The slave owners (sic) rebellion is at last understood for what it was.It wasn't a slave owners' rebellion. Only about 12% of Southerners owned slaves, but huge numbers of non-slave owners fought -- didn't rebel, but fought -- to protect families, homes and communities from a barbaric army of invasion.
The largest act of treason and sedition in American history.Nope. No treason. Only those who owe allegiance to the US can commit treason; Southerners no longer owed allegiance to the US after their states seceded.
There is nothing glorious or of value in extolling the virtues of the slave owning South.There is great glory and value in extolling the virtues of the Southern men who fought to defend families, homes and communities from a brutal military invasion, and who fought for their country's political independence.
Take these monuments and break them up.No. The answer is no.
In so doing we can take one step away from the idea of state rights and the embedded racism behind America’s shame.Shame? Then remove every monument to the US government and its military because whatever sins one believes are attached to the Confederacy, the same and worse are attached to the United States.
The USA was born in treason and rebellion. Confederacy -- slavery for 4 years. Under the US flag -- slavery for 89 years... this in a country founded on "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with ... liberty." Northern states abolished slavery within their borders, (but sold rather than freed their slaves, mostly to reduce their states' black populations) but they were still armpit deep in slavery. Northern textile interests got rich processing Southern, slave-grown cotton in their mills. New England maritime interests got rich shipping Southern, slave-grown cotton to Europe. Northern banks got rich financing the purchase of plantations and slaves, and northern insurance companies got rich insuring slaves. If the north had really wanted to end slavery, they didn't have to send an army to kill Southerners. All they had to do was quit buying the cotton. They didn't.
Remove all items that honor the US government because of its official policy of killing off the buffalo to genocide red people -- the Plains Indians -- by starvation and take their land for white settlers; and for confining more red people to concentration camps artfully known as "reservations" in conditions worse than plantation slavery; the same government that imprisoned Japanese Americans -- yellow people -- in concentration camps during WWII. Grind to dust every monument to the US military, which dropped the atom bomb on more yellow people ... and the government and military which fought and killed, and still fights and kills, brown people in the Middle East.
America's shame continues, but not everything called "racism" is racism; and not everything bad that happened is because of "embedded racism." And you'd better not be so anxious to vaporize states rights because that's one of the few things that will keep the federal government -- already colossal and incomprehensibly dangerous -- from becoming a terrifying totalitarian force nobody is safe from.
I repeat; whatever sins one believes are attached to the Confederacy, the same and worse are attached to the United States. That is truth. Deal with it.
What about the guerilla war the North waged against the South from 1856 on? Is wasn't just Missouri and Kansas. Agents of the New England Immigrant Aid Company were dividing up land in Texas that was already owned, by Texans. Other agents were committing murder and arson in and around Denton, Dallas and Fort Worth. This is mentioned in the Texas Ordinance of Secession.
ReplyDelete"They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offences, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.
If this person would like to take me on and defend their statements, I am more than capable of doing holding my own. I make an open challenge they to come here and face me.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Purvis
Not many of Simpson's sick-o-fants leave the safety of his comment threads and venture out to communicate with us directly....
ReplyDeleteNo they don't. I'd have more respect for them if they at least attempted to debate their points. I believe they resent the fact anyone disagrees with them at all. They are so used to looking down on people they cannot grasp the idea that they might still have things to learn. Worse, the idea that any of us have anything valid to offer simply doesn't compute with their high-handed attitudes.
DeleteThis is why they continue to underestimate us.
Well, I will give Corey credit. He does at least show up once in awhile. Of course never has much to offer that's relevant, but I will give props to the fact he will - on occasion - step out of his comfort zone. More than can be said of Hall, Simpson, Levin...and all the other anonymous (or otherwise not important enough to remember) little third-stringers.
Ms. Chastain;
DeleteI strongly object to your use of the word "barbaric" when you describe the Union army.
Was it barbaric to feed the Army of Northern Virginia, after its' surrender?
Were the terms of surrender barbaric?
How many Confederates were executed after the war?
Was it barbaric to be the instrument which ended slavery and its' auctions?
If Attila was the victor over Lee the cemetery at Appomattox would have 25,000 graves.
The Union army acted with restraint after the surrenders of the Confederates, much like Lincoln wanted.
All in all Ms. Chastain I believe it is time you asked yourself this question,what did your beloved Confederacy actually accomplish?
