Thursday, April 9, 2015
Via Infidel753: 150 years ago today...
On this day 150 years ago, General Lee surrendered to General Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively ending the greatest and bloodiest act of treason in American history.
Please go HERE and read Infidel753's post, "Treason and Truth," that provides detail on why the secessionist states left the Union. And yes, his post confirms that it was about slavery.
Here's the introductory paragraph:
"On this day 150 years ago, General Lee surrendered to General Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively ending the greatest and bloodiest act of treason in American history. At a time when Confederate nostalgia is widespread on the right wing (just observe how common the display of the Confederate battle flag is in some areas -- it is even part of the state flag of Mississippi), and Confederate history and motives for secession are regularly whitewashed by people who should know better, it's worth remembering what the Confederacy was actually about, and what the Civil War was actually about. In their own words..."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
18 comments:
Here's what amazes me... We fought this war, against slavery, and the states rights that provided the "legal" fodder for it. The supporters lost. Period.
Now they want to celebrate and honor the very system that brought our country to its knees.
These are the same people who would be aghast if we allowed this type of behavior to happen in Germany. These are the same people who hate when Mexicans, who also lost a war to us, wave their flags.
Why do we tolerate it. Their view lost. Plain and simple.
Yes, the south lost the Civil War, but 20 years after Lee surrendered, the people who suffered the most under the evil of slavery, were once again under a reconstituted form of it again, with the passaage of Jim Crow laws all over the South.
President Johnson turned his back on Reconstruction (he was, afterall, a southerner, and his sympathies lay with southern grievances). Subsequent presidents took little interest in how the millions of freed slaves were going to navigate freedom--no money, no homes, no 40 acres and a mule. Even the freed slaves who managed to acquire land and be self-sustaing citizens were kicked off the property that had belonged to the southerners who fled the advancing Union army and who returned and took it away. It's an horrendous story of how our government utterly failed its citizens and allowed the re-subjugation of its emancipated citizenry.
I don't know how many Americans actually know this history. My guess is very few.
Shaw, you forgot to mention the DemocRATS were the political party that supported Jim Crow laws. (That will make skidrunner happy.)
But please don't mention the fact that those in the DemocRAT party were good Christian southerners, just like their descendants in today's Republican Tea Party: Different party name, same people, same hatreds.
skudrunner left this comment in "comment moderation" @ 12:18 PM:
"Who ever denied that the Civil War was not about slavery, of course it was. Now lets deal with what is happening today."
No. You don't get to change the subject. This post is about what happened 150 years ago, not about your partisan complaints about what's happening today in this country.
I just saved you from being your usual trollish self in changing the subject to what YOU want to discuss.
Na ga happen.
Thank you, though, for your first comment that DOES stick to the subject.
Skud, actually there are many southern conservatives, who now abhor the Democratic Party and mostly vote GOP, who do not agree the Civil War was about slavery.
Consider the SCV, or sons of confederate veterans, who hold that the Civil War was not fought over slavery but rather because the Union and President Abraham Lincoln acted without regard for the Constitution to accumulate power.
Does this remind you of any groups we are hearing from today?
We defeated these people and their views 150 years ago. Why do we have to reargue this again?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/civil-war-american-south-still-loves-confederacy-116771.html#ixzz3WppTBxUz
From Dave's link:
Confederate sympathy offers an ideology that explains why life in America is not what one expected it to be, why Spanish is increasingly heard in towns across the country, why despite working hard one never seems to get ahead, why African Americans have recently occupied highly visible leadership positions as attorney general, secretary of state and, of course, president. It is a politics of victimization, a sentiment that political correctness and anti-discrimination laws constrain right-thinking and hard-working people, and that for 150 years America has strayed from its preordained and righteous path.
[skip]
Nor is such veneration confined to the former Confederate states.
