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No problem. For me, this issue is very personal. I don't live in New Orleans, but I can still find places where Confederate flags fly. I saw stuff like this in my high school. I
I have lived in several states, in the South and in the West. I personally wish I could travel more. There are some beautiful places out there, some I have not seen.
I find it interesting that you bring up what you learned in Catholic school. I'm quite familiar with Catholics. I converted to the Catholic faith a decade ago. One thing I've noticed is this. The whole "Lost Cause Of The Confederacy" was something I almost never heard uttered among Catholics. I don't know if this had to do with the large number of out-of-staters in several metro Atlanta parishes, or if the schools taught kids better. Oddly enough, I didn't know that many kids who went to Catholic schools.
Public schools I went to approached history different from what you describe. I had social studies. One year I had to take a class on "Georgia Studies". However, most of the time, nothing was studied in big details. U.S. history we never got the full details. It was "get through the textbook". I didn't even know the Articles of Secession existed until years later. I know that my father told me that the Confederate cause was basically about slavery. I didn't know how much this was the case until many years later.
I've never lived in New Orleans but have visited many times, particularly when I lived in Nashville. (New Orleans is one of my favorite places - the people are some of the warmest & nicest! Also music art & food!). Tennessee borders six or seven other States I think? It was easy to visit other places if you had a car. Tri-State area (NY, NJ, CT) as well & the car is not as necessary.
One thing I noticed about living in the South was folks were more likely to invite you to join them at their places of religious worship. Where I'm from (Long Island, NY) folks weren't as likely to do so, although you'd get invited for the more significant events, weddings, baptisms, bar & bat mitsvahs, Sikh turban ceremonies, & so on. Another thing I noticed/experienced but this is just in general mingling with people, you tend to learn about yourself & your own particular & peculiar idiosyncrasies by mingling & sharing with folks unfamiliar or from different cultures, places, family types, etc. For example, Catholicism & Judaism are not as popular, as religions go, in the South. I never really thought about it until I got to know some folk who were interested in knowing more about. Some thought Catholicism demonstrated more reverence, devotion, respect toward women in general & this by its attitudinal love of Mary, Jesus' mother. I think I may have written something in the Religious forums about my friendship with a Hindu man from work? Long story short is that he thought the most interesting & outstanding thing about Christianity was its take on forgiveness. He thought it was wonderful as in his religion, nothing really was ever forgiven - it was the Karmic cycle over & over.
I've never lived in New Orleans but have visited many times, particularly when I lived in Nashville. (New Orleans is one of my favorite places - the people are some of the warmest & nicest! Also music art & food!). Tennessee borders six or seven other States I think? It was easy to visit other places if you had a car. Tri-State area (NY, NJ, CT) as well & the car is not as necessary.
One thing I noticed about living in the South was folks were more likely to invite you to join them at their places of religious worship. Where I'm from (Long Island, NY) folks weren't as likely to do so, although you'd get invited for the more significant events, weddings, baptisms, bar & bat mitsvahs, Sikh turban ceremonies, & so on. Another thing I noticed/experienced but this is just in general mingling with people, you tend to learn about yourself & your own particular & peculiar idiosyncrasies by mingling & sharing with folks unfamiliar or from different cultures, places, family types, etc. For example, Catholicism & Judaism are not as popular, as religions go, in the South. I never really thought about it until I got to know some folk who were interested in knowing more about. Some thought Catholicism demonstrated more reverence, devotion, respect toward women in general & this by its attitudinal love of Mary, Jesus' mother. I think I may have written something in the Religious forums about my friendship with a Hindu man from work? Long story short is that he thought the most interesting & outstanding thing about Christianity was its take on forgiveness. He thought it was wonderful as in his religion, nothing really was ever forgiven - it was the Karmic cycle over & over.
Absolutely none of you two's little love sonnets have anything to do with the topic at hand...
Back to the real point of this thread, these statues were put up to honor the Southern heritage, not to offend anyone.
Absolutely none of you two's little love sonnets have anything to do with the topic at hand...
Back to the real point of this thread, these statues were put up to honor the Southern heritage, not to offend anyone.
Sounds like there are enough people that don't care for that version of heritage enough to marvel at it's "glory" during their commutes. In any case the plan was to move them, not destroy them.