Bob Carey
Mr. Carey, Confederates were not executed after the war because they had not done anything to be executed for, and the authorities in the U.S. military and government knew it. They tried for two years to make a case against Jefferson Davis, and couldn't, and if HE wasn't guilty of an executable office, no Confederate was.
DeleteThey way slavery was ended was indeed barbaric... four million slaves "freed" into a land devastated by war, its economy in shambles, with no preparation for how to make a living and support themselves... It wasn't necessary to send an army South to kill Southerners in order to free slaves; all the north had to do was quit buying the cotton. They didn't.
Barbaric:
HDQRS. MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
In the Field, Rome, Ga., October 29, 1864/
Brigadier-General Watkins, Calhoun, GA.:
Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?
W.T. SHERMAN
Major-General, Commanding.
============
A death penalty for being a "known secessionist"? Known by WHOM? Why, he doesn't specify! What a surprise, huh? Evidence unnecessary that they were the ones who FIRED on the trains .. just burn their houses and kill 'em for being "known" secessionists ... at random.
========
Calhoun, October 30, 1864.
Major-General Sherman:
My men killed some of those fellows two or three days since, and I had their houses burned. Watkins is not here, but I will carry out your instructions thoroughly and leave the country east of the road uninhabitable, if necessary.
E.M. McCook,
Brigadier-General.
(Continued)
BARBARIC:
DeleteA very incomplete list of Southern towns and communities burned (or otherwise destroyed) by the damnyankee army, often having no military significance:
Osceola, Missouri, burned to the ground, September 24, 1861
Dayton, Missouri, burned, January 1 to 3, 1862
Columbus, Missouri, burned, reported on January 13, 1862
Bentonville, Arkansas, partly burned, February 23, 1862
Winton, North Carolina, burned, reported on February 21, 1862
Bluffton, South Carolina, burned, reported June 6, 1863
Bledsoe's Landing, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862
Hamblin's, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862
Donaldsonville, Louisiana, partly burned, August 10, 1862
And then there was the sack and pillage of Athens, Alabama, on June 30, 1862, by Colonel Turchin's men, who committed rapes and other atrocities on the inhabitants. Turchin was subsequently court-martialed and put out of the military. What happened next? Turchin was rewarded by lincoln, was promoted to Brigadier General and put back in the military.
Athens, Alabama, partly burned, August 30, 1862
Randolph, Tennessee, burned, September 26, 1862
Elm Grove and Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, October 18, 1862
Napoleon, Arkansas, partly burned, January 17, 1863
Mound City, Arkansas, partly burned, January 13, 1863
Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, February 21, 1863
Eunice, Arkansas, burned, June 14, 1863
Gaines Landing, Arkansas, burned, June 15, 1863
Sibley, Missouri, burned June 28, 1863
Hernando, Mississippi, partly burned, April 21, 1863
Austin, Mississippi, burned, May 23, 1863
Columbus, Tennessee, burned, reported February 10, 1864
Meridian, Mississippi, destroyed, February 3 to March 6, 1864
"For 5 days 10,000 men worked hard and with a will...with axes, crowbars, sledges, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work as well done. Meridian, with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists." -- w.t.sherman
Washington, North Carolina, sacked and burned, April 20, 1864
Hallowell's Landing, Alabama, burned, reported May 14, 1864
Newtown, Virginia, ordered to be burned, ordered May 30, 1864
Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia, burned, June 12, 1864
Rome, Georgia, partly burned, November 11, 1864
Atlanta, Georgia, burned, November 15, 1864
Camden Point, Missouri, burned, July 14, 1864
Kendal's Grist-Mill, Arkansas, burned, September 3, 1864
Shenandoah Valley, devastated, reported October 1, 1864 by sheridan
Griswoldville, Georgia, burned, November 21, 1864
Somerville, Alabama, burned, January 17, 1865
McPhersonville, South Carolina, burned, January 30, 1865
Barnwell, South Carolina, burned, reported February 9, 1865
Columbia, South Carolina, burned, reported February 17, 1865
Winnsborough, South Carolina, pillaged and partly burned, February 21, 1865
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, burned, April 4, 1865
(Continued)
BARBARIC:
DeleteDeliberately withholding blankets, food and medicine from Confederate POWs at Helmira, though there was plenty of all of it in the union, and setting up viewing stands so townspeople could look into the prison camp and watch the suffering of Confederate soldiers. At Camp Douglas in Chicago, making Confederate POWs sit bare bottomed on blocks of ice... firing guns throught their barracks and tents throughout the night to effect sleep deprivation; making them sit high atop a thin board rail with weights attached to their ankles... Yes, barbaric. Remember, the yankee soldiers at Andersonville were not deliberately tortured and starved... The Confederacy barely had enough food for its own soldiers. The damnyankee POWs were the victims of the government's refusal to exchange prisoners.
