Free Republic

It was 150 years ago today that Florida declared itself sovereign from the United States. Some Southern states have marked the anniversaries of secession with celebrations; in South Carolina, a secession gala was met with protests and controversy. In Florida, a reenactment was quietly held by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tallahassee on Saturday, where about 40 volunteers dressed in period attire performed a condensed version of the convention. It was at that convention where a 62-7 vote led to secession in 1861, making Florida the third state to leave and later join the Confederate States of America.

Remember how during the run up to the election, all the left pundits and talking heads and their compatriots in the Old Media said that no white person would vote for Barack Obama? Well, despite the singular fact that Barack Obama convincingly won the popular vote in a country that sees a majority of its voters are white, the Old Media is still insisting that all southerners are slavery-loving, neo-confederates that are no different than they were in 1860. For the Washington Post, Robert S. McElvaine is here to tell us in "The Red, the Blue and the Gray" that...

The thought of having to dignify the legacy of the Confederacy’s only president by driving my car over his highway rather than his decrepit corpse is enough to make me want to vomit...If there is to be a Jefferson Davis Highway it should begin at the African Civil War Memorial and end at his grave, where onlookers can pull over and spit.

Rep. Ron Paul told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" Sunday that the war was a mistake – the American Civil War. "Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war…. [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic," Paul said.

KENNESAW, Ga.--Is the history of our great nation important to you? Union Gen. William T. Sherman said of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, "After all, I think Forrest as the most remarkable man our 'Civil War' produced on either side." This came from a man who was once a foe of Forrest on the field of battle. Why do some folks attack America's heritage? Several years ago, attempts were made to change the name of Forrest Park in Memphis, Tenn. Now, there are people trying to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla. But was...

Historian James M. McPherson's magnificent collection of essays This Mighty Scourge; Perspectives on the Civil War contains an essay on General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous, or infamous, "march through Georgia " that sheds light on the success of his march in bringing victory, and peace, to the United States. ********************************************* Calling such counterterrorist strikes "war crimes," as many who are critical of both America (and Israel) do, is extremely unfair. In fighting an enemy who kills soldiers and civilians without distinction, it is not possible to fight a completely "clean" war, without losing it to the terrorist enemies. No country...

...he was stunned to see two large Confederate flags flying from trucks...emblazoned with the words "The South Shall Rise Again." I'm stunned, too, that people still think it is cool to fly this flag. Our society should bury these flags -- not flaunt them...because the Confederate flag symbolizes racial tyranny to so many... ...This flag doesn't belong on city streets, in videos or in the middle of civil discussion. It belongs in our past -- in museums and in history books -- along with the ideas it represents.

Any attempt to judge our history by today’s standards — out of the context from which it occurred — is at best problematic and at worst dishonest. For example, consider the following quotes: “So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished.” “ ... there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.” By today’s standards, the person who made the first statement, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, would be considered enlightened....

(Greenville-AP) January 14, 2007 - US Senator Christopher Dodd calls Sunday for the removal of the Confederate flag that flies at the South Carolina Statehouse. The Connecticut Democrat was attending a Martin Luther King Junior memorial event at a Greenville church Sunday night. He says black and white young people from South Carolina are fighting under one flag in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dodd says the Confederate flag belongs in a museum. Dodd will be at the King Day at the Dome rally at the Statehouse Monday. The event was started six years ago as the National Association for the Advancement...

The Selected Civil War Photographs Collection contains 1,118 photographs. Most of the images were made under the supervision of Mathew B. Brady, and include scenes of military personnel, preparations for battle, and battle after-effects. The collection also includes portraits of both Confederate and Union officers, and a selection of enlisted men. An additional two hundred autographed portraits of army and navy officers, politicians, and cultural figures can be seen in the Civil War photograph album, ca. 1861-65. (James Wadsworth Family Papers). The full album pages are displayed as well as the front and verso of each carte de visite, revealing...

The NCAA will consider expanding its ban of championship events in South Carolina, possibly disallowing baseball and football teams from hosting postseason games, because the Confederate flag is displayed on Statehouse grounds.

A Confederate heritage group says its free-speech rights were violated when a landowner removed a billboard promoting Southern history near the famed Darlington Raceway. The Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to demonstrate at the State House next month and buy radio advertisements to complain about losing its billboard on U.S. 52, about two miles from the racetrack. “This is the most chilling thing I’ve seen against freedom of speech,” spokesman Don Gordon said. The Sons of Confederate Veterans bought the billboard this spring in response to remarks by a NASCAR executive about the rebel flag. The billboard featured a Confederate...

