Posted on 01/06/2006 12:05:39 PM PST by stainlessbanner
BURLESON — Two North Texas high school students who were kicked out of class for displaying rebel flags vow to take their fight to court. They said they are proud of their heritage, but Burleson High School education officials maintain the Confederate symbol is offensive.
Ashley Thomas remembered how it all started. "Principal comes up and says, 'You've got to get rid of your purse... it's racist."
Ashley and Aubrie McAllum both received purses patterened after the Confederate battle flag from their parents for Christmas. Both girls decided to take their presents to school.
"I don't have 'KKK' written on me or anything; it's just a purse," Aubrie said. "Doesn't have anything to do with what color you are."
The students were asked to leave their purses with the principal; they elected to leave school after calling their parents.
Ashley was sent home three times this week. "I'm at the point where I really don't know what to do," she said. "I want to keep going to school and get my education, but this is my life. I was born and raised in the South. Why is the flag so bad?"
Here's the answer, from Burleson ISD spokesman Richard Crummel: "It's a violation of the dress code," he said. "We don't want students to wear anything that might cause a disruption, and that symbol has done that in the past."
"Then that's a heritage violation on her, on me... on all of us," said Aubrie's father, Rick McAllum. "So we can push it."
McAllum belongs to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Ashley's mom, Joni Thomas, is from New York. But the parents of both girls praised their daughters, and vowed to fight.
"I'm hiring a lawyer," Thomas said. "I'm going all the way with it, because I think it's wrong."
Burleson High School, with a 2,200 student enrollment, is about 90 percent white, 8 or 9 percent Hispanic. There are very few African Americans.
"We want to be sensitive to everyone; make it comfortable in school for all our students," Crummel said.
Both girls said they have never been in trouble and don't want trouble now.
But they don't want to back down, either.
School officials know controversy often follows the Confederate flag, and they will not let it in.
The girls as of Friday, decided to go back to school
Can you really say that Lee was anti-slavery? And Hampton? Isn't it a question of not being enthusiastic about slavery as some were? Or perhaps of taking doubts about slavery or secession to mean actual opposition to slavery?
If a sovereign state of the Union secedes by an act of the Legislature, and a popular referendum, then it happens.
Now friend: I won't debate the right of secession with you. I like my forefathers believe it to be a fundemental right.
I respect your opinion, however if you disagree :)
Let's be honest, you really only want to find information that supports your thesis that somehow the south was a complete victim in the Civil War. The fact you sign all your postings with FREE DIXIE makes that fairly clear. You keep quoting obscure books as if somehow because someone wrote something in a book it must be true. If you would use your common sense instead of simply trying to promote your agenda of a victimized south you might learn something. The South as you want it to be probably never existed and certainly does not exist today, and while you cling to this mythological south, the rest of the people in the south continue to move forward and think of themselves as Americans and not as Southerners. The idea of 5 to 7 percent of the southern army being comprised of black soldiers is so totally idiotic only someone like yourself, blinded by your own feelings of victimhood, could possibly believe. Next you are going to tell me there were Jewish regiments in the Nazi SS.
And I respect yours.
...aren't you smart enough to know that SOME of what i post is INTENTIONALLY camouflage??? i'd guess you are NOT".
This is a NEW excuse. LOL!!!!
"Colonel,don't EVER tell me again that something is in violation of a regulation. i COMMAND this organization."
Of course this exchange happened stand......."Captain" stand to a Full Bird....LOL!!
But it will go into your updated reputation "pilgrim" (apologies to John Wayne).
read my post #455 for one. There are more examples. Of course we all know that Lincoln was anti-slavery until such stance threatened his beloved union. Are you pinging NS for drinks?
Not legally no, but the whole problem with democracy is its tendency towards absolute majoritarianism. After all, since the Constitution was authorized by delegates representing a majority and thus drawing its power and authority from the people, there is no philosophical bar to dissolving it if the people so chose. There is a fatal flaw in the system which justifies itself on a philosophical principle incongruent with the power of its legal apparati. And not to put to fine a point on it, but resistance to the forced will of a majority, even an small majority, was the proclaimed reason for the Souths secession. Compulsory democracy is evil, since it is inherently inimical to liberty. Thus the only protection against majoritarianiusm and all the evils that flow from it, is the principal of free democracy; that is voluntary democracy. Voluntary, but absolute unanimity is a medieval idea attached to medieval notions of democracy, but it's also the only just form of democracy. Compulsory democracy has no more justification for being than the worst form of tyranny.