BARBARIC:
The war on civilians ... shooting people's pet dogs. Killing livestock and throwing carcasses into streams and wells to contaminate the water and cause disease in the civilian population at a time when there was no medicine because LINCOLN, that great humanitarin, included medicine in the blockade. Stealing food from civilians, from their very homes, and DESTROYING what the yankee soldiers could not eat or carry off, in order to STARVE the civilians left behind. Destroying even FARM IMPLEMENTS so no food could be grown.... Stabling horses in church sanctuaries just for spite, and digging up corpses looking for valuables....
Yes. BAR. BAR. IC.
What did the Confederacy accomplish? I think Douglas Harper captures it quite well:
The CSA was a bid to form an independent nation out of a region that had a common enemy and some collective regional identity. But the CSA comprised many sub-cultures (a few of them didn't want to be there), and it had a leadership that sometimes confused self-interest with public policy. It had its fair share of charlatans and profiteers and criminal opportunists. It had some brilliant generals and a great many men in uniform who would be the pride of any army in human history. It was committed to 18th century republican values that were incompatible with fighting a modern war, and it had internal social conflicts that the war aggravated.
In nearly all of this it was entirely like the American Revolutionaries. The colonists in 1776: one-third for independence, one-third against, one-third uncommitted. That must be the standard for legitimacy, or else our United States lacks it. The CSA fought a much larger enemy than George III, mostly on its own soil, without a Dutch loan or a French fleet to aid it, and the majority, in spite of internal divisions, put up a herculean effort, won spectacular victories, made shift with what little it had, and held out till the place was literally gutted and blood-drained by its foe.
The four-year history of the CSA is not necessarily the place to seek an example of the values Southerners sought to uphold. Any nation fighting for survival from the cradle, invaded and blockaded all its life, doesn't get a chance to express the finer points of democracy and civil culture. If all we knew of Americans was how they actually behaved from 1776 to 1783, we wouldn't think much of our sense of "democracy" or commitment to "personal freedom."
(From Apologia by Douglas Harper)
Ms. Chastain;
DeleteThe "barbaric" episodes that you cite in your response to me describe total war. The Confederacy sowed the wind and were not prepared to reap the whirlwind.
As for the prisoner exchange program, the breakdown was because not all Union prisoners were being treated as soldiers. The USCT troops were being returned to slavery. Any C-in-C would suspend the program under such circumstances, but I suspect you already knew as much as you seem well read on the Civil War. The suspension led to abhorrent conditions in the camps on both sides.
In regards to Harper, his essay is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Confederacy, and besides he does not mention any accomplishments. The question still stands what did the Confederacy accomplish?
I don't care what you call it -- total war, Sunday School, whatever. It was barbaric. The Confederacy didn't sow anything; it simply strove for political independence against an enemy who had no right to stop it. A barbaric enemy.
DeleteWhy DID the union invade the seceded South, anyway? It wasn't to free slaves -- read Lincoln's proclamation calling for volunteers; nary a syllable about slaves, or freeing them. He sold the war to the north on "preserving the union." Why did the union need the South to be "preserved"? It only took nine states' ratification of the Constitution to create the union, and after the South departed, there were 22 states remaining in the union, more than twice the nine required to create it. What, twenty-two wasn't enough to make it as a nation, on their own, without the South? They managed to remain the union and to fight a war without the South.
What they needed the South for, Mr. Carey, was cotton and the money they derived from processing it, selling it, shipping it. Basically, it was regional slavery; the northern states and federal government were slavemasters, and the Southern states were the slaves who made them wealthy. Secession was analogous to slaves running away, and the war was analogous to the beatings runaway slaves sometimes took when they were caught. The difference was that runaway slaves still had to be able to work and be productive, so they weren't incapacitated to near-death. The South was. It was, and its economic oppression continued for generations after the war. While wealthy northern industrialists were building opulent, 100-room "cottages" in Newport, huge numbers of Southerners were dying of pellagra, hookworm and other nutritional diseases caused by poverty diets.
Believe me, as much as I resent the yankee barbarism of the war, my deepest resentment comes from the treatment of the South for generations after the war -- treatment that continues to this day.
