The Confederate Legacy
Ed Kilgore has a very interesting post on a new trend sweeping conservative politics in Dixie—“sovereignty resolutions” that appear to assert states’ rights to unilaterally invalidate federal action, a doctrine last seen in the hands of John C. Calhoun, the great antebellum theorist of white supremacy.
At any rate, while looking at Wikipedia for a Calhoun image, I saw this list of places named after John Calhoun. It’s a long list! And while I suppose I would hesitate to specifically place the blame for any current problems in American society on the fact that there are all these towns and counties and streets named after the guy, it is always striking for a historically informed northerner to see how thoroughly un-disavowed the legacy of white supremacy is in southern official culture. Get on 395 in DC and take the bridge across the Potomac, exiting onto Route 1, and you’ll find yourself on Jefferson Davis Highway. Yes. A highway named after the political leader of a rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States of America, founded on the principle that democracy was less important than the right of white people to own black people. Right there on signs and everything.
It puts the fact that a guy like Jeff Sessions can be ranking member on an important committee in perspective.
382 Responses to “The Confederate Legacy”
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May 6th, 2009 at 10:47 am
This photo should be used as frequently as possible. I think it’s the “Lurch” eyes.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Woo hoo – another post of Matthew’s calling people racists! That’s what, 3 such posts in the last 4 working days?
Remember a few days ago when Matthew was so completly lacking in self-awareness that he questioned whether there was some “some long list of people [Matthew has] been calling racists”?
Said it before and I’ll say it again – calling people racists appears to be one of Matthew’s very favorite activities on his blog. He seems to call someone a racist every other day or so.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Yes, I remember my own shock upon first encountering the Jeff Davis Memorial Road. I wasted many hours of drive-time trying to avoid it before giving up.
But it’s only part of the Southern adherence to tradition, after all. And there’s balance, too – you can hardly go anywhere in South Carolina without spending some time on the Nat Turner Parkway.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Well said! I also want to hurl when I see the statue of the Confederate solider in Alexandria.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Stop calling people racists!
Even racists!
May 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am
I know people who gave their son ‘Calhoun’ as a middle name.
It’s tricky, this one. South Carolina doesn’t have much going for it outside of Charleston, and if you’re naming streets for the people who figure prominently in state history, that’s what you end up with. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
And Al? Calling John Calhoun a white supremacist really isn’t that controversial, you witless fucking hack.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Al, Matt didn’t call anybody a racist. Oh, unless you mean Jefferson Davis – you’re not seriously disputing that characterization, are you?
But go right on clutching that white resentment card to your party-hack chest. It’s a pretty high card, isn’t it? I figure the GOP will never lose an election as long as it’s got a whopping big, Ace-of-trump-level card like that to play.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am
The South is our Waziristan.
He seems to call someone a racist every other day or so.
That’s wrong, but that would still put him well behind the neocons’ “An Antisemite A Day” program.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Al, you lying swine. (But I repeat myself.)
Said it before and I’ll say it again – calling people racists appears to be one of Matthew’s very favorite activities on his blog. He seems to call someone a racist every other day or so.
How big “appears” and “seems” are when they’re yours, eh?
Yes, I remember my own shock upon first encountering the Jeff Davis Memorial Road.
Just imagine having to account for being named “Jeff Davis” around 10 times a month. Barack Obama’s name has given me maybe 5% more breathing space.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Remember a few days ago when Matthew was so completly lacking in self-awareness that he questioned whether there was some “some long list of people [Matthew has] been calling racists”?
Remember a few minutes ago when Al was so completely lacking in self-awareness that he seemed not to grasp that calling John C. Motherfrakkin’ Calhoun a racist is not a provocative and controversial case of playing the race card.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:59 am
“Lurch eyes…” Yes and he kind of looks like the Rev. Henry Kane from Poltergeist 2.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I grew up in VA where Rt. 1 was known as Jeff Davis Highway – moved to PA and Rt. 1 here is Lincoln Highway
May 6th, 2009 at 11:01 am
So, I guess here’s the list from this post of people Matt is calling racists:
John C. Calhoun
Jefferson Davis
Jeff Sessions
Not a LONG list just yet, but it ain’t nothing.
One thing I would point out is that so far the list of people Matt has called racists seems to also be a list of racists.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:02 am
If you go to Montgomery here in Alabama, everything is named after George Wallace.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:02 am
There is also a high school in Springfield Virginia named after Robert E. Lee, in many respectse on of the most incapable commanding generals in history ands a prime reason for confederate defeat.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:04 am
My wife and I lived in Northern Virginia for a few years, and referred to Jefferson Davis Highway as “Traitor Lane.”
May 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am
To be fair to Al, Matt also mentioned Jeff Sessions. He mentioned Sessions only to say that the omnipresence of pro-slavery figures makes Sessions look like a reasonable figure by comparison, so Al is still mistaken, but he’s not actually defending Calhoun and Davis at the moment as far as I can tell.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am
“I know people who gave their son ‘Calhoun’ as a middle name.”
I know a South Carolinian who named her son ‘Calhoun’ as a FIRST name. She belongs to some sort of neo-secessionist group in Columbia. She’s also a lawyer.
