganda about slavery.
doctorgoo
Harrison explained that he would rather be a treated well as a slave in the South than he would to be starving and cold as a free black man in the North. Seems to me that he didn't have a high opinion of the way free blacks were treated by their yankee "friends".
He also explained that he would love to be free, but not by the means that the abolitionists were employing. He did not consider them, in any way, to be interested in the welfare of slaves. But rather considered that abolitionists were using slaves to further their own agenda against the South.
Gretchen wrote: "If you define slavery as working to benefit someone else instead of yourself without a choice in the matter, then yes there are."
That sounds like what we do for our dear old Uncle Sam.
Like I said, you should read Harrison's pamphlet. No one had anything to do with writing it but Harrison. All of that is explained and some of Harrison's history is given along with the pamphlet.
Posted by: wing | April 7, 2007 6:03 PM
Wing, even assuming that this propaganda pamphlet was entirely the work of a single black person, what have you proved? Only that ONE black person felt this way or could write this well. This hardly "debunks much of today's popular propaganda about slavery", as you say it does. Dave S said it best:
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 7, 2007 6:14 PM
doctorgoo
What's the problem? You're always demanding that people support what they believe with facts. But when you are presented with facts, you figuratively stick your tongue out like a brat kid. There were black Confederate soldiers, other blacks stayed and helped their "master's" families, even when there was no one to make them stay. After the war, far more blacks stayed in the South than went North. Many of the ones who went north were abused and many who stayed in the South were abused by Union soldiers both during and after the war. You've been presented facts to support those claims, but like the adult that you are, you just discount them.
Like I said, the pamphlet is available on line, complete with a photo of Harrison Berry. It won't bite you, unless, you're afraid that you just might be wrong in your prejudices and don't want to learn anything contrary to your own narrow beliefs. You don't have to take my word for it, read it for yourself. http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/berry/berry.html
Posted by: wing | April 8, 2007 1:59 AM
wing, with all due respect... while your facts (as presented in the pamphlet) do support your premise, they fall woefully short of proving them. And why is that? Because you aren't addressing all the real issues that Dave S snarkily brought up.
Simply put, everyone here has already agreed that the North wasn't perfect and that freed slaves and other blacks still faced racism in the North. But this doesn't change the fact that given a choice, a large majority of black persons were against slavery than they were for it.
Posted by: doctorgoo | April 8, 2007 9:43 AM
Wing,
The problem with that pamphlet is that it is clear propaganda, an effort to disprove the massive evidence that slavery was a horrible institution. A single individual like Harrison Berry is hardly proof that things were better in the south for a black man than they were in the North or that slavery "wasn't that bad." First, one can never know if what he wrote was indicative of his actual feeings, it wouldn't have been exactly healthy for him to write "DEATH TO THE SLAVEHOLDERS!!!" Second, his opinion of life in the North is based on what? Do we even know he ever went to the North? Where did he go? Who did he talk to? Finally, the author's life isn't exactly an example of an average slave in the South. He certainly wasn't a field hand. People who are treated far worse than Harrison Berry also grow do love and admire their captors ... they call it the Stockholm Syndrome.
If you go to the public museums of many northern cities you'll find displays dedicated to the early African American communities in those cities. Those displays will show established communities of people across many professional spectrums and living at various socio-economic levels. Is that proof that all of this propaganda about it being bad for a black man in the north? No, it simply shows that some African Americans enjoyed a high quality of life and opportunity in the North.
The problem for people trying to claim that slavery "wasn't that bad," is that while there are a handful of records like Harrison's, there are mountains of evidence to the contrary. You need look no further than the interviews of the former slaves, first hand accounts that completely refute this pamphlet. In Mr. Berry's owners own home state, it was illegal to teach a slave or free black person to read or write. If it was so wonderful being a slave, why did they prohibit their education? Why were their slave uprisings? Why do the records of the plantations themselves show signs of sabotage, work slow downs, etc.? Why was there an Underground Railroad in the first place? Why did people, of both races, risk their lives to assist escaped slaves to get out of the South?