The excuse for no prisoner exchanges was just that, an excuse. So, because some USCT were being returned to slavery, we're gonna let the rest of our POWs starve? I don't know why "any C-in-C" would do that; it's ridiculous reasoning. But then the union didn't have a lot of respect for the lives of its men in uniform, seeing them largely as cannon fodder.
The suspension didn't lead to abhorrent conditions in northern camps. Hatred for Confederates did that. There was plenty of money in the Union for food, blankets and medicine for Confederate POWs. They were withheld on purpose, out of sheer hatred.
Continued....
Harper's essay explains why there were no glowing accomplishments (of the type you probably have in mind, i.e., "accomplishments" such as the north achieved: big cities, industry/commerce, the accumulation of wealth) -- the Confederacy was invaded and blockaded all its life. However, Harper's description that the South "put up a herculean effort, won spectacular victories, made shift with what little it had" is an impressive accomplishment, considering what was happening to it at the time.
DeleteThe Confederacy fought for its political independence, and it fought to defend its people, communities and territory from a military invasion. That's accomplishment in my book. If Harper's essay is not a ringing endorsement of the Confederacy, it is even less a ringing endorsement of the USA... all his civil war essays seem as much criticism of the USA as praise of the CSA.
Most of the Confederacy's accomplishments were military -- the Hunley comes to mind... It was, after all, fighting for its survival and political independence, so it stands to reason its accomplishments would be related to the military struggle. Union General Don Carlos Buell gets quite specific about what it took for the damnyankee army to overcome Confederate military accomplishments.
"It required a naval fleet and 15,000 troops to advance against a weak fort, manned by less than 100 men, at Fort Henry;
--35,000, with naval cooperation, to overcome 12,000 at Donelson;
--60,000 to secure a victory over 40,000 at Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh);
--120,000 to enforce the retreat of 65,000 intrenched, after a month's fighting and maneuvering at Corinth;
--100,000 repelled by 80,000 in the first Peninsular campaign against Richmond;
--70,000, with a powerful naval force, to inspire the campaign which lasted nine months, against 40,000 at Vicksburg;
--90,000 to barely withstand the assault of 70,000 at Gettysburg;
--115,000 sustaining a frightful repulse from 60,000 at Fredericksburg:
--100,000 attacked and defeated by 50,000 at Chancellorsville;
--85,000 held in check two days by 40,000 at Antietam;
--43,000 retaining the field uncertainly against 38,000 at Stone River (Murfreesboro);
--70,000 defeated at Chickamauga, and beleaguered by 70,000 at Chattanooga;
--80,000 merely to break the investing line of 45,000 at Chattanooga, and 100,000 to press back 50,000 increased at last to 70,000 from Chattanooga to Atlanta, a distance of 120 miles, and then let go an operation which is commemorated at festive reunions by the standing toast of "One hundred days under fire;"
--50,000 to defeat the investing line of 30,000 at Nashville;
--and, finally, 120,000 to overcome 60,000 with exhaustion after a struggle of a year in Virginia.
--From the third volume of "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War"
Mr. Carey, Southern people's maintenance of their will and distinctive identity, during the days of the Confederacy, and both before and after it, in the face of the USA's attempts to eradicate it (with ridicule, lies, invasions both military and cultural, among other methods) is their greatest accomplishment.
Like our flag, "We're still heeeee-ere."
Ms. Chastain;
DeleteThe only reason you're still here is that the Union was very generous after you're surrender. Let them up easy to paraphrase Lincoln. The fact that you are still here proves that the Union army were not barbarians.
The one noteworthy accomplishment of the Confederacy is that it hasten the demise of the very social structure it started a war to protect.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Bob Carey
"Ms. Chastain; The only reason you're still here is that the Union was very generous after you're surrender."
DeleteYou would have to be God to know that, and I don't think you are. You are simply spouting off for "your side."
"Let them up easy to paraphrase Lincoln. The fact that you are still here proves that the Union army were not barbarians."
Much of their behavior was barbaric, as I have substantiated.
"The one noteworthy accomplishment of the Confederacy is that it hasten the demise of the very social structure it started a war to protect."
The Confederacy did not start a war to protect slavery.
Bob Carey
DeleteThe Yankee army was nothing more than a bunch of thieving, raping, burning, BARBIC bunch of low life men dressed as soldiers. When you finish with Connie perhaps you would like to be offended by my statements.
George Purvis
http://confederatepows.southernheritageadvancementpreservationeducation.com/page.php?6
Bob,
Delete"What did the Confederacy accomplish?"