In April 2008, the SCV opened Jefferson Davis Park in Ridgefield, Washington, between Seattle and Portland, flying Confederate flags within sight of Interstate-5. Central to these efforts is a mission to recast the meaning of the Confederacy as a rebellion to save the United States, not to save slavery. This enables the Confederacy to be characterized as remaining true to America’s origins (unlike the United States since 1865, which has allegedly strayed from its foundational principles) and Confederate supporters, therefore, to be the most authentically American members of the population.
MORE HERE at Dave's link.
Dave,
You can always find a group that will enhance any view. Look hard enough and you will find a group that believes the Boston Tea Party was actually about Tea.
Slavery still exists except the masters have changed from land owners to the government. Isn't indebtedness a form of slavery or the government provides therefore I will go along.
"Slavery still exists except the masters have changed from land owners to the government. Isn't indebtedness a form of slavery or the government provides therefore I will go along."
So you actually think the government is a slave master?
You were given that idea by Ronald Reagan who said government isn't the solution, government is the problem. Then he and his Republican successors went forward and proved it.
You cannot have a country of over 350 million people with a patch-work quilt of different state laws making legal in some states and illegal in others. That's chaos. You and other malcontents think all government is bad, but you luv your local state governments that can pass laws that make discrimination against gays legal? Or unlimited ownership of any sort of firearm, no matter how lethal-- legal anywhere, anytime always and forever. You'd love government that said it's okay to make children recite Christian prayers in public schools. Or force women to carry pregnancies, not matter the circumstances--IOW, state-forced pregnancies.
You guys are okay with government that conforms to your ideas of liberty, but everything else is oppressive.
There is no way we, with all our regional differences, can agree on what is the best government, but if we can get rid of the absurdly insane idea that no government is the best government, that would be a start.
Because that idea of no government worked so well in the wild, wild, west, and is so accommodating in places like Somalia.
Not No Government but limited government. The whole idea does scare some people. The country was founded on States Rights and has been taken over by the power of DC. If you don't like the policies of one state, you can move.
You do have your great presidents confused. It was actually Jefferson who said a government big enough to give you everything you want etc.
BTW the stars and bars is made up of stars from the thirteen states and is red, white and blue. Not unlike the original flag of the colonies.
Skud... you asked whoever said the Civil War was not about slavery.
When presented with evidence, you flail.
The fact is the SCV is not some fringe conservative group. It is a large group that represents a view very central to the hearts and minds of Southern Conservatives, the people who call that war, the War of Northern Aggression.
Tell me, do you think any GOP leaders in the south will counter the views of the SCV or groups like them?
"You'd love government that said it's okay to make children recite Christian prayers in public schools"
Only if it is a private, non- taxpayer funded school. I am totally for the separation of church and state which has never happened. Churches are tax exempt, their RE holdings are not taxed as a business.
Shaw, thanks for the link! It's important to remember the reality of these events, not only because there are many groups today who try to pretend that secession and the formation of the Confederacy were about something other than slavery, but also because any nation is the product of its history, and the Civil War was the most pivotal event in US history. Its effects and its causes are very much with us still.
Skudrunner: Slavery still exists except the masters have changed from land owners to the government. Isn't indebtedness a form of slavery or the government provides therefore I will go along.
This is an unforgivable insult to the memory of the millions who suffered under real slavery in the antebellum South. The comparison is utterly ridiculous.
Not No Government but limited government. The whole idea does scare some people.
You're trying to change the subject again. As Shaw said, "This post is about what happened 150 years ago, not about your partisan complaints about what's happening today" -- and the reason this is important is that, as is demonstrated by the popularity of Confederate flags (and efforts to rehabilitate and commemorate the Confederacy) among the kind of people who most habitually vote conservative today, they cultivate nostalgia for a fake country established by traitors for the sole purpose of preserving slavery, while having the incredible gall to call themselves patriots. That's why the Civil War is still relevant. The diseased mentality that gave rise to the Confederacy and the war is still here, trying to undermine and divide the nation.
Crudrunner: “The country was founded on States Rights (…) If you don't like the policies of one state, you can move.”