How can a government, deriving its authority from the consent of the people, philosophically justify the forced compulsion of the people against their consent? If the Constitution does not draw its authority from the people, from where does it come?
And slavery btw.
Conceded. Although I haven't yet met the descendant of a Union soldier whose ancestor was fighting against slavery. Read Mr. Lee at #455. I'm sure you will have a different context for that one. I would appreciate some similar denouncement from some of the Union generals although I understand that the best we can do is hearing from Sherman that he would lay down his sword if the fight was just to free the slaves.
Haven't found one who was fighting for tariffs, either.
Read Mr. Lee at #455. I'm sure you will have a different context for that one.
Well, I'll put it in context with other writings of Lee.
Look at the words and it is clear that any objection Lee had towards slavery was tepid at best. He is like the person today who would say that they didn't approve of abortion and personally would never have an abortion, but did not believe that it was the role of the government to say what a woman could do with their body. Such a person might consider themselves anti-abortion. Would you?
Lee might personally disavow slave ownership. He might have freed his own slaves. But to call him anti-slavery when he was opposed to any intervention in controlling or ending the institution? Hardly.
Yet this man, who wrote an anti-slavery missive in 1856, was chosen to command an army which had as its sole aim the maintenance of the institution. Am I getting this right?
I had a light gray suit before, please keep that under your hat
I will sir , my grey Kepi, with the CSA Captains braid
upon it ;^)
I think Foote put it best when he said in his book that for the most part your average Johnny-reb and Billy-yank fought for many of the same reasons. They fought for glory and adventure, but also because they were afraid not to fight. The propaganda from the North was that the Yankees were gloriously fight'n to save the Union, and the South was traitorously fight'n to dissolve it. The propaganda from the South was generally the same, but with the inference of wickedness of motive reversed.
The irony was the neither side could really explain the nature of the fight, and few have come close since; except as Foote quoted in his book a captured reb remarked to his Yankee captors "I'm fight'n because you're down here."
Personally I think animosity was the main reason, and which because of its own weaknesses as a reason must attach itself to some other cause. In addition to regaining the trade of the Mississippi valley, and Southern markets for Northern goods, I think many Yankees just felt like fight'n Southerners who they perceived as spoiled, reactionary, and worst crime of all arrogant! And, in addition to fight'n for anything else, Southerners wanted to be free of a people they viewed as provincial, greedy, and worst of all, arrogant!
Re watie see below from his own prior postings on the Ranchino issue:
Lincoln’s 'Great Crime': The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice
Posted by stand watie to capitan_refugio
On Smoky Backroom 09/20/2004 7:23:28 AM PDT · 1,565 of 3,012
"in point of fact, a doctoral dissertation done at the Univ of MN (Actually is Univ Wisconsin / Madison) by James A. Ranchino in the 1960s said that the CORRECT figure was 5-6% of southerners, which was about the same percentage as that of the northerners who owned slaves.
as i'm NOT at home & thus have no access to my library, i can't give you more documentation than that now.
i was privileged to take some grad classes under Jim Ranchino in the 1970s."
You can note watie "allegedly" took grad courses under James Ranchino but James "Jim" Ranchino 1936-1978 taught in Arkansas (Ouachita Baptist University) and lived for a time in Louisiana. Watie concurrently "went" to Tulane and Auburn for his "grad" work....neither are in Arkansas. Draw your own conclusions from the oddity of these claims.
You might want to ask him for the proof on that number now that he likely is home and can reference his library for that dissertation (not published that I can find).
Not entirely, no. He wrote one letter, not a missive, where he mildly complained about slavery. Nine years later he was writing another letter where he was stating that slavery was the best condition for blacks in the confederacy. Couldn't seem to make up his mind, I guess. And while defense of slavery was by far the single most important reason for the southern rebellion it was not the only one.