Sounds like there are enough people that don't care for that version of heritage enough to marvel at it's "glory" during their commutes. In any case the plan was to move them, not destroy them.
They are more than welcomed to take a different route if it is that big of a deal to them.
They are more than welcomed to take a different route if it is that big of a deal to them.
And they are more than welcome to move them, it's their city. I would suspect something similar would have happened if King James ever had a statue erected in Boston if it weren't outright demolished first.
Absolutely none of you two's little love sonnets have anything to do with the topic at hand...
Back to the real point of this thread, these statues were put up to honor the Southern heritage, not to offend anyone.
Pardon me Ma'am. What do you think about this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChiGeekGuest
If "Secession was viewed by the Confederacy not as rebellion against the United States, but as a right guaranteed by the Constitution,"
why then didn't they change their own Constitution to grant this right?
From Constitution of CSA:
Section 9:
(15) To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Confederate States, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.
In other words, there were no changes from the US Constitution. By keeping this clause the CSA essentially gives itself the right to fight its own Civil War someday.
Why is it necessary for Southern heritage to be tied to a four year timeframe & that from over 150 years ago? Why chained to the Confederacy, failed & defunct, never recognized as an Independent Country, whose main objective was preserving & extending the right to own people as property? American people from the South deserve better.
"No reason not to" is not good enough. The facts show that the Confederate cause was expressedly about keeping and expanding the institution of slavery. You have not refuted that.
And alot of Native Americans live on reservations. Many probably see themselves as people who live in a place taken from them. At least from some interviews.
Come up with a better reason than "no reason not to".
Most of the revisionists and "Lost Causers" are generally just ignorant and try to say things like "black people fought for the South too!" and "Most white folks were poor and didn't even own slaves!" and the classic "it wasn't about slavery, but state's rights!".
All documentation of the southern states secession had absolutely everything to do with slavery as one of the main focal points. To their point yes, the Constitution at that time, did guarantee their "right" to own slaves, but it had been a point of contention essentially since the founding of the United States.
Louisiana did not publish a declaration of secession but here is an address by George Williamson to Texas:
Quote:
To the Hon. O.M. Roberts, President of the Convention of the People of Texas. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the people of Texas.
I have the honor to address you as the commissioner of the people of Louisiana, accredited to your honorable body. With this communication, by the favor of your presiding officer, will be laid before you my credentials, the ordinance of secession, a resolution in regard to the Mississippi river and the ordinance to provide for the appointment of delegates to a convention to form a Southern Confederacy. These ordinances and the resolution were adopted at their respective dates by the people of Louisiana in convention assembled, after serious debate and calm reflection.
Being desirous of obtaining the concurrence of the people of Texas in what she has done, Louisiana invites you to a candid consideration of her acts in resuming the powers delegated to the government of the late United States, and in providing for the formation of a confederacy of “The States which have seceded and may secede.” The archives of the Federal Government bear ample testimony to the loyalty of Louisiana to the American Union. Her conservatism has been proverbial in political circles. The character and pursuits of her people, her immense agricultural wealth, her large banking capital, her possession of the great commercial metropolis of the South, whose varied trade almost rivals that of the city of “ten thousand masts” present facts sufficient to make “assurance double sure” she did not take these grave steps for light or transient causes. She was impelled to this action to preserve her honor, her safety, her property and the free institutions so sacred to her people. She believed the federal agent had betrayed her trust, had become the facile instrument of a hostile people, and was usurping despotic powers. She considered that the present vacillating executive, on the 4th of March next, would be supplanted by a stalwart fanatic of the Northwest, whose energetic will, backed by the frenzied bigotry of unpatriotic masses, would cause him to establish the military despotism already inaugurated.