You might want to take a look at the slave narratives:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html
They tend to disagree with Mr. Berry.
Why did the freed slaves not leave the South? You might want to remember that, at the time, the average native-born American lived and died within 25 miles of their birthplace. Why didn't they move north? Perhaps it was because they were freed with only the clothes on their backs, faced with unknown prospects in a land they'd never seen, hundreds of miles away? See now, wander hundreds of miles through a war torn countryside, littered with distraut and disgruntled war veterans, bandits, etc., to arrive in a part of the country you know nothing about, don't know if you'd have a job, friends, or family? Yeah, I'm just shocked that all of the slaves didn't just move. They could all mix and match as well, leave their friends, family, loved ones, for a complete mystery alone in the North.
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 8, 2007 11:26 AM
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 8, 2007 11:26 AM
>>Why did the freed slaves not leave the South? You might want to remember that, at the time, the average native-born American lived and died within 25 miles of their birthplace. Why didn't they move north? Perhaps it was because they were freed with only the clothes on their backs, faced with unknown prospects in a land they'd never seen, hundreds of miles away? See now, wander hundreds of miles through a war torn countryside, littered with distraut and disgruntled war veterans, bandits, etc., to arrive in a part of the country you know nothing about, don't know if you'd have a job, friends, or family?
All of the above seems to support my side of the argument more than your own. Seems to me that if the war was so much about ending slavery, the yankees threw the baby out with the wash water.
>>"First, one can never know if what he wrote was indicative of his actual feeings, it wouldn't have been exactly healthy for him to write "DEATH TO THE SLAVEHOLDERS!!!"
If what he wrote was not indicative of his actual feelings, he didn't need to write at all. After all, who was going to force an uneducated slave to write anything?
It was illegal for Gen. Stonewall Jackson to teach blacks to read and write, but he did it, openly. It's illegal for most of those Mexicans to be in the US, but they're here by the millions.
>>The problem with that pamphlet is that it is clear propaganda, an effort to disprove the massive evidence that slavery was a horrible institution.
I can't see how something that a Southern slave wrote is "pure propaganda". Certainly, no more so than a couple of photos of abused slaves that are pasted every where as evidence of the horrid brutality of slavery. I've seen photos that are presented as depicting the "retched conditions" under which slaves lived, that showed black families living in houses as nice as the one that my grandmother grew up in. Even before the war, only rich people lived in mansions. There are people living in retched conditions in this country, today.
>> Second, his opinion of life in the North is based on what? Do we even know he ever went to the North? Where did he go? Who did he talk to?
What were Northern opinions about the South based on? Like you said, most folks never traveled more than a few miles from their homes in their entire lives, in those days. I recently read a book about one of the VA regiments in which a Confederate soldier commented about how surprised the civilian yankees were that Confederates didn't have horns or anything of that sort.
>>Why do the records of the plantations themselves show signs of sabotage, work slow downs, etc.?
I've never seen any of those records. Post some real evidence that they actually exist. Something "reliable", none of that "propanda" stuff.
BTW, I have read interviews with former slaves. Many of them were very favorable to their former owners and their former lives.
How about this example?
To Mrs. Charles D. Lanier; President of the Robert E. Lee Foundation
12 Oct 1943
"......I have a beautiful libery (sic) chair formerly belong to Gen. Robert E. Lee....the chair finally came into the possession of Mrs. Betsy White...who was breaking up housekeeping....and Mrs. Whites maid told me about it, and I being a former slaves son, and Gen Lee was always so good to his slaves that I bought the chair.
.....We decided that you all was the ones to have the chair for the Stratford Hall home of Gen. Robert E. Lee, and so I want to present the chair to my Masters foundation as a tribute to Gen Lee for his goodness to his colored people, always (sic) he treated his colored people good and fine, and after Lee surrendered in 1865-Gen Lee looked after his colored people. Long as they lived the Lee family was instructed to continue this obligation long as any of the former slaves lived, and the Lee family has carried out the wishes of Gen. Lee.