I love history. I’m proud of my Southern heritage. But for me to be angry to the point of protesting a moment in Southern history that happened nearly a century-and-a-half ago would be just, well, nonsensical. And would in some ways tarnish that heritage.

CARY, N.C. - The joke around here is that this town's name is really an acronym for ''Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.'' As far as Vernon Yates is concerned, they haven't been contained well enough. Nearly surrounded by pricey subdivisions, the cinderblock Yates Grocery and Farm Supply sells neither anymore. As if things weren't bad enough, style maven Martha Stewart has chosen this Raleigh suburb to build a signature neighborhood of houses designed after her homes in Maine and New York. Holding court near a potbellied stove, the 69-year-old man in the suspenders and NASCAR shirt laments that his old...

The idea to honor only Confederate soldiers is a bad idea...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -— Three men face charges after being accused of damaging a car that displayed the Confederate flag in Rochester. Police said a woman approached two people in a parked car, upset over the flag. The people sitting in the car told police the woman threatened to "get her boys to take care of it.''

MARYVILLE, Tenn. A civil rights activist is carrying a Confederate battle flag from Johnson City to Maryville because he says southern pride is being silenced with a pending school decision. H.K. Edgerton -- who is black -- says no more Rebel flags will be allowed at high school football games there if the school board proposal passes. The school board is expected to vote to limit flags and noise makers later this month. Maryville schools director Mike Dalton says the board feels like the group should deal with anything that's offensive to some. But Edgerton says banning the flag is...

Richard McElrath and his sister, Natheley McElrath, at a community forum in West Charlotte, N.C. (Photo by Michael Falco) RACE AND IMMIGRATION Pressed by a New Invasion of Yankees, Schools of the New South Resegregate BY Jonathan Tilove   CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Jane Henderson's voice trembled as she implored the school board not to let Charlotte-Mecklenburg's schools resegregate any more than they already have.     Jack Heilpern, wife Mary, son James, 17, and daughter Jennifer (on stairs), 12, in the foyer of their Huntersville, N.C., home. James, a high school junior, and a fellow student started a movement...

I believe there is alot wrong with our current goverment and I just cant wait until the south rise again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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...

The defining moment of my visit to New Orleans a year ago occurred in a gift shop. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this, but at least it wasn't the kind that sells feather boas and t-shirts with jazz-playing lobsters. I wasn't a sorority girl nursing my hangover at Café Du Monde during Mardi Gras; I was a tourist visiting what used to be a sprawling, stately slave plantation. I was busy mulling over that subtly troubling experience, browsing through the gift shop's bookshelves, when I came to a curious array of volumes. The title The South Was Right! jumped out...

Vandals strike Forrest monument Apr 13, 2005, 11:02 PM Vandals spray painted a 4-letter word followed by the letters "K-K-K" on a monuimen to former Confederate Gerneral Nathan Bedford Forrest. It's the latest turn in an effort to change the names of confederate Mid-South parks. Gene Ingram says this isn't the first time the monument of Nathan Bedford Forrest has been vandalized. "The people that do these things they don't read they don't know they take the word of other people" said Ingram. Ingram is a relative of the general's wife, Mary Anne Montgomery who is buried inside the tomb...

Confederate heritage groups got excited when Gov. Bob Riley's annual proclamation designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month dropped a paragraph saying slavery was the cause of the Civil War. The groups were pleased because they consider that description of slavery historically inaccurate. Their excitement, however, was short lived. "It was a mistake," said Jeff Emerson, the governor's communications director, on Monday. He said he did not know how the mistake was made. Emerson said the governor was unaware of the deletion until The Associated Press contacted his office. The governor quickly reissued the proclamation with the paragraph on...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Black activists are upset by a purple-and-gold version of the Confederate battle flag waved by some Louisiana State University fans at sports events. The modified banner is popular with many LSU students. "It represents two different things that I'm proud of," said sophomore Harper Hollis, referring to Southern heritage and the state's largest university. Isaac Netters, a New Orleans native who is coordinator of black student affairs at LSU, said he noticed the modified flag image as early as 1996, when he was a freshman at the school. He said he isn't angered by it.

The battle over Southern heritage was waged Saturday as hundreds filled Elmwood Cemetery for a rally to resurrect the Confederate battle flag.The flag hasn't flown at the cemetery since the city of Charlotte removed it two weeks ago, but protestors waved dozens among the monuments and spoke from a podium draped in the flag.Organizers said the rally was the first step toward gaining the attention of city leaders, and political hopefuls used it as a platform to campaign for office.Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Madans and Doug Hanks, who's running for Patrick Cannon's at-large seat on the Charlotte City Council, spoke...

