Posted on 06/01/2002 9:37:15 AM PDT by Mom_Grandmother
Southern Heritage News & Views
6/01/02
An Englishman's Take on the Confederate Flag
Dear Friends of the South,
As an Englishman, living in England, may I throw my hat into the ring also, in relation to the letter by the lady Prudence.
1) As you are all aware, the UK consists of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. (A mini US if you will, with England as the major partner) Should one of these countries wish total independence, I for one would not take up arms to retain it.
2) Had I been alive and in the American Colonies in 1776, I too would have fought for my right to independence and the creation of the United States.
3) Had I been alive and living in the south in 1861, I too would have fought for my right to independence and the creation of the Confederate States.
4)I would have owned NO slaves, just as 80% of those who fought for the Confederacy OWNED NO SLAVES !
5)Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves IN THE CONFEDERACY (the country he had no control over) All slaves in the north remained in bondage.
6) There were more slaves in Washington DC in 1861 than there were in Charleston SC.
7) When the proclamation was issued, the 6th Ohio put their guns down and went home.
8)My personal hero, Lt.Gen. A.P.Hill, felt slavery was evil and owned none.
9) In England, a bunch of low-life racist's use the Cross of St George as their flag, yet it can be seen flying everywhere because of the Queen's Jubilee.
10)The reference to the War for Southern Independence being a "White man's fight" was changed in the late 19th century from the original "Free man's fight", and all reference to the 60,000 brave gentlemen of colour who fought for the Confederacy (of their own free will) was all but wiped out, except for reference in English and French history books !!!!!!
11)Slave traders bought their slaves fron Africa, sold to them by Arabs on occasion, but mostly by other Black African's !!!!!
12)I am ashamed to say that Jews, who should have known better, also owned slaves and I AM A JEW!!! but I still do living history, dress as a Confederate soldier and tell the truth about what happened, warts and all and I proudly fly my Battle Flag !!!
Every nation must learn from its history and not be afraid to admit where it went wrong.
For The Confederacy to fight to retain its independence was RIGHT.
For The Confederacy to have slaves was WRONG.
But that is HISTORY.
Here in the UK, school children can read that we invented Concentration Camps during the Boer War, 50 years before Hitler. WE DON'T TRY TO COVER IT UP OR CHANGE IT BECAUSE IT MAY BE OFFENSIVE. We've made mistakes AND WE LIVE WITH THEM.
The War for Southern Independence was what it was, warts and all. Admit to the bad parts, but BE PROUD OF THE GOOD PARTS!!!!
Most of all, KEEP FLYING THE BATTLE FLAG AND BE PROUD OF IT !!!!
Norman Strongman
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DATE: May 29, 2002
SUBJECT: Reb Wows Crowds in Greenville
Reb Sutherland, candidate for SC Governor, spoke before the Americans for Constitutional Government at 11:00 a.m. in Greenville, SC on May 28, 2002. Reb told them, "It is up to you and me to uphold the South Carolina Constitution and the United States Constitution. Our judges will no longer do it."
Reb also spoke in the gubernatorial forum which was hosted by WORD Radio at the Bob Jones University in Strantton Hall. The doors opened at 6:30 p.m. and the room filled almost immediately which held approximately several hundred seats. This event was the talk-of-the-town all day. Several television anchor men and women completed a panel that asked questions of the candidates. Ralph Bristol moderated the event.
Reb enjoyed a lively exchange with a wonderful audience. Topics included plutonium, lottery money, education, tax cuts, economic plans, etc. However, the clincher for the evening was the question about the NAACP boycott which continues to demand removal of the Confederate Flag from state properties.
Reb told her opponents that they can't say the issue is over. "It came up tonight. I was facing down the NAACP in Little River while you were out making speeches," said Reb. "The NAACP started the boycott in 1999, and the original statement is on its website. I have two things to say about this issue. First, I have written a book entitled, AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN ALLIANCE OF 1858.
My book has a quote from Karl Marx who was a peer of that era. He made it very clear that the War Between The States was not fought over slavery at all; instead, it was fought over tariffs . . . that's taxes. If the Communists can understand this, then I figure South Carolina can, too. Second, as soon as I become Governor, I will give the NAACP twenty-four hours to lift that boycott. It they don't, then I will put on my jeans, and shimmy up that pole to put the symbol of state sovereignty back on the dome."
The crowd went wild.
You go sister! I was going to vote for Charlie Condon for governor, but now I'm not so sure.
