Confederacy of the determined - (Southern heritage buffs vow "Confederate History Month")

WASHINGTON TIMES.COM ^ | APRIL 24, 2005 | Christina Bellantoni

[CHARLITE]

Southern heritage buffs vow to use the Virginia gubernatorial election as a platform for designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

The four candidates have differing views on the Confederacy, an issue that has been debated for years in the commonwealth.

"We're not just a few people making a lot of noise," said Brag Bowling, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. "This is not a racial thing; it is good for Virginia. We're going to keep pushing this until we get it."

Each candidate recently shared his thoughts on what Mr. Bowling called a "litmus test for all politicians." Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine would not support a Confederate History and Heritage Month. Former state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore would support something that recognizes everyone who lived during the Civil War.

Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. and Warrenton Mayor George B. Fitch would support a Confederate History and Heritage Month. Many past Virginia governors honored the Civil War or the Confederacy.

In 1990, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first black governor, a Democrat and a grandson of slaves, issued a proclamation praising both sides of the war and remembering "those who sacrificed in this great struggle."

Former Govs. George Allen and James S. Gilmore III, both Republicans, issued Confederate History Month proclamations. In 2000, Mr. Gilmore replaced that proclamation with one commemorating both sides of the Civil War -- a move that enraged the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, has refused to issue a gubernatorial decree on either side of the Civil War.

Mr. Kaine, another Democrat, would decline to issue a Confederate History and Heritage Month proclamation if he is elected governor, said his campaign spokeswoman, Delacey Skinner.

[fortheDeclaration]

but the Feds did not enforce the fugitive slave act, the Northern States provoked the South, the Abolitionist tried to instigate murder & revolt, and tried to take away the South's economic well-being.

The Feds did enforce the fugitive slave act, even sending troops to do so.

The fact is the South had no reason to gripe about anything except the fact that it wanted the North to accept slavery as being moral which it refused to do.

[fortheDeclaration]

Anything that makes you lose control of your senses is a sin, (that is not for medical purposes)

Taking a mind altering drug is the same as getting drunk.

Or do you think that drunkness is not a sin? (Pr.23:29-35, Eph.5:18)

[fortheDeclaration]

What does Romans have to do with slavery? " Read it. It addresses the reality of slavery of its time. It does NOT say anything along the lines of "even though it is wrong for one to be a slave/servant" It calls for slaves/servants to be GOOD slaves/servants. And it does not provide that slavery be "just" for it to be recognized. Slavery, in the Bible, is recognized as a fact of life. It is not directly assaulted (or even indirectly, no matter how you interpret it.) "The fact is there is no moral justification for slavery, which is what the slave States attempted to develop." No, the FACT is slavery existed prior to the South. They didn't develop it, and stopping it in the States sure as hell didn't strike it from history, nor current affairs.

The fact is that the Bible deals with slavery as a given in a corrupt world.

It never states that anyone should enslave another human being.

It deals with those who are enslaved and how they are to exist in that type of environment.

The South in the mid 1800's began pushing slavery as a positive good, along racial lines, which the Bible never does.

So for the South to bring up the Bible is the height of hypocrisy since they refused to obey the rules that the Bible laid out for slaves, like not returning runaway ones.

[fortheDeclaration]

Indentured service is not slavery." then why is "indentured servitude" illegal under the same laws as slavery?

Because the government did not want people selling themselves to pay of a debt.

That was too drastic a measure for debt repayment.

We also stopped putting people in prison for the same reason.

[fortheDeclaration]

So, a General was in control of the Trans-Mississippi! In other words, there was no civilian government left. So, the Confederacy had regressed into a military led gov't? So, Lincoln was in effective control of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government! In other words, there was no civilian government left. So, the Union had regressed into a despot led gov't?

No, Lincoln had all three branches of civilian governments working, even holding off year elections (in which the Republicans took a beating).

The Confederacy as a government, ceased to exist with the fall of Richmond, as even your pro-Confederate website stated.

[fortheDeclaration]

The person in question had a history of posting to me and stand watie calling us "tonto' and/or 'chief', and he admits his racism toward Mexicans. Stating FACTS is not abusive.

I have not seen any evidence of any racism towards Mexicans.

As for 'tonto'and 'chief' I think you are being a bit hyper-sensitive (P.C).

stand watie calls all of us 'damn Yankees'-so what?

[fortheDeclaration]

Amen to your post.

[fortheDeclaration]

Lincoln did and have troops stationed at polling booths to ensure his victory

He didn't have any troops when he was elected the first time!

What he did have was a divided Democratic party, a Democratic party which rejected the Northern candidate because of his support of tariffs?

No, because he would not go along with the deep South's goal to expand slavery.

