Posted on 12/16/2004 6:48:26 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
Americans Owe Confederate History Respect
By CHRIS EDWARDS
The Time Has Come To Take A Stand After attending the Confederate Memorial Day service on June 1 in Higginsville, I found myself believing our nation should be ashamed for not giving more respect and recognition to our ancestors.
I understand that some find the Confederate flag offensive because they feel it represents slavery and oppression. Well, here are the facts: The Confederate flag flew over the South from 1861 to 1865. That's a total of four years. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in April 1789, and that document protected and condoned the institution of slavery from 1789 to 1861. In other words, if we denigrate the Confederate flag for representing slavery for four years, shouldn't we also vilify the U.S. flag for representing slavery for 72 years? Unless we're hypocrites, it is clear that one flag is no less pure than the other.
A fascinating aspect of studying the Civil War is researching the issues that led to the confrontation. The more you read, the less black-and-white the issues become. President Abraham Lincoln said he would do anything to save the union, even if that meant preserving the institution of slavery. Lincoln's focus was obviously on the union, not slavery.
In another case, historians William McFeely and Gene Smith write that Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant threatened to "throw down his sword" if he thought he was fighting to end slavery.
Closer to home, in 1864, Col. William Switzler, one of the most respected Union men in Boone County, purchased a slave named Dick for $126. What makes this transaction interesting is not only the fact that Switzler was a Union man but that he bought the slave one year after the issuance of the Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Of course, history students know the proclamation did not include slaves living in the North or in border states such as Missouri.
So if this war was fought strictly over slavery, why were so many Unionists reluctant to act like that was the issue?
In reviewing the motives that led to the Civil War, one should read the letters soldiers wrote home to their loved ones. Historian John Perry, who studied the soldier's correspondence, says in his three years of research, he failed to find one letter that referred to slavery from Confederate or Union soldiers.
Perry says that Yankees tended to write about preserving the Union and Confederates wrote about protecting their rights from a too-powerful federal government. The numerous letters failed to specifically say soldiers were fighting either to destroy or protect the institution of slavery. Shelby Foote, in his three-volume Civil War history, recounts an incident in which a Union soldier asks a Confederate prisoner captured in Tennessee why he was fighting. The rebel responded, "Because you're down here."
History tends to overlook the South's efforts to resolve the issue of slavery. For example, in 1863, because of a shortage of manpower, Lincoln permitted the enlistment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Battlefield documents bear out the fact that these units were composed of some of the finest fighting men in the war. Unfortunately for these brave soldiers, the Union used them as cannon fodder, preferring to sacrifice black lives instead of whites.
These courageous black Union soldiers experienced a Pyrrhic victory for their right to engage in combat. However, history has little to say about the South's same effort in 1865. The Confederacy, its own troop strength depleted, offered slaves freedom if they volunteered for the army.
We know that between 75,000 and 100,000 blacks responded to this call, causing Frederick Douglass to bemoan the fact that blacks were joining the Confederacy. But the assimilation of black slaves into the Confederate army was short-lived as the war came to an end before the government's policy could be fully implemented.
It's tragic that Missouri does not do more to recognize the bravery of the men who fought in the Missouri Confederate brigades who fought valiantly in every battle they were engaged in. To many Confederate generals, the Missouri brigades were considered the best fighting units in the South.
The courage these boys from Missouri demonstrated at Port Gibson and Champion Hill, Miss., Franklin, Tenn., and Fort Blakely, Ala., represent just a few of the incredible sacrifices they withstood on the battlefield. Missouri should celebrate their struggles instead of damning them.
For the real story about the Missouri Confederate brigades, one should read Phil Gottschalk and Philip Tucker's excellent books about these units. The amount of blood spilled by these Missouri boys on the field of battle will make you cry.
Our Confederate ancestors deserve better from this nation. They fought for what they believed in and lost. Most important, we should remember that when they surrendered, they gave up the fight completely. Defeated Confederate soldiers did not resort to guerrilla warfare or form renegade bands that refused to surrender. These men simply laid down their arms, went home and lived peacefully under the U.S. flag. When these ex-Confederates died, they died Americans.
During the postwar period, ex-Confederates overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party. This party, led in Missouri by Rep. Dick Gephardt and Gov. Bob Holden, has chosen to turn its back on its fallen sons.
The act of pulling down Confederate flags at two obscure Confederate cemeteries for the sake of promoting Gephardt's hopeless quest for the presidency was a cowardly decision. I pray these men will rethink their decision.
The reality is, when it comes to slavery, the Confederate and United States flags drip with an equal amount of blood.