The stereotype that all Southerners are racist hicks is grossly unfair. But dear God, there are some creepy racist people down there, and a great many of them are upper middle class and college-educated.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am
It’s tricky, this one. South Carolina doesn’t have much going for it outside of Charleston, and if you’re naming streets for the people who figure prominently in state history, that’s what you end up with.
I had a friend from South Carolina in college, otherwise quite liberal, who defended naming things after Calhoun, I suspect more or less for this reason.
But maybe we can convince them to swap to Stephen Colbert.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:07 am
You 20-something DC bloggers are cute when you cross the river. Such an adventure! Exotic place names! I’m looking forward to the day you go to Richmond.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:07 am
[...] This post from Yglesias got me thinking: John C. Calhoun was a scary looking dude: [...]
May 6th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I am highly agitated by any suggestion, however oblique, that the Confederacy represented anything other than the equal advancement of all races in the great Union which is these United States.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am
The first time I took that road I was unpleasantly surprised as well.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
As bad as Jefferson Davis highway is the Confederate White House. I have no objection to keeping it for its historical significance, but visit and you won’t hear a word from the tour guides about treason.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
What’s wrong with the Conferedate Statue in Alexandria?
As a Southerner I take offense to that remark.
I saw something on C-SPAN the other night, it was BookTV and it was about the opposition to the War by Southerners in the Confederacy. I forget who the guy was but he was a profesor at Georgia Southern I think.
The South was ruled by aristocracy. They were the planation owners and owned slaves. Not every white Southerner was a planation owner. Not every white Southerner owned slaves. Some did not want to fight or even fought for the Union.
Remember Lincoln only “freed the slaves” in the states that seceeded.
The history of the South is a troubled one. But, it is most definitely part of the nation’s history. We should not forget that. And, we all should work together to heal that wound on all sides. (Black, White, North and South) Off the cuff comments do not help matters any.
Have you seen the Confederate Cemetry in places like Alexandria or Chattanooga vs. the National Cemetries? The National Cemetries are cared for while the Confederate Cemetries are overgrown and run-down. Those grounds should be cared for as well.
All of the said, I’m a liberal Democrat and think that the Republican Party is running themselves into the ditch. And, I’m enjoying it all from the sidelines.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Al is on a mission to single-handedly prove Matt’s contention that the right is more offended by discussion of racism than by racism itself. Mission accomplished.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Travis:
So you think highways in the US should be named after Jefferson Davis?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
You know that Jeff is short for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III – yep, three straight generations named for the unrepentant President of the Confederacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I was on a tour of the Capitol a few months ago, and it’s apparently the law, or at least tradition, that each state can put up two statues of any famous person they like. Many of them are in a Statuary Hall of some kind but there’s not enough room there so you see them spread all over the hallways. Anyway, one of the ones Virginia put up is Robert E. Lee. I was, to be honest, astounded. I asked the tour guide, so, you mean there’s no restriction on what the states can submit? and he said pretty much no. I guess I can understand the reason why one wouldn’t want to get into picking and choosing, slippery slope and all…but you’d think a rule about “no one who waged a military rebellion against the United States” would be a sufficiently bright-line rule that you could reasonably enforce.
Not to mention, that’s just a giant “fuck you” from Virginia, isn’t it?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Before Lincoln was elected, southern states effected a split. Once Lincoln was nomiated the Democratic Party split into free and slave factions. Seceeders opted for Beckenridge and Joseph Lane as nominees. The Whigs and ‘Know Nothings’ nominated Bell and Everett.
So as soon as Lincoln was nominted even BEFORE election, the southern states succeeded in seceeding.
Que lastima!
May 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
And by the way, I grew up in Georgia, and I think all of this Confederate nostalgia is embarrassing.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Hey, not too far outside Atlanta we actually have Jim Crow Road.
But I find that a lot less weird than today’s Republicans talking about secession in order to prove that they’re such American patriots.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I get tired of reading this point.
“Remember Lincoln only “freed the slaves” in the states that seceeded.”
a) and that was what percentage of the total slave population?
b) perhaps he would have finished the job if HE HADN’T BEEN SHOT!
“Have you seen the Confederate Cemetry in places like Alexandria or Chattanooga vs. the National Cemetries? The National Cemetries are cared for while the Confederate Cemetries are overgrown and run-down. Those grounds should be cared for as well.”
Why? By whom?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:16 am
travis, i’m all for “healing the wounds,” but in order to heal the wounds, the people from the traitor states need to acknowledge that honoring the people who lead the traitorous actions isn’t on.
i’m still waiting for that moment (having just been down in new orleans for the jazz and heritage festival, i’m reminded that there’s a jeff davis highway there as well).
May 6th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Careful. You’ll get some traitor-fluffer in here arguing that the Civil War had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. Also, they’ll insist that you shouldn’t even call it “The Civil War.” To them, it’s “The War Between the States.”
