More Sesquicentennial Slime

The Sesquicentennial of the War for Southern Independence will create a blizzard of claptrap like this, so Southerners who honor their culture, history, heritage and forebears -- brace yourselves... Oh, and if you're so moved, backsass the people attempting to palm off this claptrap. You may or may not teach them anything, but if my experience is anything to go by, it'll sure make you feel better.

Fayette: Peachtree City honors the wrong cause
By Jill Howard Church

Talking about the Civil War is a minefield of politics and emotion. As was the case with actual land mines during that war (as developed by Confederate Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains), some Southern tempers tend to detonate under the slightest pressure, even after 150 years. But it’s not easy, or even appropriate, to tread lightly.

Folks, isn't it amazing how "opinion journalists" make baldfaced statements like this "detonate" accusation  without offering a shred of explanation, let alone evidence.  Frankly, Ms. Church, you're the one who seems to be detonating, here....

Peachtree City’s proclamation of Confederate History and Heritage Month was read aloud at a City Council meeting recently. Its wording took me aback, and I grew up in the same state as Robert E. Lee. My long-lost cousin Samuel’s Confederate sword is a family heirloom. I “get” the heritage, but only to a point.
This is 2011, generations removed from that most uncivil war. And I had hoped its lessons would be better reflected in modern mention. The proclamation begins, “April is the month in which the Confederate States of America began a four-year struggle for independence, state rights, individual freedom and local government control ...” I guess that depends on which individuals and whose freedom we’re talking about. The 4 million men, women and children held in bondage in 1861 struggled much differently.

Kind of like the slaves during the American Revolution, who didn't fall under the category "all men" as in the Declaration's "all men are created equal"? Kind of like American slaves who had no rights but three-fifths of them were counted for legislative apportioning, by Constitutional authority? Are the situations similar, Ms. Church, or not? And if not, why not?

The proclamation says April 26 is when “Georgians honor the brave men and women of all ethnic backgrounds who served the Confederate States of America.” Well, not exactly. True, there were Canadians, Europeans, Native Americans and Mexicans in the Confederate ranks. There were also thousands of Jewish soldiers, but their service was conveniently forgotten once the Klan showed up (just ask Leo Frank).>

Well, since Leo Frank has been dead since 1915, we can't exactly ask him, can we?  However, perhaps you will kindly point me to any published work by Leo Frank that indicates he knew the service of Jews to the Confederacy was "conveniently forgotten" after the KKK showed. Oh, and which KKK are you talking about, by the way?  There have been several "incarnations" of the Klan. If you are facetiously referring to Frank's lynching by the "Knights of Mary Phagan," that has nothing to do with Jewish service to the Confederacy, or the commemoration of it.  Yes, Ms. Church, I'm being as deliberately obtuse as you are. Only I'm not being nearly as dishonest as you are.

From the accounts I’ve read, black Confederates served mostly as laborers, relatively few as soldiers. And many who fought did so believing (or having been promised) they’d be freed in return.

What accounts have you read? And whether they served as laborers or fighters, what's your problem with acknowledging their service?  The same thing happened during the Revolution. Can we expect to see a similarly snide editorial penned by you denigrating the United States come the Fourth of July?  What a silly question, of course we cannot. Critics of the Confederacy are virtually always blind to the sins of the Union.

“Georgia has long cherished its Confederate history and Georgia’s great leaders who made sacrifices on behalf of the Confederate cause,” the proclamation says. But that way of life was built on broken backs and lives, and it is disingenuous to either contend or pretend that the “Confederate cause” isn’t stained by atrocity. Section 9 of the Confederate Constitution specifically bans restricting “the right of property in Negro slaves.”

The Confederate Constitution also forbade the importation of slaves from any foreign country except the United States, which some say would eventually cause the demise of slavery. Why no mention of that? Only what's worthy of criticism is worthy to be mentioned? Oh, and the United States isn't stained by atrocity?  For example, the official U.S. Policy of genocide against the Plains Indians. That's not an atrocity?  The 3/5th clause in the U.S. Constitution is hunky-dory with you? The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments... CIA torture in Central America during the Cold War...  Gitmo, Abu Ghraibe...  Is slavery the only circumstance you recognize as atrocity?

Be careful how you criticize the Confederacy, Ms. Church; you're liable to find just as bad or worse done by the United States.

As I listened, I realized the only African-American person in the room was the police officer on security duty.

How ironic that the individual there to protect the lives of everyone else was the one person who, in the days of Dixie, wouldn’t have been considered a person at all. What did those words mean to her or her family?

I couldn’t bring myself to even look in her direction.

What do you mean by "in the days of Dixie"? Dixie means "the South".  The South predates the United States.  It still exists today, and will very likely exist after the United States ceases to.  That entire timeline is the "days of Dixie." Are you clumsily attempting to imply that slaves were not considered persons in the era before slavery was abolished? Where did you get that information? Certainly not from the laws of the day. 

I suggest you're going by your own personal concept/understanding, perhaps shaped by Hollywood and lurid paperback novels, or perhaps leftist race-baiters. I also suggest you look at the laws back then. Slaves were indeed considered persons. They had rights by law, very limited ones, to be sure, but non-persons do not have any rights (just ask an aborted fetus). Law mandated that slaveowners support slaves in sickness and old age. It gave slaves the right to give testimony in certain case. Slaves were also afforded more rights not by law but by custom -- for example, lighter work for women, especially during pregnancy, and the right to religious instruction. I suggest you attempt to rise above your anti-Confederate indoctrination and read real history, from source documentation dating from that era. You badly need it.

I understand that there are people for whom certain periods of history hold particular interest for one reason or another. Some Civil War aficionados re-enact the battles like a costumed chess game but not, thank God, the beatings, lynchings or other horrors of the time. I guess it’s easier to make believe than to make amends.

Civil war re-enactors re-enact the war; they don't re-enact plantation life or town merchant life or yeoman farmer life. Every time has its horrors, but the horrors of the time (and place) you're referring to are only a small portion of the total.  I understand that indoctrinees such as yourself have been taught to focus solely on the small, negative portion and pretend it is the whole -- and to try to convince others of the same distortion -- but it isn't. I guess it's easier to engage in false demonization than to see things as they really were.

But with the war 150 years past, and with African-Americans now 20 percent of Fayette County’s population, it seems more honorable to mourn the dead — from both sides — without constantly picking at our nation’s deepest wound.

Then stop picking.