Don’t touch that Confederate flag (Confederate Southerners are like Serbs)

When one of the nation’s ablest governors, Georgia’s Gov. Barnes, was defeated in part because he advocated shrinking the Confederate emblem which had dominated the state flag, voters said: “Don’t touch that flag!”

That is the voters in white rural counties. Republican Sonny Perdue carried 95 of 96 counties which are at least 65 percent white, where popular T-shirts shouted, “Change the governor, keep the flag.”

Yankees, all-business Chamber of Commerce leaders, hard liberals and civil rights activists deplore, misinterpret or fail to understand what is in the minds and guts of those rural Georgians.

Europeans who have had a tragic history would understand. The Balkans come to mind specifically Serbia. Rural whites in the Deep South have cultural memories and resentments similar to what might be called, the Confederate State of Serbia.

Defeat and scorn are two of the bitter but bearable legacies of a hard history shared to some degree by Serbs and Southerners. The South is the only part of America that was once a separate nation and, until Vietnam, could say that the former Confederate states had exclusive knowledge of what it meant to suffer defeat, without dishonor. If memories of Confederate defeat in 1865 die hard, the victory of Turkish Muslims at Kosovo Field in 1389 has an even more tenacious grip on the emotions of the Serbian people.

The double-barreled emotional punch of defeat with dignity is powerfully evoked by the man chosen by Union commander Grant to receive the surrender of arms and colors on April 12, Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain.

“On they came, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags.., the proud Confederate ensign. Each captain taking pains for the good appearance of his company, worn and half-starved as they were… Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; famished but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours…

“They fix bayonets, stack arms; then hesitatingly, remove cartridge-boxes and lay them down. Lastly, reluctantly, with agony of expression they tenderly fold their flags, battle worn and torn, bloodstained, and lay them down… And only the flag of the Union greets the sky.”

Those of us who believe the Confederate cause was wrong, and who agree with Rhett Butler that it was foolhardy for an agricultural nation to attack a great industrial power, even we are moved as the general from Maine was by the nobility of Confederate troops in defeat.

Much of the Serbian aristocracy, its best and brightest, perished on Kosovo Field and the Serbian Orthodox Catholic people were occupied and dominated for four centuries by Muslim Turks.

Old injuries and humiliations lie close to the surface in Serbia and the South. The historic pain of the Serbs was whipped into a frenzy of hatred against the Albanians of Kosovo by the demagogic appeal of Slobodon Milosevic. Sonny Perdue had George Wallace’s sense of how to unleash old resentments in the South.

Once anger is aroused, however, the demagogue’s dilemma must be faced: What do you do with a population of people seething with white-hot anger? It takes statesmanship greater than Milosevic’s or Perdue’s to channel negative currents in useful directions.

Milosevic reaped the whirlwind of war, and another defeat. Governor-elect Perdue seems to be torn between an embarrassing, divisive referendum or breaking his word and being a one-term governor.

Cultural symbols such as Dixie and We Shall Overcome are revered as anthems of a civil religion and they are mutually exclusive. They shouldn’t be, but they are.

Personally, my blood rises when I hear the merry tune, Dixie, because it evokes powerful memories of people, place and history. So, too, I am moved by the nobility of We Shall Overcome, which says for all humanity, we are not afraid, we will overcome.

Despite the human wish to impose their beliefs on others, we do honor freedom of religion. Where are the leaders – black and white – to teach us how to honor freedom of culture?

And some say that is was foolhardy for a small second world power like Serbia to resist the combined might of NATO but they did it for 79 days with elan and flair and courage until the "Union" went "General Sherman" on their cities. Even in that defeat Milosevic forced the mightiest alliance on the planet to negotiate and drop its all or nothing ultimatum and sign a peace with dignity.

That is how I see it, I recon.

Cultural symbols such as Dixie and We Shall Overcome are revered as anthems of a civil religion and they are mutually exclusive. They shouldn’t be, but they are.

When I was a little kid, first learning how to play piano, I played and sung both these songs, not to mention, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again," "Swannee River," and "Go Down, Moses." I didn't know them as North vs. South, Union vs. Confederate, Black vs. White. I knew them as American heritage.

Sometimes I wish I had that six-year-old, piano-playing innocence back. More often, I wish the nation had a better sense of it.

Complaining about alleged persecution after the Civil War, ex-rebels were forgetting that every one of them was just as guilty as John Brown, whom the state of Virginia had hanged for treason.

Every Confederate was a Demmocrat, every single one.

See www.republicanbasics.com for information about "Back to Basics for the Republican Party".

Nice self-advertisement.

If you think the Democrats of 1860 were the same beast as the Democrats of 2002, then you probably labor under the delusion that the Republicans of 1856 were the same as Republicans of 2002.

If Republican "basics" are the Lincolnian system of socialist tariffs and the inexorable federalization of all local government then you'll get few takers here.

The heart and soul of the Republican party today is the conservative Christian white Southerner - and Lincolnolatry, let alone Fremontism, will get you nowhere.

No, there were some Confederates from the ranks of the former Whigs, including former President John Tyler, a member of the Confederate Congress. A Confederate general, James Longstreet, became a leading Republican during Reconstruction. He was hated by his fellow southerners for joining what was yet to be called the "GOP." But Longstreet wanted a two-party system in the South, as it had during the 1830s-1850s. It is also likely that quite a few Confederate soldiers were apolitical -- not Democrats or anything else.