Well they did built the first working submarine.
What di the Yankees accomplish besides invading and destroying a peaceful country?
The first working submarine used in war was the "Turtle". It was used by the Americans against the British fleet in NY harbor. Its' inventor was a Connecticut Yankee by the name of Bushnell.
DeleteThe Hunley was the first working sub to sink an enemy ship in combat. All of the Turtle's attempts to attack the enemy failed.
DeleteKey word in the sentence--"Working." How many ships did the turtle sink?
DeleteNow what di the Yankkes accomplish except destroying the South?
Again, Douglas Harper answers the question of what the yankees accomplished quite succinctly:
Delete"Lysander Spooner was an influential and ardent abolitionist and a true American radical humanitarian in the mold of Thoreau. By 1867, he had come to understand that the war was a defeat for men like him. The North had fought for the principle that 'men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support a government they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.'
Southerners saw this sooner. They saw the victory of Lincoln in 1860 as defeat after a long struggle, the final reduction to helplessness in the face of a majority determined to force its social and economic values on the whole nation.
You can love your homeland and still lament the place it might have been. Is 20th century America -- with its Babbittry, its rotten bureaucracies and its destructive disregard for natural resources and human lives -- really the best we could have done? Or did we take an unbalanced, headlong tumble into modernity because the Northeast, child of industrial capitalism and Puritan morality, became "America" by grinding an economic and political rival under its heel?
Note, in my earlier comment, this phrase, "...and if HE wasn't guilty of an executable office..." should read, "...and if HE wasn't guilty of an executable offense...."
DeleteWe know both sides invented weapons to kill each other with, here is something I knew nothing about----http://www.academia.edu/2909650/Dr._Chisolms_Inhaler_A_Rare_Confederate_Medical_Invention
DeleteI think but I am not sure the Confederates formed the 1st patent office.
BTW I am waiting for Bob to show us documentation the Yankees were anything but barbaric in their actions.
George
George;
DeleteSince Abraham Lincoln had a patent I pretty sure that the United States had a Patent Office before the Confederacy was formed.
You may be right, I am not going to dispute that point since the CSA was a copy of the USA. Are you ready to prove to us why the Yankees were not barbarians? I think that was your original intent?
Delete...so someone (Landrieu) who is not one-tenth the man that Robert E. Lee was...is taking down a statue of Lee. That is the age we live in...
ReplyDeleteI will write the mayor and city council a letter. I'll include a bit of Louisiana history for them. No way will I be nice.
DeleteA recent poll of New Orleans residents shows 43% against removal of the monuments and 34% for - in a city that's 60% black, 33% white and the remainder either Hispanic or Asian.
Delete"...the North is fighting for money. It is fighting for its supremacy to rule and levy tribute upon us. Its all is based upon its connection with us--commerce, manufactures, industry and wealth of all sorts. The people of the North know it. Financial ruin for all times stares them in the face. They are staking all--life, blood, political liberty--all upon the hazard. They must have money."
ReplyDeleteCharleston Mercury, August 8, 1861
There are proclamations by Buchannan and Lincoln that state their goal was to collect "revenue" from the seceded states. One of the first acts of Andrew Johnson was to set up collection points for revenue.
DeleteRead this article and comment https://pastexplore.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/false-dichotomies-and-slippery-slopes-in-the-confederate-iconography-debate/
ReplyDeletewe have them out in the open now.
I followed the link. The author admits, in an offhanded way,that it's about the same old thing. Northern supremacy, not the welfare of Black folks. Over at the Union Million Man Militia, they openly admit that they're defending the North as a distinct, dominant nation, not "America."
DeleteYes it is about the same old song. What surprises me more than anything, I try to ask Jimmy Dick and Al Mackey some pointed questions , but Nick Sacco's keeps running interference for them . He will jot allow my comments to stand. I have posted one blog post related to this, today or tomorrow I will post another.
DeleteGeorge Purvis
Cold Southern Steel
Amazing. Jimmy Dick needs somebody to run interference for him? He's a one-trick pony, a broken record that says the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ....
DeleteApparently Mackey does too. I can't get over how confused Sacco is about what is being posted. He banned me from posting, -- for insulting of all things. oh well don't mean nothing.t proves I was right and he hasn't the facts to prove me wrong.
DeleteNotice how he and Mackey loves to throw the ter "white supremacist" around?????
Mackey and Dick...
Delete"All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of 'Court Intellectuals' whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public." -Murray Rothbard