.......So Mrs. Lanier you can have the chair for the Robert E. Lee Foundation soon as you can send for the chair.....My mother who was a maid and nurse in the family has taken care of this very chair. I mean she has dust and polished the chair in the libery (sic)...So will you call and get the chair at the your earliest convenience and oblige, yours sincerely,"
Richard M. Lee
209 W. 27th Street
New York City
----------------------------
>>Why was there an Underground Railroad in the first place? Why did people, of both races, risk their lives to assist escaped slaves to get out of the South?
I'm sure they had their reasons, but if it was so imperative to get out of the South, why did the vast majority stay, even after they were completely free to go?
Posted by: wing | April 8, 2007 1:06 PM
>>>>...I asked dogmeat and raging bee about their standard for judging right and wrong... [Posted by: Connie | April 3, 2007 01:56 AM]
>>>>Well, that's a pretty complicated question. I guess I'd start by saying that democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech are right, and murder, slavery, genocide and oppression are wrong; and work from there into the grayer areas in between. [Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2007 09:09 AM]
>>>>I would have to agree with 'bee regarding "right and wrong," [posted by: dogmeatib | April 5, 2007 07:43 PM]
dogmeat - - While you may agree with Bee's answer to my question, his answer did not include a standard for judging right and wrong. So, neither of you really answered my question.
Posted by: Connie | April 9, 2007 4:30 AM
>>>>Posted by: Raging Bee | April 6, 2007 09:21 AM
>>>>Connie: now you sound like a Northern feminist! There's hope for you yet.
Bee - - I am highly offended by you daring to think that I might be a yankee. I'm not sure why you would think that being a northern feminist is a good thing, but that sure goes to show that your judgment of my character is way off. I think that I liked being called a racist better than I like having you think that I might be a yankee or a feminist.
Posted by: Connie | April 9, 2007 5:06 AM
Connie said:
Well, some of us are kind of partial to being able to vote, wear trousers, own property, not be legally raped or beaten by our husbands, know how to read and write, be able to choose how many babies we have, etc....you know, the little things "northern feminists" got for us.
Posted by: Gretchen | April 9, 2007 5:35 AM
I think that I liked being called a racist better than I like having you think that I might be a yankee or a feminist.
This statement is further proof that Connie's "understanding" of "reality" is hopelessly tainted by the basest sort of tribalism.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 9, 2007 8:59 AM
It is a sort of deranged tribalism isn't it? I am sure if the Confederacy advocated gassing Jews then these buffoons would be right behind it.
I mean, as an Englishman, I can celebrate the great things in our history (Turner, Morris, Darwin, Newton - actually, he was an arse, but a clever one - a massive chunk of literature, the catalyst for the industrial revolution and all sorts of other phenomenal achievements) without denying the awful things we did at times as well, particularly in terms of the Crusades and the persecutions that accompanied the Reformation as well as some of the genocidal atrocities perpetuated in the name of the Empire. Any country or other tribal group is the same, as is any person.
If you want to be a Southern Nationalist, instead of trying to justify the unjustifiable, why not find and celebrate the slave owners who did treat their slaves with respect, defied the law to give them an education, and defied a culture to cultivate a relationship of respect with them?
Why is it so hard to admit that, for all the Confederacy was the staunchest defender of an abhorrent institution - slavery and the inherent accompanying xenophobia - there were still some people who stood against this and made a courageous stand against the dehumanisation of African slaves? I don't know of any examples myself, but as Southern Patriots, instead of trying to pretend completely insane things like 'slavery was good for black people' and 'the war wasn't about slavery' surely this is what you should be educating me about.
Accepting that the South was wrong in many things does not imply disloyalty or a lack of love for where you are from, it gives credibility to the positive stories you could then tell if you did so. But if you keep insisting on crazy things then people actually won't listen when you tell them the stories of valour that you should actually be telling instead.