[fortheDeclaration]

VICE PRESIDENT ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS, in his "War Between the States," declares that the escorts which have been made to "fix the odium of cruelty and barbarity" upon Mr. Davis and the Confederate authorities "constitute one of the boldest and baldest attempted outrages upon the truth of history which has ever been essayed." After briefly, but most conclusively, discussing the general question, Mr. Stevens continues as follows in reference to the Federal prisoners sent South: It now appears that a larger number of Confederates died in Northern than of Federals in Southern prisons or stockades. The report of Mr. Stanton, as Secretary of War, on the 19th of July, 1866, exhibits the fact that, of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands during the war, only 22,576 died; while of the Confederate prisoners in Federal hands 26,436 died. This report does not set forth the exact number of prisoners held by each side respectively. These facts were given more in detail in a subsequent report by Surgeon General Barnes, of the United States Army. His report I have not seen, but according to a statement editorially, in the National Intelligencer -- very high authority -- it appears from the Surgeon General's report, that the whole number of Federal prisoners captured by the Confederates and held in Southern prisons, from first to last during the war, was, in round numbers, 270,000; while the whole number of Confederates captured and held in prisons by the Federals was in like round numbers, only 220,000. From these two reports it appears that, with 50,000 more prisoners in Southern stockades, or other modes of confinement, the deaths were nearly 4,000 less! According to these figures, the per centum of Federal deaths in Southern prisons was under nine! while the per centum of Confederate deaths in Northern prisons was over twelve! These mortality statistics are of no small weight in determining on which side was the most neglect, cruelty and inhumanity! http://www.civilwarhome.com/prisonertreatment.htm

[fortheDeclaration]

Here is why the North refused to exchange prisoners later in the war,

No aspect of the American Civil War left behind a greater legacy of bitterness and acrimony than the treatment of prisoners of war. "Andersonville" still conjures up images of horror unmatched in American History. And although Northern partisans still invoke the infamous Southern camp to defame the Confederacy, the Union had its share of equally horrific camps. Prison camps on both sides produced scenes of wretched, disease-ridden and emaciated prisoners as repulsive as any to come out of the Second World War.

Partisans in both the North and the South produced wildly exaggerated novels, reminiscences of prisoners, journalistic accounts and even official government reports which charged the enemy with wanton criminal policies of murderous intent. It took several decades for Revisionist historians to separate fact from propagandistic fancy and deliberate distortion from misunderstanding. Even today the bitter legacy of hate lingers on in widespread but often grossly distorted accounts from this tragic chapter of American history.

Neither side deliberately set out to maltreat prisoners. Arrangements were made hurriedly to deal with unexpected masses of men. As neither side expected the war to last long, these measures were only makeshifts undertaken with minimum expenditure. Management was bad on both sides, but worse in the South owing to poorer, more decentralized organization and more meager resources. Thus, prisoners held by the Union were somewhat better off.

In the first phase of the war, 1861-1862, the relatively small numbers of prisoners taken by both sides were well treated. Both sides agreed to a prisoner exchange arrangement which operated during the latter half of 1862. Under the cartel, captives remaining after the exchanges were paroled. But the agreement broke down, in part because of Northern refusal to recognize the Confederate authorities as anything other than "rebels," and in part over the Negro question.

''In a war of this kind, words are things. If we must address Davis as president of the Confederacy, we cannot exchange and the prisoners should not wish it," declared the influential Harper's Weekly.

Following the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863, the North began enlisting former slaves into the Federal army. Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared that "all Negro slaves captured in arms" and their White officers should be delivered over to the South to be dealt with according to law. That could mean rigorous prosecution under strict laws relating to Negro insurrections.

Still, special exchanges on a reduced scale continued, but from 1863 onwards, both sides were holding large numbers of prisoners.

On 17 April 1864, General Grant ordered that no more Confederate prisoners were to be paroled or exchanged until there were released a sufficient number of Union officers and men to equal the parolees at Vicksburg and Port Hudson and unless the Confederate authorities would agree to make no distinction whatsoever between White and Negro prisoners.

On 10 August, the Confederate government offered to exchange officer for officer and man for man, accompanying the proposal with a statement on conditions at Andersonville. This offer induced General Grant to reveal his real reason for refusing any further exchanges. "Every man we hold, when released on parole or otherwise," Grant reported to Washington, "becomes an active soldier against us at once either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman's defeat and would compromise our safety here." (Rhodes, pp499-500)

In October, Lee proposed to Grant another man-to-man exchange of prisoners. Grant asked whether Lee would turn over Negro troops "the same as White soldiers?" When Lee declared that "Negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange," the negotiations completely broke down.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p137_Weber.html

The article is very balanced regarding POW treatment by both sides.

[fortheDeclaration]

actually, at some reenactments, the South WINS......

Not the battles that decide the outcome of the war it doesn't.