Chris Edwards is a local musician and MU graduate student of history. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and of the board of Missouri's Civil War Heritage Foundation.
Hear Hear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ALL NEWBIES HERE WOULD DO WELL TO LISTEN TO THIS NORTHERN SAGE....HIS MESSAGE IS NEARLY ALWAYS SPOT-ON.
From: a 7th generation Mississippian
Why do you invent some counterfactual like this? Do you have any evidence that ThJ ever did something like this? The idea that a coal miner's kid can do anything with his life is equally fanciful. History is about real stuff. I can assure you that some of my great-grandparents, no doubt, wished they were someones slave. There are many human conditions that are worse than slavery, but it just doesn't suit the revisionist history of northern aggression not have been fighting for the noblest of all causes.
3 out of every 5
You really need to understand some history before you engage in these sorts of discussions. The northerners wanted to count slaves as 0 out of every 5; the southerners wanted to count them as 5 out of every 5. The 3/5 was a compromise, and it had nothing to do with anyones view of the humanity of a slave.
ML/NJ (Lifetime Yankee)
How many Confederate soldiers were tried for treason?
I would really encourage you to read Gov Pickens account of the events leading up to Ft. Sumter. I think you might be surprised. Have a read over the holidays.
Just because they weren't tried, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Perhaps it was just a wise move on the part of the administration to avoid trials and try to heal the nation? I understand the respect many people have for the confederate leaders and soldiers. I respect many of them and understand that it was a trying time and not easy to pick sides. Sometimes I think they made good points, other times I think the Union made good points. In the end, I think the Civil War was necessary to solve some of the prominent questions of the day. Without it, we could not have grown into the force that we became fifty years later. However, that does not mean they were not engaged in treasonous behavior.
First, I never said he did, I merely said he could. It was entirely within his rights as a slaveholder to dispose of his slaves for whatever reason he wished. Even for fripperies at Monticello.
Second, he, the great advocate of fiscal responsibility and solvency, was an undisciplined and profligate spender who, due to his own whims and his architectural monomania in building and rebuilding his temple to himself, accumulated at least $100,000 in debt. (Sort of like the way he, as the great advocate of separation of the races, apparently didn't mind knocking his revolutionary boots with Ms. Hemmings...) Upon his death, his slaves were sold to pay for his debts. So is it unreasonable to assume that he would have been so concerned about the welfare of people he owned as property that he wouldn't sell then to satisfy a passing fancy? Nothing in his history suggested that he wouldn't.
The idea that a coal miner's kid can do anything with his life is equally fanciful. History is about real stuff.
Slave children were slaves and had no opportunity to do anything but serve another and to exist at their pleasure. Coal miner's children experienced great hardships, but they were not legally required to toil in the mines. Sadly, many had little or no practical choices, but there was the hope that they could do more. Slavery means that there is no hope.
But what do I know? After all, history is unanimous on the subject. No child of a coal miner ever did anything with his or her life. There is not one singe instance of success of a coal miner's son or a Coal Miner's Daughter...
I can assure you that some of my great-grandparents, no doubt, wished they were someones slave.
Again, if one wishes he were a slave, that is his business. I think the clinical name for this is masochism.
There are many human conditions that are worse than slavery, but it just doesn't suit the revisionist history of northern aggression not have been fighting for the noblest of all causes.
Slavery is not objectionable merely for its brutality. (The manner in which the southern slave holders treated their fellow man should have determined, in a just Reconstruction, whether each slave holder met the gallows or the jail cell. But that's an argument for another day.) The fact that there are some people who are not slaves, but whose living conditions are worse than the conditions of the best-kept slaves, is really irrelevant. If one is not a slave, there is always the possibility of change, the possibility that a new life can be achieved. And maybe perhaps not even for yourself but for your descendants. A well kept slave has nothing but the fear that things will get worse and no way to insure that it will not.
I wonder if you could ask you great-grandparents if they would choose slavery over coal mining if, as a result that choice, they knew their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc., would also be slaves. Wouldn't you endure the hardship of a life of coal mining if you thought that your children might not have to?
As for historical revisionism, it is willing blindness to history to believe that, after a period of eighty-odd years of fighting over slavery in every way possible (the fugitive slave laws, various Compromises over slavery, newspaper advocacy and agitation, John Brown, the cowardly assault in the Senate on Charles Sumner by that idiot Brooks, bloody murder in Kansas, etc., etc., etc.) that after all that history, one of the sides of that debate - an entire region - would rebel basically all at once because of the Federal Government's fiscal policies. Please.