The people of Louisiana were unwilling to endanger their liberties and property by submission to the despotism of a single tyrant, or the canting tyranny of pharisaical majorities. Insulted by the denial of her constitutional equality by the non-slaveholding States, outraged by their contemptuous rejection of proffered compromises, and convinced that she was illustrating the capacity of her people for self-government by withdrawing from a union that had failed, without fault of hers, to accomplish its purposes, she declared herself a free and independent State on the 26th day of January last. History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisianalooks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. As her neighbor and sister State, she desires the hearty co-operation of Texas in the formation of a Southern Confederacy. She congratulates herself on the recent disposition evinced by your body to meet this wish, by the election of delegates to the Montgomery convention. Louisiana and Texas have the same language, laws and institutions. Between the citizens of each exists the most cordial social and commercial intercourse. The Red river and the Sabine form common highways for the transportation of their produce to the markets of the world. Texas affords to the commerce of Louisiana a large portion of her products, and in exchange the banks of New Orleans furnish Texas with her only paper circulating medium. Louisiana supplies to Texas a market for her surplus wheat, grain and stock; both States have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. Each of the States has an extended Gulf coast, and must look with equal solicitude to its protection now, and the acquisition of the entire control of the Gulf of Mexico in due time. No two States of this confederacy are so identified in interest, and whose destinies are so closely interwoven with each other. Nature, sympathy and unity of interest make them almost one. Recognizing these facts, but still confident in her own powers to maintain a separate existence, Louisiana regards with great concern the vote of the people of Texas on the ratification of the ordinance of secession, adopted by your honorable body on the 1st of the present month. She is confident a people who so nobly and gallantly achieved their liberties under such unparalleled difficulties will not falter in maintaining them now. The Mexican yoke could not have been more galling to “the army of heroes” of ’36 than the Black republican rule would be to the survivors and sons of that army at the present day. The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery, if Texas either did not secede or having seceded should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy. If she remains in the union the abolitionists would continue their work of incendiarism and murder. Emigrant aid societies would arm with Sharp’s rifles predatory bands to infest her northern borders. The Federal Government would mock at her calamity in accepting the recent bribes in the army bill and Pacific railroad bill, and with abolition treachery would leave her unprotected frontier to the murderous inroads of hostile savages. Experience justifies these expectations. A professedly friendly federal administration gave Texas no substantial protection against the Indians or abolitionists, and what must she look for from an administration avowedly inimical and supported by no vote within her borders. Promises won from the timid and faithless are poor hostages of good faith. As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slaveholding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery. The isolation of any one of them from the others would make her a theatre for abolition emissaries from the North and from Europe. Her existence would be one of constant peril to herself and of imminent danger to other neighboring slave-holding communities. A decent respect for the opinions and interests of the Gulf States seems to indicate that Texas should co-operate with them. I am authorized to say to your honorable body that Louisiana does not expect any beneficial result from the peace conference now assembled at Washington. She is unwilling that her action should depend on the border States. Her interests are identical with Texas and the seceding States. With them she will at present co-operate, hoping and believing in his own good time God will awaken the people of the border States to the vanity of asking for, or depending upon, guarantees or compromises wrung from a people whose consciences are too sublimated to be bound by that sacred compact, the constitution of the late United States. That constitution the Southern States have never violated, and taking it as the basis of our new government we hope to form a slave-holding confederacy that will secure to us and our remotest posterity the great blessings its authors designed in the Federal Union. With the social balance wheel of slavery to regulate its machinery, we may fondly indulge the hope that our Southern government will be perpetual.
Geo. Williamson Commissioner of the State of Louisiana City of Austin Feby 11th 1861.
All of the declarations of secession cite the preservation of slavery as the main motivator.
As for the poor white folk that still fought? As we know Southerners are deeply connected to their churches, and there are records of church sermons spreading preaching the validity of slavery, and the horrible things that would happen if african slaves were freed. The idea of african slaves being "equal" to poor white men was abhorrent.
As far as "state's rights", that argument goes out the window when you look at the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act. Southern states wanted to utilize the powers of the Federal government to overrule northern state's abolition laws and guarantee (at tax payer's expense) the return of their "property". So to say the South had any regard for "state's rights" is an absolute LIE.
Did any of those people you mentioned take up arms against the United States of America? They were traitors, every single one of them. And make no mistake - the cause for which they turned on their own country was the worst one in history. Slavery. Never mind 'states rights'. That term is a euphemism for 'keeping our slaves'. Glorifying traitors has no place in our country. The confederate flag might as well be a swastika.
The colonists took up arms against their country. The only difference was they won.
Confederate soldiers were largely tasked with preventing the enemy from burning down their local infrastructure and cities. Don't pretend that if the US army started burning down and shelling your home town, you'd just be cool with it.
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