I'll bet they don't fly the nazi flag over Parliament, either, though.
You don't have to take the Civil War out of the history books (indeed, those "Hollywood types" have made millions form Civil War History, as has PBS). Just take the flag of seditious rebels of the state house grounds.
But I guess that's too much to ask.
For more on what the NAACP is all about, as well as some specifics on this very issue, see Civil War, Reconstruction & Creating Hate In America Today.
For those unwilling to go to the article, it discusses both the NAACP creation by White Fabian Socialists and how the organization has fulfilled its original purpose by creating hatred between the races ever since. Anyone who would appease the NAACP is either a fool, too lazy to really study the issue, or an enemy of fundamental American principles.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
You are one of the many that will never understand, that flag was a "Battle Flag", it was flown during the course of war, the North won the war, but they do not have the right to take the flag away from the decendents of the people that fought that war, it's personal! It represents Southern Heritage, their families, their heritage, not yours. It will never be erased by a handful of "offended" blacks and snot-nosed liberals, to do that would be to deny all Southerners their right to their Heritage.
We Southerners are mighty "Offended" by many things around us in this world, but we don't go out of our way to stomp on the Civil Rights of others to eliminate them either. The NAACP and anyone else that is offended by this flag had just best get over it, that Battle Flag is going no where, and they should have left well enough alone.
Fine. Hang it in your living room, and eat dinner in front of it.
But don't try to co-opt me into your heritage of losers.
My point exactly, if such a big deal had not been made over our flag, you would not see so many people flying it today. No one paid much notice of the Battle Flag atop the Dome till the NAACP came along and started to "strong arm" the people, and now you will see this Flag "everywhere".
If Reb Sutherland does climb the pole to raise the Confederate Battle Flag, I will be there, front row center to give her any help she needs just for the devil of it. As I said, they should have left well enough alone.
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Where No Flag Flies
Donald Davidson and the Southern Resistance Mark Royden Winchell
Donald Davidson (1893!1968) may well be the most unjustifiably neglected figure in twentieth-century southern literature. One of the most important poets of the Fugitive movement, he also produced a substantial body of literary criticism, the libretto for an American folk opera, a widely used composition textbook, and the recently discovered novel The Big Ballad Jamboree. As a social and political activist, Davidson had significant impact on conservative thought in this century, imfluencing important scholars from Cleanth Brooks to M. E. Bradford.
Despite these accomplishments, Donald Davidson has received little critical attention from either the literary or the southern scholarly community. Where No Flag Flies is Mark Royden Winchell's redress of this critical disservice. A comprehensive intellectual biography of Davidson, this seminal work offers a complete narrative of Davidson's life with all of its triumphs and losses, frustrations and fulfillments.
Winchell provides the reader with more than a simple study of a man and his achievements; he paints a complete portrait of the times in which Davidson published, from the 1930s to the early 1960s. Davidson was more directly involved in political and social activities than most writers of his generation, and Winchell provides the context, both literary and historical, in which Davidson's opinions and works developed. At the same time, Winchell offers detailed evaluations of Davidson's poetry, fiction, historical writings, and essays.
Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, including Davidson's letters and diary, Where No Flag Flies provides unique access to one of the most original minds of the twentieth-century South. Donald Davidson may not have achieved the recognition he deserved, but this remarkable biography finally makes it possible for a considerable literary audience to discover his true achievement.
About the Author
Mark Royden Winchell is Professor of English at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. He is the author of numerous books, including Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern Criticism.
I would love to know why he chose Hill as his own personal hero? There were much more distinguished generals on the southern side.
Our nation was founded by seditious rebels.
Do you have a problem with the stars and stripes too?
There were 37,290 slaves in Charleston County in 1860. There were 3,185 slaves in the District of Columbia that same year. I think he needs to check his facts again.
Just over two weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862 the 6th Ohio was part of General Buell's army that beat Bragg at Perryville. When the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863 the 6th Ohio was in the middle of the Battle of Stones River. Any trip home must have been very short </sarcasm>
Charleston, the town, is cited, not the county.
The facts remain that the North was just as guilty, if not more so, as the South on the slavery issue. And they weren't treated near as well in the North (by the majority) than what they were in the South (by the majority).
There is no evidence that anything more than a handful of free blacks fought for the south during the Civil War. According to the census of 1860 there were fewer than 20,000 free blacks men of military age in the entire south. Where do you sothroner's keep coming up with these people?