Yes, many Confederates were former Whigs, but they were all Democrats by the start of the war and all voted Democrat where allowed to in the state election authorized by the Lincoln administration. And yes, some Confederates became Republicans, but that was after the war.

Today's neo-Confederates glorify the killers of 400,000 U.S. troops in the 1860s, so as US-born enemies of our country grow in number and ferocity, this neo-Confederate position will become absurdly untenable.

Neo-Confederates also forget that the Confederacy was far more centralized than was the North at the time, states rights pronouncements notwithstanding. Jefferson Davis never even appointed a federal judiciary, in violation of the Confederate constitution, because he would tolerate no interference with his ruling the southern economy by decree. In their declarations of secession, every word of every one of the 11 state declarations was a defense of slavery and how they had to fight to keep blacks down -- not one word about the tariff or anything else. Neo-Confederates also forget that 200,000 southern blacks (don't they count?) and 100,000 southern whites fought in the United States Army during the Civil War. For example, during his march to the sea (where most damage was caused by maurauding Confederate deserters), General Sherman's personal escort was the 1st U. S. Alabama Cavalry, comprised of "Billy Yanks from the hills" of Appalachia, or "hillbillies".
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Well, I wouldn't say I'm a neo-Confederate, but the Confederacy did have Judah Benjamin as Secretary of State, while the Union had General Order #11 that ordered Jews expelled from certain territories.

The north was also the side that attempted to have Judah Benjamin set-up as in on the assassination of Lincoln, so that they could have a Jewish "Judas" to a Christ-like Lincoln -- which is the reason that Benjamin was the only major Confederate figure not to return to or live in the reconstructed U.S.

Were the North a bunch of anti-Semites compared to a philo-Semitic south? Though I would say that was the tendency, it's not cut-and-dried. In the same way, it's simplistic to view the South as simply a bunch of traitors.

But if they do want to view it that simplistically, than so can I.

For example, during his march to the sea (where most damage was caused by maurauding Confederate deserters), General Sherman's...

That statement is one of the most extreme, shameful excercises in revisionist BS I have ever seen. What do you do for an encore, claim the jews made up the holocaust?

General Order 11 was Grant's idea, which he decreed while isolated during his Vickburg campaign and it never became widespread policy. The Republican Governor of Wisconsin during the Civil War, and a close ally of Lincoln, Edward Salomon, was Jewish.

By the way, the poster who critized me for "Lincolnolatry" has the screen name "wideawake" -- what pro-Lincoln campaign marchers called themselves.

The Confederacy lacked the taxing authority of the Union: so how was it more centralized than the North? Centralization was needed in wartime for efficiency, but the states-rights attitudes of the eleven Confederate states fostered disunity. Governor Joseph E. Brown of GA, I believe, even refused certain troop requests of President Davis. Davis' principal weaknesses were the (1) lack of industry in the South, (2) his own management style which led him to act on the basis of personal wishes and slights, rather than the overall strategy of the Confederacy. For instance, he removed General Joseph E. Johnston at a critical point in 1864, replaced him with the less capable John B. Hood, then had to recall Johnston, who surrendered to Sherman at Durham in April 1865. I don't recall tariff issues during the war, but high tariffs were a cause of secession. Lincoln once said he could not allow the South to secede, for southerners paid nearly two-thirds of tariff receipts. The North in fact raised tariffs in 1861.

Yes, it's true, as can be seen, not from history books by pro-Confederate Democrat professors, but by reading, for example, the actual letters to and from the Confederate Governors of Georgia and South Carolina at the time, which were full of denunciations of the maurauding rebel deserters and appeals for CSA General Joe Wheeler and others to stop it. See "The Rewards of Patriotism" by Lucy S. Stewart (1930).

How true. Have you ever seen the Confederate monument at Arlington? It was created by a Jewish Confederate veteran named Moses Ezekiel. He was a Sergeant from Virginia. It is crowned by a statue representing the South, and has numerous relief panels around the base and midsecion. He and 500 other Confederates are buried nearby. It was erected in 1912 and was the first monument on American soil to honor the African-American Soldier. Confederate, of course. Also, the ONLY hebrew military cemetery outside of Israel is in Virginia, and is Confederate.

Yes, deserters from both sides were quite a problem, especially in the last days of the war. But to blame the admitted destruction performed by Sherman's army on them is an excercise in ignorance that is remarkable, to say the least. What grade are you in? Third? Fourth? Don't worry, when you get older you will learn how foolish your statement was. I don't think Sherman would appreciate you giving others credit for his 'hard work' and 'glory'.

General Order 11 was Grant's idea, which he decreed while isolated during his Vickburg campaign and it never became widespread policy.

Well, if it was an order, then those who didn't implement it were traitors, right? I guess you think those "jew-lovers" should be hanged with the democrats right? You are consistent in your logic aren't you?

A distinction should be made between Sherman's destruction of the southern railroad system and other war-related facilities and the perfectly justifiable foraging for supplies (Lee did it in Maryland and Pennsylvania), and the wanton looting and vandalism of private property -- the bulk of which was caried out by the rebel deserters. There are many instances recorded of Georgia civilians appealing to the U.S. Army for protection against the rebel deserters. No need to get nasty.

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