Ahhh! The truth always wins. Crudrunner has revealed his true Neo-Confederate sentiments and the aspirations of a Good Ole Boy who seeks to restore the former glory of the Old South – rooted in slavery, bigotry, oppression, lynching, murder, white supremacy, and the KKK. Yup the truth always wins, and now you see the troll for what he really is.
For your listening pleasure, I leave you with this song:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.”
Of course, if Scud-the-Crud insists on fighting the last Civil War all over again (please note: the last one didn't go very well), I would be more than willing to accommodate.
753
I was addressing the response from Ms Shaw not changing the subject.
Keeping in mind the regional bigotry you, shaw and legs have, the South did not capture and transport slaves, their own people did in either ships from Europe, Spain or New York transported them.
None of my family ever owned a slave or was involved in the War Between The States, nothing civil about it.
Legs, if you don't like a states policy you can move. That is about taking personal responsibility for your life instead of making everyone beat to the same drummer, something some find offensive. Point taken and so are the insults.
"...the regional bigotry you, shaw and legs have, the South did not capture and transport slaves..."
Whose economy was based on slavery?
(Both the North's and the South's --the northern mills manufactured the cotton that was prized by the British. But the South's dependence on slave labor made the families who owned slaves the richest in America. Can you now understand why they were invested in keeping slavery legal? Once the slave trade was stopped, the southern states bred the "stock" they owned to the point where there were more than 4 million slaves at the time of the Civil War.
Do you understand supply and demand? The original slaves came to the colonies from Africa where they were captured and put on slave ships. But the colonies were happy to have them and place them in bondage for the rest of their lives. The families who owned slaves did not turn them away and say "No thank you." They built their fortunes on the backs of human beings, breaking up families, torturing and in some cases murdering those who attempted to escape the horror.
Your attempt to place the blame solely on the African slave traders exposes your agenda to pretend the south had no responsibility.
skud: "...if you don't like a states policy you can move."
Really? Most of the states that disallow marriage equality, access to a legal medical procedure for women are in the south, and most of the people affected are poor. Suggesting they just pull up stakes and move is callous and idiotic. Do you have any idea how burdensome and inhumane that would be for families?
I don't think so.
Crud: “Keeping in mind the regional bigotry you, shaw [small caps error] and legs have …”
Regional bigotry? Oh really! I happen to live a Southern state, and there is nothing regional in the defense of human rights. Protected by our Constitution and under Law, human rights cannot be abrogated by states rights – a point Southern white boys like you fail to fathom.
Crud: “Legs, if you don't like a states [punctuation error] policy you can move.”
Born and raised within the territorial waters of the United States, I have the right to live anywhere I want, and NO ONE TELLS ME TO MOVE - another point Southern white boys like you fail to fathom. Like civil rights, full rights of citizenship – including the right to live where I choose - are Constitution rights that cannot be abrogated by states rights, or denied by neo-Confederate deadbeats like you.
You have only two choices: Fight the Civil War all over again or accept unconditional surrender now. My terms: The Union Army keeps the full arsenal of nuclear weapons in perpetuity. In addition, all Southern ladies will be moved to the safety of Union states – so they won’t have to run up a tree faster than a cat to protect their honor from incestuous kin like you.
In exchange, you agree to accept full responsibility for the National Debt. My terms are non-negotiable. Take it or leave it!
In addition to the 'South Will
Again Rise' groups like Dave mentioned, we note some few northern Libertarians, with whom
states rights is a big issue, hold some severe views on Abraham Lincoln-
1- Lincoln did not exhaust all
other methods before the War
2- Lincoln tricked the South into
firing the first shot.
3. Lincoln started the war over
lucrative tariffs from the South
4. Slavery would have disappeared on its own.
As an amateur Civil War history buff, I know these are false and as a young Army officer who served in Alabama in 1964, I know
the ugly results of states rights.
BB,
Assuming Spud agrees to the terms of the Armistice, once those Southern belles start packin' those bags and movin' to the safety of the Union states, potato head will start regrettin’ all that frettin’ over tey gays.
Post a Comment