What I was stating is that the North had its slaves as well, and for the most part they were put to work in poorly lit factories, set among dangerous machinery, and who knows what else.
Farmwork and housework in the old South was much safer. And the majority of the land owners in the South made sure that their slaves were educated, well fed, and had shelter provided. It's only the horror stories that ever get repeated.
The facts also show that within twenty years after the War of Northern Aggression, new farming techniques and technology would have terminated slavery anyway. How do I know this? I have a lot of friends who do Civil War re-enacting, and they are required to learn what's not taught in the textbooks.
In 1860 Charleston County had a free white population of 29,136, a free black population of 3,622 and a slave population of 37,290 for a total of 70,048. The city of Charleston's population was estimated at 40,500, slave and free combined. If every single free white person in the county lived in the city of Charleston, and every single free black person in the county lived in Charleston, that would leave 7,722 slaves in the city of Charleston, or twice the number of slaves as were in the District of Columbia. Mr. Strongman's claim is patently false. Why is that so hard for you to accept?
That however does not detract from the Northern states owning slaves does it. Again, you don't even challenge me on the conditions the Northern slaves faced.
As for your claim that slaves were owned up north, that is not in dispute. The four slave states which remained loyal to the Union contained about 10% to 12% of the total slave population. What does that have to do with Mr. Strongman's post?
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http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/3843/blackconfed.htm
Black Confederates Fact Page
by Scott K. Williams
Black Confederates Why haven’t we heard more about them?
It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks.
Dr. Leonard Haynes, a African-American professor at Southern University, stated, “When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you’ve eliminated the history of the South.”
A quota was set for 300,000 black soldiers for the Confederate States Colored Troops. 83% of Richmond's male slave population volunteered for duty.
Union General U.S. Grant in Feb 1865, ordered the capture of “all the Negro men… before the enemy can put them in their ranks.” Frederick Douglas warned Lincoln that unless slaves were guaranteed freedom (those in Union controlled areas were still slaves) and land bounties, “they would take up arms for the rebels”.
On April 4, 1865 (Amelia County, VA), a Confederate supply train was exclusively manned and guarded by black Infantry. When attacked by Federal Cavalry, they stood their ground and fought off the charge, but on the second charge they were overwhelmed. These soldiers are believed to be from "Major Turner's" Confederate command.
A Black Confederate, George _____, when captured by Federals was bribed to desert to the other side. He defiantly spoke, "Sir, you want me to desert, and I ain't no deserter. Down South, deserters disgrace their families and I am never going to do that."
Nearly 180,000 Black Southerners, from Virginia alone, provided logistical support for the Confederate military. Many were highly skilled workers. These included a wide range of jobs: nurses, military engineers, teamsters, ordnance department workers, brakemen, firemen, harness makers, blacksmiths, wagonmakers, boatmen, mechanics, wheelwrights, ect.
Terri Williams, a black journalist for the Suffolk “Virginia Pilot” newspaper, writes: “I’ve had to re-examine my feelings toward the [Confederate] flag…It started when I read a newspaper article about an elderly black man whose ancestor worked with the Confederate forces. The man spoke with pride about his family member’s contribution to the cause, was photographed with the [Confederate] flag draped over his lap…that’s why I now have no definite stand on just what the flag symbolizes, because it no longer is their history, or my history, but our history.”
Some people just seem to be stuck in one frame of mind about slavery, "all Southerners were pro-slavery", go figure.
So, does this mean I can put our Black grandson to choppin cotton after he does his homework, we are "pro-confederacy" you know? Geeeezzzzz.
You mean this flag? These rebels? They've added more stars to it, but there are still as many slaves held under it today as there were then.
When a pal asked me to run his blacksmith's forge at a Revolutionary War-era roundezvous and military reenactment a few years back, I tried to set it up as well as I could, and my teen-aged next-door neighbor begged to be included as a slave working for his local 'smith, even offering to be chained to the forge as an uppity runaway.
I checked. At the antebellum smithy I was using as my prototype, all the black smiths were freed slaves who had been released by writs of manumission as much as a decade before the War of Northern Dominance and had became apprenticed to the trade. He might have been a bit young to have been my partner, but the working story we had was that he was orphaned and that I took him into my home and shop after his father had died in an unspecified accident or of illness. I suspect that in reality, there were more such arrangements around rural forges, stables, farms and sawmills than any records still available today would ever show.
