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I've been fighting it for nearly 50 years, and I had six relatives I know of who fought for the Confederacy. I live in S.C. where the government has shown the world in the last few days just how big a lot of racist bastards they really are. Nikki Hayley finally called for the removal of the flag from the State House grounds when the political climate got white hot last week after the Charleston shootings, but the flag remained at full staff for the slain legislator's body to pass by when he was brought to the capital to lie in state. The only reason she acted and Lindsey Graham did a 180 from a week before is that they have designs on national political offices.It really needs to be relegated to a museum, but it should always be remembered as an example of what not to do in the future.
On the eve of the Civil War, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens gave this speech:
“Our new government is founded… upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…"
This is from the horse's mouth. "State's Rights" means the right to own people as property. The flag is, was, and will always be a racist symbol.
Don't forget that the church where the terrorism took place last week is on Calhoun St., named after John C. Calhoun.
Quote:
Calhoun led the pro-slavery faction in the Senate in the 1830s and 1840s, opposing both abolitionism and attempts to limit the expansion of slavery into the western territories; actively anti-Wilmot Proviso. He was a major advocate of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which required the co-operation of local law enforcement officials in free states to return escaped slaves
You are partially correct, though the causes of the civil war included many more factors than slavery, most of them involving the struggle for the bigger share of business profits between northern financiers and southern landowners, with the working-class people of both the Union and the Confederacy bearing the brunt of the fighting, dying, and suffering. Just like it's always been, from the Revolution to Vietnam.
Concerning your reference to " burying the hatchet"', what would you have preferred? A continuance of the Civil War? The imprisonment of every Southerner? Nuremberg-style war trials and mass hangings? The assassination of President Lincoln, and the resulting promulgation of Reconstruction created the depth of bitterness in the south which gave rise to the KKK and the Dixiecrats -- and the revival of the display of the Confederate battle flag, which is the source of current controversy.
Consider this: without the (admittedly imperfect) reconciliation between north and south in the years after the Civil War, our country might have faced the wars of the twentieth century without one of its most important human resources -- the hundreds of thousands of southern soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who continue to form the backbone of our armed forces.
Don't get me wrong: I do not for one moment mean to minimize the importance of African-American servicemen, and whites and Hispanic troops from other regions of the country. But if people start applying words like "traitor" to southerners, and retroactively implying that our country would have been better off treating the south even more like a conquered province, they need to think twice about how one expresses their patriotism toward the U.S.A., and whether displaying a flag outweighs fighting and dying for one's country. Some Southerners have done the former; many more have done the latter. Do not overlook that fact.
Nonsense, look the civil war was 100% about slavery. What southerners didn't like about Lincoln was his anti-slavery expansion rhetoric.
The southern states were afraid that the Republican Party would stop the spread of slavery to new territories.
Again, read the articles of succession. They tell you way they are leaving the union. And it's 100% about slavery.
I would have preferred that black Americans not be thrown under the bus and subjugated to another 100 years of racial violence, white supremacy and terror as official government policy.
If that meant another 100 years of fighting so be it.
By inventing this Lie that in fact southerners weren't fighting for a death cult to own human beings, they emboldened white supremacy, led to the creation of the Klan, and returned the south to racist white southerners who then promptly killed and disenfranchised black Americans, the lie only makes sense if one forgets the incalculable suffering of black Americans, racists usually can do this with no problem.
All of your hypotheticals are irrelevant. What we know is black people suffered greatly under Jim Crow, No voting, no rights, no housing, white riots, job discrimination, white supremacy, lack of education, criminal justice racism, and on and on.
If one discounts black Americans, then everything worked out fine.
To me white southerners memorializing the confederacy as being about bravery and nobility is the same as memorializing lynchings as being about community standards and cohesiveness.
It's a lie and everyone knows it's a lie.
It's more proof of how racist the nation remains that so many pretend otherwise.
They've had over a 150 years to "tell their experience" and "make the change of their own free will." Time's up. TIME'S UP! Fly the flag to your heart's conent on private property but get it off public, government buildings with the exception of museums, historical battlefields, Civil War veterans grace sites, etc.
Didn't I say
You can argue that Flying the confederate flag perpetrates a long and incredibly entrenched tradition of organized racism, bigotry, and terrorism. You can even argue that this flag must come down as quickly as possible, and that we as a nation will be better for it.
well, there are still people who believe ALL southerners fly that flag are racists. in case you didn't notice.
No it's a lie based on the articles of succession. The reason the south hated Lincoln was because the Republican Party was founded to stop the expansion of slavery to new states and territories.
Far from wanting to end slavery the confederate/slave states wanted it expanded.
Again, read their articles of succession. This is why they are leaving the union in their own words. Source material and that reason is all about slavery.
This has zero to do with liberals. This is objective reality.
The lie that the civil war was about states rights is an add on after the fact lie that northern and southern white folks invented to sort of bury the hatchet after the war.
Yes it does. It includes us all. Understanding that is very important. I realize if I were born in a different time I very well might support these evil policies myself. That's why I see these issues as fundamentally about American national identity.
Current events have brought it to the forefront, but if you like you can easily do a google search of older articles and see that this has been an ongoing issue.
Even though I have been on this planet long enough, I am still amazed at how people interpret the world through prisms such as this.
The Confederate Flag has always been despised, I guess this poster did not hear about the dispute in S.C. that has been going on for years and years. Then to add insult to injury, people actually agree with the poster..
You can argue that Flying the confederate flag perpetrates a long and incredibly entrenched tradition of organized racism, bigotry, and terrorism. You can even argue that this flag must come down as quickly as possible, and that we as a nation will be better for it.
well, there are still people who believe ALL southerners fly that flag are racists. in case you didn't notice.
Actually no, I have hated that flag for years...but I have never lived in the South (born in northern NYS), educated in Massachusetts, so it was very far out of view. I grew up with many more Canadian flags than southern flags. My family fought for the Union Army, Ohio Regiment. My grandfather is a civil war history buff - his grandfather fought for Ohio and I have a healthy, reasonable view of the Union army but strong respect for Lincoln. I have thought that flag was a symbol of Southern stubbornness to accept enlightened, reasoned and moral thought for years. I refuse to live in Missouri (slave state)...I live in Kansas (a couple blocks away from Missouri) because it was a free state. I know John Brown was a deeply flawed man, but his cause was right. How anyone could have accepted slavery as a way of life is just unfathomable to me.
It seems you have a very advanced case of "hatethesouth" disease and there is no cure.
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