Posted by: Matthew Young | April 9, 2007 9:20 AM
>>>>"I think that I liked being called a racist better than I like having you think that I might be a yankee or a feminist."
This statement is further proof that Connie's "understanding" of "reality" is hopelessly tainted by the basest sort of tribalism.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 9, 2007 08:59 AM
Bee - - I'm always amazed at your arrogance!
I'm not in the least sorry for the advancement women have made in their standing in society. And for the many courageous women who made those changes possible, I am truly grateful. That doesn't mean that I choose to be associated with the women who have called themselves feminist during my lifetime. I think that they, like the NAACP lost track of their true mission, long ago. And are only detrimental to that true cause as, I believe, the NAACP is to the black race's quest for true equality.
Posted by: Connie | April 9, 2007 4:44 PM
Connie,
I don't have a lot of time to bother with you and honestly I'm not in the mood to be polite. I spent the better part of the weekend at the hospital with an extremely ill family member.
1)"While you may agree with Bee's answer to my question, his answer did not include a standard for judging right and wrong. So, neither of you really answered my question. "
Actually Bee provided a rather effective range for right and wrong, that you can't see that is rather interesting. That, again, you are complaining about anyone on this thread not answering your question to your satisfaction is truly laughable, you've dodged so many questions/arguments I was beginning to think you were really a 12 year old kid on the playground with a bright red rubber ball.
2) Bee - - I'm always amazed at your arrogance!
Again, you appear to be projecting. You make a statement where you state you'd rather be considered a racist than a "Yankee" and he's being arrogant? You just arrogantly made a statement that millions of people are of lesser value than a racist and Bee is arrogant? Wow, you truly are amazing in your efforts to defend your bigotry. So will we-in's yankees be totin' and haulin' for y'all when the South rises again massa?
Wing, you are honestly so delusional it is scary.
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 9, 2007 11:15 PM
dogmeat - -
You definitely need a reading comprehension class.
You may not know the difference between being "CALLED" something as opposed to "ACTUALLY BEING" something, but they are not one and the same, the difference is quite often huge. Being considered anything bad by you and your cronies is probably a good thing, as apparently, you have no real standards.
You seem to think that "you" have some sort of exclusive right to determine the value of people. Like a common bully, you puff and blow when someone has the audacity to "not" see things according to your pretentious slant on the truth. And once again, "you" seem to be projecting.
You are either just plain stupid or completely naive if you think that there aren't just as many racists yankees as there are racists Southerners, and as many racist blacks as whites. I know that you love to twist what I have written to make it sound like something other than what I intended, but I did not say that anyone was better than millions of people. If you are referring to me as the racist in your little diatribe about me stating that millions of people are of less value than a racist, I don't think that any one person is of any particularly greater value than another. And I absolutely don't think that you or any of your yankee-minded cronies here are of the great value that you apparently place upon yourselves. Since you degrade people who are proud of their Southern heritage, don't expect me to express any complimentary feelings toward yankees. I wish that you would call me a millionaire, I don't think that I'd mind being rich!
As far as your mood is concerned, don't worry about being polite. I'm sure that politeness is something that you are completely innocent of having ever possessed. And please, don't bother with me. No doubt, your lively banter and "sunny" disposition is just what that ill family member so direly needs.
Posted by: Connie | April 10, 2007 3:39 AM
Thanks, Matthew, you nailed the salient points very neatly. And the fact that Connie made TWO subsequent posts, one rather long, without even mentioning anything you said, speaks volumes about her "Southern pride." I mean, she could have at least said "Thanks for the good word, and BTW, thanks for trying to help us in the 1860s too."
(Speaking of which, thanks for helping us in that stupid war Bush got us into. I'm guessing it would be turning out even worse without the help of someone with previous experience in both Iraq and imperialism.)