Was slavery the only issue? Of course not. But to pretend that slavery was a side issue or a footnote is little more than an attempt to maintain an affection for people you admire in the face of the fact that they engaged in acts that you do, or should, find abhorrent and repugnant.
3 out of every 5
You really need to understand some history before you engage in these sorts of discussions. The northerners wanted to count slaves as 0 out of every 5; the southerners wanted to count them as 5 out of every 5. The 3/5 was a compromise, and it had nothing to do with anyones view of the humanity of a slave.
You really need to improve your reading comprehension skills. I did not say that they were seen as 3/5 of a person. I said they counted 3 out of 5 of them for representation purposes. The whip-crackers wanted to count everyone of them because their power in the federal government would increase. This is useful in situations like electing presidents if it is thrown to the house, controlling the federal purse, enacting legislation like the fugitive slave laws, and spreading the cancer of slavery to newly acquired territory. (Unless you're so naive to believe that the Southerners intended to send people with the slaves' interest at heart to Washington.)
Northerners rightly did not want them to be counted in apportioning the seats in the House of Representation, because to do so made a complete mockery of the very notion that this was a representative body. They wanted the make-up of the House to reflect truth: since the non-slave population were the only ones actually being represented in the House, the count should only be of the that population.
Sorry, the treason charge doesn't stick. If you can prove otherwise, please share.
Well, I don't have the Federal Code in front of me, so I'm not positive on that definition of treason. Without that, I'm turning to Webster's, which defines it as:
"Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies."
With that definition, how could the confederates not be guilty of treason?
I don't mean that as an insult. I understand why they did what they did. Had they won, they would have been revolutionaries and another set of "founding fathers". They lost though, which makes them traitors. Funny how one treaty can turn you into a hero or a traitor so quickly.
Look beyond your admiration for the Confederacy for a second and just read the definition and look at the facts. You can admire them all you want to. And, in MANY cases I do. But that does not mean they are not guilty of treason.
Listen WildHorseCrash! My great-grandparents weren't coal miners. Their days ended at a place called Auschwitz. Slaves in the old South, even when they were old and nonproductive, continued to be cared for. There are levels of human degradation you apparently cannot comprehend.
ML/NJ
And I have sympathy for them and for their descendants, including you. If I misinterpreted your previous posts as indicating that they were coal miners, then I apologize sincerely. I certainly did not imply any disrespect to you, to them or to what they experienced.
I would also point out that, on a basic level, the slave system in the South and treatment of Jews and others in Nazi occupied Europe stemmed from the same disease (manifested in different ways and to vastly different ends, of course): the misuse of the power of the state to deny and strip from individuals the most fundamental rights they enjoy, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Slaves in the old South, even when they were old and nonproductive, continued to be cared for.
Perhaps, but that simply does not justify the fact that they had been kept as property for their entire lives.
There are levels of human degradation you apparently cannot comprehend.
No, I simply recognize that the fact that there are levels of degradation does not mean that slavery in the old South was anything but an incarnation of that degradation.
That is correct, is there a point?
I hope that your health is good, and that there has been no recurrence of any problem.
Bill Flax
That sounds a bit like the rant of the Abolitionist sociopath John Brown--the one whose bones are "a moldering in his grave." However, it is not in accordance with traditional Western Theology. Both the Old and New Testaments, as I mentioned earlier, accepted slavery.
Your rants would pillory the fountainheads of Western Culture. Ancient Attica had more slaves than freemen. Ancient Rome had a slave culture. And, as I have already mentioned, such was also prevalent in Biblical times, in the Holy Land.
You seem to feel that you have the right and duty to meddle in other people's affairs, to enforce your moral judgments; that the ends justify the means. Such was the doctrine of Lenin and Trotsky; such that of Adolph Hitler and Chairman Mao.
I find that doctrine very offensive.
For an anti-slavery view, that anyone can respect, on the other hand; you might check out Daniel Webster's immortal speech, on behalf of the Compromise of 1850: Daniel Webster. As Webster points out, the Abolitionist fanatics, who sounded like you, actually set back the cause of ending slavery.
William Flax
The Declaration does not found a nation. It postulates the moral basis for adhering to Government, then recites specific grievances against the British Government, including the stirring up ("excited") of domestic insurrections; and then declares the sovereign independence of the original 13 States. (But those States--or nations, if you prefer--already existed, but without sovereignty.)
As for the lack of respect between the races, that you postulate, I would cite you no less an authority than Booker T. Washington, as to the genuine respect and affection of the Negro Southerner, for the Old South--including, in particular the former Master and Mistress. Or how else do you explain: Atlanta Exposition Speech?