That is why the Confederacy lost, they lost the key battles.

[fortheDeclaration]

Whether it was Lincoln OR Stanton, doesn't make a difference. If The Feds attempted to have Davis killed, they lost any & all moral high ground, and the Confederates were justified in doing what was done.

There is no hard evidence that either did so.

I would expect that the raid no longer be mentioned as being a legimate reason for the murder of Lincoln, since Lincoln had nothing to do with any plot against any of the Confederate leadership, as the historian himself admitted.

[fortheDeclaration]

Apparently, you didn't read some of Lee's later writings. He wasn't so happy with Reconstruction, and wished he had never surrendered.

Well, post them or a link.

[fortheDeclaration]

The record shows (even though you will not admit it) that the civilian gov't of the Confederacy ceased to exist with the fall of Richmond.

[M. Espinola]

I would like to add a few more items in this discussion. A number of us have noticed whenever the term 'abolitionists' happens to be mentioned the hard-core 'neo-confederates' immediately & viciously attack, slander and ridicule all those involved in the the abolition of slavery movement. Now what does that make them?

"Mr. Breckinridge is the pro-Slavery candidate for the Presidency, and is supported by the slave-code, slave-trade, and 'Disunion party', as the only man prepared to do 'justice' to the South upon the 'Negro question'.

Republican Party Platform (1860)

NINTH. "That we brand the recent reöpening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age, and we call upon congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic."

Regarding the so-called election of 'Confederate President' Jefferson Davis; as all of us know there was never a traditional popular election and nobody has been able to step forth a 1861 popular election vote tally.

At least Lincoln was elected in a national election just as Grant, Harrison, LBJ, JFK, Nixon, & the rest of the American Presidents were, not hand picked by a pack of soar losers representing the South's cotton empire which only functioned because of slave labour.

One of the more well known high priests of the neo-Confederate movement is Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a promoter of modern secessionist, an arch promoter of the Southern platform in 1860, and chief propagandist for 'neo-Confederism' DeLorenzo and his type deliberately ignore the facts that the South illegally succeeded over the issue of maintaining and expanding slavery.

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union: "In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."

South Carolina Secession

President Lincoln justifiably reacted to a pro-slaver insurrectionists triggering the Civil War. Liberating the slaves came some two years later, but (selected) Jefferson Davis & (selected) VP arch-bigot Stephens fought to preserve slavery, thus preserving their corporate bottom line in the rebelling Cotton Empire.

The secessionists pro-slavery Confederate leaders were not totally defeated in 1865, for in 1877, after federal troops were mistakenly withdrawn from former slave states, a new form of 'neo-slavery' began with the 100 years of the South's Jim Crow 'legal' discrimination against fellow Americans enforced by criminal terrorists like the KKK.

Example-1931: "I experienced my first involvement with racism in the business when we played Jacksonville Florida in 1931. I knew there was segregation in southern theaters, but was not fully aware of the pain that it caused until then.

"After the show I decided to walk. As I came to the corner, I saw a black man of about eighty coming toward me. When he reached me, he jumped out into the gutter. Thinking he'd seen a snake or something frightening, I jumped into the road with him,where upon he jumped back onto the sidewalk and so did I. We did this dance routine about three times before I grabbed his arm and said, "What the Hell is going on Pop? Why are you leaping up and back like a jumping bean?" Frightened, he answered, "Sir, in this city a black man musn't walk on the same side of the street with a white man." "Mister," I told him, "this is not my city, but it's my country and I can walk with any man I choose to."

"I put my arm about his shoulder and forced him to walk with me around the corner. He said. "Man, you seem nice, but you're liable to get us killed." I tried to clam him, and then let him go on his way and continued walking.

"When I went back to the theater the manager stated, "We don't want any N*****lovers in our theater or in our city, so get movin' before you get in big trouble!"

"We left Jacksonville in disbelief and headed back to New York."

Page 53 & 54 'Moe Howard & The 3 Stooges', by Moe 'Horwitz' Howard, 1977, Citadel Press, Secaucus, New Jersey.

One side note, if Moe & and the boys for example, had been in Germany a few years later, Jews, under Nazi German law, were forbidden to walk on the sidewalk if a German were passing. The similarities between Jim Crow 'laws' and Nazi 'laws' pertaining to Jews & others are horrifyingly similar in numerous respects. States of terror for victims of the 'law'. German law resulted in ovens, Jim Crow law, mob lynchings with 'police' participation.

Moe and the other Stooges would have been murdered for simply being born Jewish. In the Jim Crow South, a man could be murdered for simply being black or vocing objections about 'legal' Southern segrigation.

"If real Americans living in the South in 1860-1861 questioned the decision by a few to rebel against their country, they were likewise threatened, ridiculed, and coerced."