The youngun' I had working alongside me was a joy to teach what little I know of the trade and he had a ball, and my pal with the forge now has a new partner to work with when his real world job in the electronics industry lets him attend such events, and when he can't, that youngster handles it on his own.
He really ought to get himself a slave for such instances. Or at least a wife who can cook johnnycakes on the forge.
-archy-/-
Prison industry and the commercial *corrections* industry remain profitable, so much so that more than a million Americans have been placed into such conditions as you describe that there are now more than a million such held in custody, about 1/250th of the US population. In the last census, prisoners under confinement were included as *local residents* for taxing and apportionment purposes; there's good money in the modern-day government slave monopoly.
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| Prisoners Under State Jurisdiction, 1997 (Number) | 155790 | 2 | 1127986 |
| Prisoners Under State Jurisdiction, 1998 (Number) | 161904 | 2 | 1178978 * |
| Prisoners Under State Jurisdiction, 1999 (Number) | 163067 | 3 | 1366721 * |
Odd, then, that the Confederate general usually thought to have been the finest Infantry division commander on either side would go to the trouble of petitioning his superiors and the Confederate Congress for freed slaves as volunteer troops. Yet he did just that as early as January of 1864, with the clear belief that such a call might bring enough such volunteers as to change the course of the war.
As for where such men can be found, Patrick Ronaynes Cleburne was born at Annbrook House, Glenmore, Great Island in County Cork in Ireland and came to America and the South to the town of Helena, Arkansas, where he practiced law in that county seat. That is where we came up with that one.
In a letter to his family in 1861 he wrote that "I am with the South in death, in victory or defeat. [Like most Southrons, he said] I never owned a Negro and care nothing for them, but these people have been my friends and have stood up to me on all occasions. In addition to this, I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the constitution and the fundamental principles of the government. They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed."In January 1864 Cleburne took the then radical step of advocating emancipating slaves who agreed to fight for the Confederacy. In a letter first presented to his subordinates that he sent to the general commanding the Army of Tennessee he wrote:
"Moved by the exigency in which our country is now placed, we take the liberty of laying before you, unofficially, our views on the present state of affairs....We have now been fighting for nearly three years, have spilled much of our best blood, and lost, consumed, or thrown to the flames an amount of property equal in value to the specie currency of the world. Through some lack in our system the fruits of our struggles and sacrifices have invariably slipped away from us and left us nothing but long lists of dead and mangled. Instead of standing defiantly on the borders of our territory or harassing those of the enemy, we are hemmed in today into less than two-thirds of it, and still the enemy menacingly confronts us at every point with superior forces. Our soldiers can see no end to this state of affairs except in our own exhaustion; hence, instead of rising to the occasion, they are sinking into a fatal apathy, growing weary of hardships and slaughters which promise no results.... Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say that it means the loss of all we not hold most sacred - slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, priode, manhood. It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision.... ...The President of the United States announces that 'he has already in training an army of 100,000 negroes as good as any troops,' and every fresh raid he makes and new slice of territory he wrests from us will add to this force. Every soldier in our army already knows and feels our numerical inferiority to the enemy....Our single source of supply is that portion of our white men fit for duty and not now in the ranks. The enemy has three sources of supply: First, his own motley population; secondly, our slaves; and thirdly, Europeans whose hearts are fired into a crusade against us by fictitious pictures of the atrocities of slavery, and who meet no hinderance from their Governments in such enterprise, because these Governments are equally antagonistic to the institution. In touching the third cause, the fact that slavery has become a military weakness, we may rouse prejudice and passion, but the time has come when it would be madness not to look at our danger from every point of view, and to probe it to the bottom. Apart from the assistance that home and foreign prejudice against slavery has given the North, slavery is a source of great strength to the enemy in a purely military point of view, by supplying him with an army from our granaries; but it is our most vulnerable point, a continued embarrassment, and in some respects an insidious weakness....Like past years, 1864 will diminish our ranks by the casualties of war, and what source of repair is there left us?.... Our country has already some friends in England and France, and there are strong motives to induce these nations to recognize and assist us, but they cannot assist us without helping slavery, and to do this would be in conflict with their policy for the last quarter of a century, England has paid hundreds of millions to emancipate her West India slaves and break up the slave-trade. Could she now consistently spend her treasure to reinstate slavery in this country? But this barrier once removed, the sympathy and the interests of these and other nations will accord with our own, and we may expect from them both moral support and mateiral aid....This measure will deprive the North of the moral and material aid which it now derives from the bitter prejudices with which foreigners view the institution, and its war, if continued, will henceforth be so despicable in their eyes that the sources of recruiting will be dried up. It will leave the enemy's negro army no motive to fight for, and will exhaust the source from which it has been recruited. The idea that it is their special mission to war against slavery has held growing sway over the Northern people for many years, and has at length ripened into an armed and bloody crusade against it....Knock this away and what is left" A bloody ambition for more territory, a pretended veneration for the Union, which one of their own most distinguished orators (Doctor Beecher in his Liverpool speech) openly avowed was only used as a stimulus to stir up the anti-slavery crusade, and lastly the poisonous and selfish interests which are the fungus growth of the war itself. Mankind may fancy it a great duty to destroy slavery, but what interest can mankind have in upholding this remainder of the Northern war platform? The Constitution of the Southern States has reserved to their respective governments the power to free slaves for meritorious services to the State. It is politic besides. For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field....The slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army they would be a thousand fold more dangerous; therefore when we make soldiers of them we must make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies also.... It is said that Republicanism cannot exist without the institution. Even were this true, we prefer any form of government of which the Southern people may have the molding, to one forced upon us by a conqueror....It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties."