Insurrections have three times thrust upon Williamsburg armies of occupation. In July 1676, when the town was yet called Middle Plantation, it fell into the power of the rebel Nathaniel Bacon and his men. In June 1781, as the war for American independence neared its dénouement, England's Lord Cornwallis and his troops briefly took over the city. After Yorktown, French troops took up winter residence. Eighty years later, the morning of May 6, 1862, in the War for Southern Independence the first of the Yankees marched in. It was the end of the Battle of Williamsburg, a clash along an...

The NAACP would like the Confederate soldier memorial removed from the Courthouse on the Square lawn and placed in a museum, the organization’s Denton County president confirmed Tuesday

Slavery is a practice that represents the darkest corner of the human heart....The rebel flag is a universal symbol of that practice and that belief...To many Americans who have witnessed the virulence of that message, it can never represent heritage. It will always represent hate.

Charlotte has removed the Confederate battle flag flying in Elmwood Cemetery, City Manager Pam Syfert announced Tuesday morning.

The left continues to set new standards for puniness. This haphazard grasping of straws is indicative of a group frustrated beyond words and unable to change their situation.

As a Louisiana native who is now living north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am well aware of the concerted effort to erase Southern culture from the nation's collective consciousness. I have written numerous articles addressing this social cancer, and every time I do I inevitably hear from people who have the audacity to call me an extremist. "The Civil War is over," they say. "The South lost. Get over it!" Sure. Never mind that those of us who defend the South do so in response to the increasingly virulent attacks on our heritage. Forget that political correctness has...

The month of February has begun and so has the celebration of Black History Month in the nation, schools and communities. Throughout this time, many noteworthy leaders, citizens, scientists and soldiers who fought in wars and conflicts will be recognized. However, there is one group of African Americans who will receive no recognition again this year during this month. I am speaking of black Confederates who served and fought to defend their homeland from what they believed to be an armed invasion. Advertisement The South was home to some 4 million who lived there and had roots going back more...

At least it's a civil war. "Let me put it gently: Have you lost your mind?" reader Richard Curtis queried after Monday's column on the vandalizing of a Seattle cemetery monument to local veterans of the Civil War who later helped build this state. Veterans of the Civil War who fought on the side of the South, that is. Why, Curtis wondered, should we feel badly that a "monument to racists has been destroyed? A monument to racist scum who went off to fight for an evil system? The notion is obscene," he said. The only thing he and scores...

RALEIGH, N.C. – Bronzed Johnny Rebs, sprinting across a Capitol lawn, charging soundlessly for the ideals of the "lost cause," have long been seen as a quaint and largely harmless part of this region's heritage. Today, doubts rise alongside pride in regard to these sculpted heroes. A school board declines to name a new high school in Cherokee County after Georgia's Civil War governor. Floridians question why Confederate soldiers adorn a water tower. Even the word "South," in some quarters, has become a slur - a convenient repository of national guilt over the exploitation of Africans in the Cotton Belt...

RALEIGH, N.C. – Bronzed Johnny Rebs, sprinting across a Capitol lawn, charging soundlessly for the ideals of the "lost cause," have long been seen as a quaint and largely harmless part of this region's heritage. Today, doubts rise alongside pride in regard to these sculpted heroes. A school board declines to name a new high school in Cherokee County after Georgia's Civil War governor. Floridians question why Confederate soldiers adorn a water tower. Even the word "South," in some quarters, has become a slur - a convenient repository of national guilt over the exploitation of Africans in the Cotton Belt...

The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. By Dinesh D'Souza Most Americans -- including most historians -- regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man. For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the "Lincoln myth," which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's...

The key to understanding Lincoln's Philosophy of Statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. Most Americans — including most historians — regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man. For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the "Lincoln myth," which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical...

After reading Marcy Newman’s article "Symbols of Racism" (1/13/05) in The Arbiter, I had to wonder if Boise State is an institution of higher learning or just another of those campuses specializing in a type of politically correct indoctrination. In her article where she mentioned "what the Confederate flag really means," Newman told of a student who, according to her description, violated her space by wearing a jacket displaying the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV) battle flag. She rambled on with her interpretation of what the Georgia legislature had in mind when it adopted the ANV battle flag into its...

In his article "A Class War" Victor Davis Hanson paints the picture that General William T. Sherman and his army were fighting a war of equality. He seems to think average "agrarian" men of the northern states, were so inspired they would lay down their tools, leave their families and join the Union army to invade the Southern States on a campaign of social equality. Hanson states Sherman's objective was "freeing the unfree and humiliating the arrogant." This is a nicely packaged version of history that reads well, though historically inaccurate.The Draft - Yankees RiotSupport for invading the South was...