The tension that has been created between the races, since, did not arise spontaneously. It was achieved by generations of agitation, started not by American Negroes but by Leftist Whites, seeking a metaphor for the Class Warfare that had worked to destroy traditional cultures in other lands. (See Civil War, Reconstruction & Creating Hate In America Today.)
No one is sugar coating history. But throwing the vile refuse of the Far Left on our history, North or South, is the historic equivalent to some of the vile anti-religious pretensions to art, that have shocked sensibilities in recent years. It is no accident, that suddenly, about 130 years after slavery ended in America, it became again a hot button issue. But it is very sad to see people at a Conservative web site, taking up the contrived agitation against traditional America.
William Flax
Ha ha. Well, John Brown may have been crazy, but I'd take his brand of crazy any day over the ranting of an apologist for slavery. Too bad there weren't more psychopaths like him in 1860 going down South. It might have saved the lives of a lot of innocent Northern boys.
***
However, it is not in accordance with traditional Western Theology. Both the Old and New Testaments, as I mentioned earlier, accepted slavery.
Accepted and in some degree mitigated. But they didn't condone it. They didn't celebrate it. The fourth commandment wasn't "Thou shalt raise scars on the back of the field hand if he doesn't work hard enough"; Ecclesiastes didn't say "For everything there is a season, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to rape the mulatto wench you own..."; John 3:16 doesn't read, "For God so loved the world that he made the black folks to serve the white folks." Get real.
You sound like a multiculturalist talking about the clitoris slicers in Africa, "We may not understand it, but it's their culture. It's part of their heritage. Who are we to judge?" What the hell kind of person can look evil in the eye and just shrug his shoulders?
***
Your rants would pillory the fountainheads of Western Culture. Ancient Attica had more slaves than freemen. Ancient Rome had a slave culture. And, as I have already mentioned, such was also prevalent in Biblical times, in the Holy Land.
Okay. Without getting into the extraordinary differences between these types of slavery, so the hell what? Do you spend every day of your life saying, "Well, it looks like evil to me, but the fountainheads of Western Culture may have thought differently, so I'll excuse it..."
The fact of the matter is that Western Culture, prior to the Renaissance, was as backwards as any. It had the seeds of greatness, for sure, but Rome was a cesspool of depravity, life was cheap in the Near East, European society after the fall of Rome to about 1500 had all of the grace and moral stature of a cock fight or a date rape. It was only after the society began to respect the rights of the individual that the society itself became worthy of respect.
***
You seem to feel that you have the right and duty to meddle in other people's affairs, to enforce your moral judgments; that the ends justify the means.
No, I feel I have the obligation to point out evil. And chattel slavery was unmitigated evil. I feel that if you think it is right for you to own another person like you would a swine or steer, that it is okay for me to free that person by killing you, if necessary. I feel that if you co-opt your country into enforcing your ownership of another person, that I have the right to get another polity to wage war on you until all those who share your crime are dead.
What the hell? You complain about me wanting to "meddle in other people's affairs" but you blithely excuse a system where the cream of the South not only meddled in other people's affairs, but actually owned the other people. That's sick.
***
Such was the doctrine of Lenin and Trotsky; such that of Adolph Hitler and Chairman Mao.
Don't be stupid. The communists and Nazis used the power of the state to strip from the individual his right to freely enjoy his rights and his life. They said that an individual is nothing, the duty to the state was everything. In the old South, the lives and rights of the slaves meant nothing. The state stripped from those individuals their right to freely enjoy their rights and their lives. The whip-crackers said that the slave as an individual was nothing, his duty to the master was everything. If you've got a Commie/Nazi fetish that you're looking to indulge, there you go.
***
I find that doctrine very offensive.
You excuse chattel slavery, but find it offensive for me to point out that it is immoral for the state to allow one person to own another? That's sick. Seriously. That's really sick.
why'd you call Brooks an idiot and not John Brown.
Brooks whipped Sumner's ass (and head) with a caning because his bigassed mouth publicly overloaded his arse.
John Brown cold bloodedly murdered innocents yet you give him no moral pejorative nod?
Bias clouds perspective everytime.
You mean, causing trouble by demanding that blacks be given the vote and be allowed all the same rights as white people?
I can see how that would lead Southerners to start lynching.......
had he said the same about my mother, the caning he got from Brooks would have been the least of his worries.
john brown was no better than osama bin laden = murderous FILTH & SCUM.
btw, did you know that brown's first victim was a black VA state peace officer, named Heywood Shepard.
free dixie,sw
rave on, fool. someone will cover up for you.
free dixie,sw
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.