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 10, 2007 10:00 AM
Connie,
You are so amazingly obnoxious, odious, and stupid, it boggles the mind. I don't care if you meant "called" or "are" you're referring to an entire region and making a slight. Before you try to make the claim that we "started it" you need to work on your reading comprehension skills, we have made it very clear that our stance, comments, and complaints are only with those of your bigoted ilk, southern apologists and neo-Confederates. I wonder at times if you and vasteve are married, you share the same half of a brain.
You don't value one type of person over another? That's a crock, you've made it very clear you value people like yourself over anyone else regardless of the cost. I personally value people who are honest more than those who are dishonest; people who are kind over those who are unkind; people who are open and accepting over racists. In other words yes, I value most of the other people on this thread far more than I value you.
One last time, after the way you've ducked and dodged so many questions in this thread, it is amusing that you are so fixated on the lack of time, effort, and consideration I gave to your question. The simple answer is, you aren't worth time, effort, or consideration. No one is going to convince you of anything, you are certain you aren't racist (you are), you are certain the South was somehow a victim in a war they started, you are certain that slavery wasn't that bad, you are certain that the North was responsible for all of the horrors of the Civil War. You are, quite simply, a Confederate apologist and a (not so) closet racist. The fact that you slap a thin veneer of civility upon your slimy nature doesn't change a thing.
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 10, 2007 10:20 AM
Bee - -
I didn't bother to reply to Matthew because of his ridiculous comment. "It is a sort of deranged tribalism isn't it? I am sure if the Confederacy advocated gassing Jews then these buffoons would be right behind it."
Judah P. Benjamin was a U.S. senator, who became a Confederate attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state.
It was in the "U. S." Senate that he was often attacked because of his religious background.
The fact that it is well known that Benjamin was Jewish, made the incredulous stupidity of Mathew's opinion unworthy of attention.
BTW - I've noticed that you ignore posts when it suits you.
Posted by: Connie | April 10, 2007 3:46 PM
>>>>No one is going to convince you of anything,
dogmeat - -
There you go projecting, again.
That fact that you don't value people who disagree with your pretentious ideas, only serves to prove that you possess all of the attributes that you claim to find so offensive. You have certainly made one thing clear, you are the kind of person who thinks themselves so high above others that if you had actually lived during the time of slavery, you would have had no problem owning and abusing many people who were different from you.
Posted by: Connie | April 10, 2007 3:53 PM
Connie,
Do you honestly believe the tripe you write? If so, you need to seek professional help, you are truly delusional. My pretentious ideas? Honesty? Kindness? Tolerance and acceptance? Those are pretentious? Interesting, I believe every major religion has basic tenents that advocate those very things ... so you're saying that those religions are pretentious as well, eh? Gotcha, wow, I wasn't aware that you were the center of the universe and source of all that is correct in the world. Impressive, if that's the case how can you be so wrong with all of this "slavery stuff?"
Yes, because I value people who are honest, kind, tolerant, and accepting it means that I think myself "so high" above others ... yup, and I'd have owned slaves in the antebellum period. Because it was people who were honest, kind, and tolerant who owned slaves ... [rolls eyes]
See this is a simple concept, because I don't value people who lie, are unkind, intolerant, and unaccepting of others, I don't spend time with them. That you apparently do tells us a lot about you. In addition to your racist statements and defense of the South, Confederacy, and slavery, it tells us a lot about what kind of person you are.
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 11, 2007 10:48 AM
Tee hee. You are splendid, Connie. It is possible that I wasn't being entirely literal, you know.
I have also noticed, with tremendous amusement, some interesting things about the fabled 'Southern Manners'. Now, we English also have something of a reputation for excellent manners, albeit one which is rather losing its shine these days.
What we have also developed, concurrent with some excellent manners, is the ability to display truly dreadful manners in the most polite possible way.
Consequently, I feel quite a home with you Connie, when you try so very hard to sound like a Southern Lady (TM) by using rather convolutedly forced good form, whilst the actual message you are conveying is really not very nice at all.