The very same mob rule exists today in areas under control by radical Islamic terrorists.

Coward terrorist thugs hid behind masks

"Today, they hide behind loads of BS and screen names, but they are the same punks."

One in particular still gets his demented kicks from calling some Americans 'Negroes'. You know who you are. There's always an open invitation to come up to the real world anytime, and spout off your neo-KKK segregationist crap, anytime, slug.

-Never Again!-

[A Jovial Cad]

Once again, right on point and exactly right.

Excellent post, and every bit of it so irrefutably true.

[fortheDeclaration]

Regarding the repeated lie that Lincoln agreed to a Constitutional amendment to make slavery permenant in the South

[c. January 19-21, 1861]


I learn from a gentleman who had an interview with Mr. Lincoln, at Springfield, within the past week that the latter in discussing the existing state of affairs expressed himself as follows:

---``I will suffer death before I will consent or will advise my friends to consent to any concession or compromise which looks like

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Page 176


buying the privilege of taking possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right; because, whatever I might think of the merit of the various propositions before Congress, I should regard any concession in the face of menace the destruction of the government itself, and a consent on all hands that our system shall be brought down to a level with the existing disorganized state of affairs in Mexico. But this thing will hereafter be as it is now, in the hands of the people; and if they desire to call a Convention to remove any grievances complained of, or to give new guarantees for the permanence of vested rights, it is not mine to oppose.''

To James T. Hale [1]
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Confidential. Hon. J. T. Hale Springfield, Ill. Jan'y. 11th 1861.


My dear Sir---Yours of the 6th is received. I answer it only because I fear you would misconstrue my silence. What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass, till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union. They now have the Constitution, under which we have lived over seventy years, and acts of Congress of their own framing, with no prospect of their being changed; and they can never have a more shallow pretext for breaking up the government, or extorting a compromise, than now. There is, in my judgment, but one compromise which would really settle the slavery question, and that would be a prohibition against acquiring any more territory. Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN.



Annotation

[1] Copy, DLC-RTL. James T. Hale, Republican congressman from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, wrote January 6 as a member of a committee of congressmen from the border states, recommending an amendment to the Constitution denying the right of Congress to abolish slavery in the states, a joint resolution declaring that abolition could not take place in the District of Columbia without consent of Maryland and citizens of the District, an amendment of the fugitive slave law and that states repeal all personal liberty bills, and that the U.S. be divided at 36(deg) 30', all territories north of that line to be free and all those south of it to be free or slave as they chose (DLC-RTL).
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?

[fortheDeclaration]

Yet another letter regarding Lincoln's view of compromise on the slavery issue

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Page 183



To William H. Seward [1]
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Private & confidential. Hon. W. H. Seward Springfield, Ills. Feb. 1. 1861


My dear Sir On the 21st. ult. Hon. W. Kellogg, a Republican M.C of this state whom you probably know, was here, in a good deal of anxiety, seeking to ascertain to what extent I would be consenting for our friends to go in the way of compromise on the now vexed question. While he was with me I received a despatch from Senator Trumbull, at Washington, alluding to the same question, and telling me to await letters. I thereupon told Mr. Kellogg that when I should receive these letters, posting me as to the state of affairs at Washington, I would write you, requesting you to let him see my letter. To my surprise when the letters mentioned by Judge Trumbull came, they made no allusion to the ``vexed question'' This baffled me so much that I was near not writing you at all, in compliance with what I had said to Judge Kellogg.

I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question---that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices,---I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation. And any trick by which the nation is to acquire territory, and then allow some local authority to spread slavery over it, is as obnoxious as any other.

I take it that to effect some such result as this, and to put us again on the high-road to a slave empire is the object of all these proposed compromises. I am against it.

As to fugitive slaves, District of Columbia, slave trade among the slave states, and whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is amongst us, I care but little, so that what is done be comely, and not altogether outrageous. Nor do I care much about New-Mexico, if further extension were hedged against. Yours very truly A. LINCOLN---
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?

[M. Espinola]

"Once again, right on point and exactly right. Excellent post, and every bit of it so irrefutably true."

Thank you. Now we await the typical, countering, scripted propaganda 'slavery had nothing to do with the origins of the Civil War'. :)

The Wilmot Proviso, The Fugitive Slave Laws of 1850, The Underground Railroad, Bleeding Kanasas, Uncle Tom's Cabin, John Brown's raid, the Missouri Compromise, the Abolition Movement, Ableman V. Booth, Dred Scott, the founding of the Republican Party, The Kansas-Nebraska Act and on and on, all meaningless pages in the history books, playing no part in the building roots of America's Civil War, according to the modern secessionist spin masters.

[fortheDeclaration]

Yes, and it was all because of the slave owners attempts to expand slavery.

Hence, Lincoln's House divided speech.