OMG! My best friend's bro was on that team! Richard Perez, linebacker. Pat Sheehan was the QB - uh, no relation to Cindy, IIRC. ;o)
Explain again to me "the forced will of majority" that drove the south to secede? It was the election of Lincoln that drove them out and he hadn't taken office or had a chance to force his will on anyone when they seceded.
Nice find! I knew that was in there somewhere.
Agreed, but Wise was one of those inclined to speak off the cuff. He invited Southern governors to meet in Raleigh to discuss what Southern States should do if Fremont was elected, and only NC and SC showed up. And they didn’t do anything in the end. There was no popular clamour for secession in 1856, I would assert, because the violence I spoke of had largely not occurred yet.
If Fremont had shown more signs of winning, secession talk would have been louder, and if he'd won, there might well have been a secession in 1856.
You didn’t have State legislatures passing resolutions about secession in 1856 like you did in 1860 (e.g. Alabama and Mississippi). It is not coincidental that the Alabama Resolutions (Feb. 24, 1860) were issued in the immediate aftermath of Harper’s Ferry, when there was talk of northerners rescuing Brown before his execution, northerners publicly praising his efforts, and public mourning of his execution. These acts by private citizens indicated how they intended to conduct themselves in the future.
In 1850-1 there was a lot of talk about secession. I would surmise that it failed because neither party was anti-slavery, Calhoun and Clay were still alive, and the country had just passed through a victorious and unifying war, rather than six or ten years of sectional conflict.
You needed a run-up to rebellion. Enough Southerners had to feel that they'd exhausted alternative approaches before they would take such a radical step.
In 1860, by contrast, Southern Democrats split their party, ensuring the election of a Republican, an event which could serve as a pretext for secession. What was going on there?
Obviously, there were elements in the South that demanded either (A) complete acquiescence in Southern demands, or (b) secession. That is the mindset of some of the delegates who went to Charleston.
As for the Compromise measures of 1850/51, those advocating their adoption (e.g. Clay and Webster) presented them as a “final adjustment” of the slavery issues. These measures were accepted by the people of the South on that basis. When the compromise measures weren’t honoured by the Northern people, the people of the South felt betrayed, and had reason to doubt the sincerity of any future compromise proposal.
Clearly John Brown was a factor, but I doubt one could say he was the main one. He was something demagogues could use to scare voters, but politicians had a pretty clear assessment of what was going on, and weren't so easily cowed themselves.
To be sure, there was fear in the South in the days leading up to war, but there was also a great enthusiasm for taking a revolutionary step. Those who believe in the Southern version of victim history leave that out of their accounts.
But that step only resonated with the people of the South after the violents events I wrote of.
Also, I doubt Republicans "winked and nodded" at Brown. That's the sort of claim that people love to make then or now about this party or that, but when you look at the record there's usually less to such allegations than people want to believe.
By winking and nodding, I meant certain concrete acts that were taken by Northern Republican office holders. For example (as I mentioned in an earlier post), Gov. Samuel Kirkwood (Republican, Iowa) and Governor William Dennison (Republican, Ohio) refused to extradite to Virginia those wanted for their connection to the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Kirkwood’s excuse was that the extradition request wasn’t notarized. (I went to Richmond and saw the original letter from Kirkwood to Letcher). Dennison informed Letcher that there was no statute in the Ohio statute book that would allow him to extradite someone wanted to trial in another State. (Letcher then found the Ohio statute for Gov. Dennison.) Additionally, Dennison wrote that the indictment did not specify that the accused had ever been in Virginia, and thus he could not have fled to State to escape prosecution. Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, refused to allow a deputy of the US Senate apprehend Frank Sanborn and take him to Washington to testify to the Mason Committee investigating the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. These incidents were noted in newspapers all across the South at the time. In addition, the incidents were specifically referenced in the secession declarations of South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia in laying out their reasons for wanting out of the Union.
Ultimately, however, the decision to secede (and thus go to war, although these two things are not the same thing) was a complex one. There were a number of reasons, some directly related to protecting the investment of Southerners in that form of “property” others not directly related, and some not related at all. And the key thing is that any particular individual could have felt any or all of these reasons. And some of those reasons are completely honorable.
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