It reminds me so much of carping old fishwives at a tupperware party saying lovely things like 'Oooh, what lovely biscuits Mabel, are they from Marks & Spencer?' when what they really mean is 'Oh you cheap, ill-educated social climber, don't you bake your own biscuits like I do?'
Of course, the veneer's slipped a little in recent posts and you're not doing nearly so well as you used to. What a splendidly mad old bag you are though, well done.
Posted by: Matthew Young | April 11, 2007 11:22 AM
No, Connie, I'm not ignoring your posts; I'm merely using my limited time to respond to those points that deserve a response. Your last post was a non-sequitur (look up the phrase yourself, I can't do everything around here), so I'll only say in response to it that Matthew put in a good word for your beloved South (the whole South, not the dimwit Dixie-defenders), and you STILL have nothing to say in response to it (just as you had no response to my comment about the gentlemanliness of Lee and his generals); so I'll have to conclude that you really have nothing relevant to say on the subject.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 11, 2007 11:23 AM
Er, sorry Bee, just went and ruined that with a slight overdose of facetious Connie-baiting.
She is top-drawer though - mad as a sack of badgers.
Posted by: Matthew Young | April 11, 2007 11:25 AM
Bee - - I wasn't necessarily referring to my posts when I said that you ignore posts when it suits you. I never deliberately ignored anyone that I believed was interested in an honest exchange of ideas or facts.
dogmeat - - nothing about you has in any way convinced me that you possess any of the attributes that you claim to value in others. As a matter of fact, I believe you are exactly like all the people that you claim to find so intolerable.
Matthew - - If you weren't being "entirely" literal you should have mentioned that fact. It's up to you to make clear your meanings. I can only read what you write and assume that you mean it.
I am always civil to people who are civil to me, regardless of their race, religion, national origin, etc. However, civility is in short supply amongst most of bloggers here, as you well know. Your insults couched in feigned English politeness and the deliberate crudeness displayed by many others here still hasn't exhibited that any of you possess the virtues necessary to put you above those that you claim are beneath contempt.
You are right about one thing, though; I am splendid. If you want to see for yourself, come visit Virginia this month. I'll be out celebrating my Confederate heritage with many others who haven't been whipped into submission by today's PC hatred of all things Southern and the biased slant on history that is touted on this blog. Come out from behind your computer, meet and talk to some of those fine people that you hate so much. They'll be ladies and gentlemen, even if you aren't. [>
Posted by: Connie | April 12, 2007 4:59 AM
dogmeat - - nothing about you has in any way convinced me that you possess any of the attributes that you claim to value in others. As a matter of fact, I believe you are exactly like all the people that you claim to find so intolerable.
Ahh, thank you for your confirmation that you are delusional. What a bigot, who celebrates slavery and racism, thinks of me matters not in the least. Your dishonesty and intolerance displayed here has reduced your opinion value to somewhere in the neighborhood of absolute zero. I could defend my own "virtues," but you're not worth the time nor the effort.
You might want to read back through the thread here. You haven't been a "lady" for a very long time. Point in fact, you were quite rude to me long before I returned your rudeness in kind. Besides, the false politeness you value isn't a virtue.
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 12, 2007 11:35 AM
dogmeat - - "I could defend my own "virtues," but you're not worth the time nor the effort." Right back at ya!
Y'all have a Dixie day!
Posted by: Connie | April 12, 2007 3:29 PM
I don't claim they are beneath contempt. I rather admire the ability to deliver the iciest of put-downs in the most charming and inoffensive of language. But I don't pretend that it's especially polite.
What do you celebrate when you celebrate Southern heritage then? Not any of the slavery-related institutions, I presume? Or any of the politicians and prominent pillars of society who advocated slavery? This is the bit I don't get about you - you've come in here ranting and raving about how slavery wasn't all bad and that the American Civil War wasn't all about slavery and so on, which is all clearly nonsense, but you've yet to point out anything good about the South.
Posted by: Matthew Young | April 17, 2007 7:59 AM