The idea of the Confederacy considering enlisting blacks isn't quite so far fetched as it seems today. Early in the War, for example, it was reported in the Southern press that some mixed race, free men had offered to organize regiments composed of their peers. Uniformed, black musicians served from the start of the War. In addition, there have recently appeared in various publications reports of various individual slaves serving as personal servants, laborers, or cooks who picked up guns and fought and black or mixed-race individuals who enlisted in the Confederate army. Ultimately, a number of Confederate soldiers, including General Robert E. Lee, advocate the enlistment of blacks. On 15 March, 1864, for example, several commissioned offcers in Thomas' Brigade (14th Georgia) asked General Thomas to forward a request that almost all the enlisted men had agreed to which proposed "...that negroes in the counties of Georgia which our companies hail from be conscribed [sic] in such numbers and under such regulations as the War Department may deem proper.... ...When in former years," they explained, "for pecuniary purposes, we did not consider it disgraceful to labor with negroes in the field or at the same work bench, we certainly will not look upon it in any other light at this time, when an end so glorious as our independence is to be achieved. We sincerely believe that the adoption throughout our army of the course indicated in the above plan, or something similar to it, will insure a speedy availability of the negro element in our midst for military purposes and crate, or rather cement, a reciprocal attachment between the men now in service and the negroes highly beneficial to the service..." On 18 March, 1865, General Thomas approved and forwarded this proposal. According to Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. in his book, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, after the Confederate Congress approved of the enlistment of blacks--something General Robert E. Lee had been advocating for a good while--a few black units participated in minor engagements. A complete copy of General Cleburne's proposal to enlist blacks can be found in The Gray and the Black, The Confederate Debate on Emancipation by Robert F. Durden.
"If this cause that is so dear to my heart is doomed to fail, then I pray heaven may let me fall with it, while my face is turned toward the enemy and my right arm battling for that which I know to be right."
-- Patrick R. Cleburne in a address to his troops on 2 October, 1864.
"If the stars and stripes become the standard of a tyrannical majority, the ensign of a violated league, it will no longer command our love or respect but will command our best efforts to drive it from the State."
-- General Patrick Cleburne
General William J. Hardee: "When his Division defended, no odds could break its lines; When it attacked, no numbers resisted it's onslaught, save only once; and there is the grave of Cleburne and his heroic division."
It was very apparent to the South that the Northern states began taking on powers beyond the Constitution. Even during the war, Saint Abraham made Nevada a full-fledge state without following the rules to do so, just to mine its silver.
The war was not fought over slavery as the liberal historians claim, and the NAACP whines about. There was nothing in the Constitution that said a state could not withdraw from the Union if other states started abusing the government. Based upon this, the South was justified in its stand.
The South was not a traitor to the Union, it was the North that had become traiterous in taking on powers not granted to them.
You are correct in one regard...the South's economy was nowhere near that of the North's. Yet, they were two different industries. The North had factories, and the South had farming. You can't rightly compare the two. The North was passing legislation that would help their economy, but hurt the South's. This was the other reason for war, again not slavery.
I am not an advocate of slavery, nor am I bigoted or racist. Yet the South was the more virtuous side, because they were not looking to defend slavery, but defend their rights as American citizens.
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