The South proudly preserves its European aristocratic tradition, whereby the underprivileged many are willing to suffer for the interests of the overprivileged few, in exchange for nothing but a sad kind of regional pride. Then, the many go back home to rot.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Fine, let the Southern States secede. They will lose all military bases, federal highways will become toll roads, Postal services will be stopped, Social Security will be history, veteran’s benefits will stop, etc.
Who needs them? The smart ones will migrate north before it happens and the “real” America will cleanse the South of miscreants and conquer it again.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Glenn,
That is amazing considering Virginia has a quite a roster of potential candidates; Washington, Jefferson, and Madison spring to mind.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:18 am
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/CSA.htm
At the link is a comparison of the Confederate constitution to the US one. By and large, the Confederates just wrote “Slavrey RAWKS” in the margins of the existing constitution; however, there are some peripherally related issues discussed. All of which are GOP talking points.
Why? Because the contemporary GOP is THE SAME as the confederacy.
It’s not controversial to say that the Southern GOP works on a patronage succession (as do the Dems), and the Confederates were all allowed to return to power after the war. The ideology has simply named its replacement at the retirement of another Confederate.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Matt: you need to get yourself to a library or bookstore for a copy of Confederates in the Attic stat.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:21 am
retake 11th grade american history
civil war wasn’t fought over slavery, MATTHEW
May 6th, 2009 at 11:22 am
That’s because most white Southerners were broke-ass poor. The South had a tiny middle class, who were known for buying slaves and then renting them out, rather than buying land themselves, because they couldn’t afford enough slaves to be economically viable. So slave ownership did penetrate down into what little middle class the chronically backward, underdeveloped South had.
Pointing out that most white Southerners didn’t own slaves only serves to highlight what craven, servile fools they were, willing to fight and die for their betters’ way of life. This cringing tradition of Southern, snivelling bitchery continues today in their opposition to labor organization. Anything to please their betters.
I guess there still are slaves in the south, they just happen to be white.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:22 am
It might be useful, but probably won’t be, to point out that Yglesias didn’t call Sessions a racist. Didn’t call Jefferson Davis a racist. And didn’t even call Old Blue Eyes, John C. Calhoun, a racist. He pointed out that Calhoun and Davis were rebels and advocated the right of white people to own black people. Since slavery is an ancient practice, it isn’t specifically a theory of race. Even white supremacy isn’t a theory of race: it’s an economic one.
Pig-ignorant racial views about inherent racial differences often go hand-in-hand with the belief in chattel slavery and economic advantage based on skin color, but that’s not germane to Yglesias’s comments. Yglesias may believe that these folks are racists — I think they are — but he hasn’t actually called them that. Anywhere. Al likes to take “sounds like” arguments. He does it as often as he “breathes” since, as a zombie, he mimics Life.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Remember Lincoln only “freed the slaves” in the states that seceeded.
No, the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the states that seceded. Lincoln actually did free all the slaves, mostly by crushing the Southron Insurrection, even if he did miss the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment by having the poor judgment to get shot in the head.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am
it should also be said that the neo-secessionist argument from the 10th amendment is just silly.
like their confederate forebears, these idiots are confusing an extra-constitutional right of rebellion–which any political entity has, but which no political charter can grant or withhold–with a constitutional right of orderly withdrawal.
look, anybody who wants to rebel can rebel–that’s true, the world over. when you rebel, you attempt to overthrow the constitution. fair enough–there’s no point in looking for a constitutional way to overthrow the constitution. you just declare yourself in rebellion, and constitution be damned.
then you duke it out on the battlefield. jefferson and adams did not claim that the english constitution gave them a right of orderly withdrawal from the british sovereignty. they just declared sovereignty, and hired a good general. if you win (e.g. u.s. vs. u.k.), then you are sovereign. if you lose (e.g. c.s.a. vs. u.s.a.), then you are not.
but that’s all to say: the american revolution gives absolutely no precedent for any attempt to find a mechanism for continued or reasserted state sovereignty *within* the constitution. there is no recognition of state sovereignty within the constitution.
quite the opposite: there are explicit wing-clipping provisions in the constitution that demote the states to the status of non-sovereign entities. they cannot make treaties. they cannot coin money. they cannot keep troops in time of peace. they cannot declare war. they cannot choose a form of government other than a republican one.
in other words, they are explicitly debarred from the central “acts and things which independent states may of right do” (as the declaration puts it). they are permanent wards of the federal government. they cannot fly on their own.
so long as those wing-clipping provisions are in place, the constitution explicitly rules out state sovereignty. explicitly. i.e., as in “the kind of stuff that the 10th amendment can’t help you with.”
so this crap about the 10A meaning that states are sovereign is utter bollocks. it’s just constitutional illiteracy.
of course, if any states want to go full out and try for extra-constitutional rebellion, then they are welcome. republicans and southerners never seem to care much for the constitution, anyhow.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:24 am
That would certainly explain why a majority of Mississippians fought on the side of the Union.
See? I told you the revisionists would show up.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:24 am
While Calhoun was definitely an asshole, he was also dead about ten or fifteen years by the time the civil war happened. Sure he was pro-state’s rights and probably would have loved the South to secede – but that’s not quite the same thing as being a “leader of a rebellion”.
Further, if you’re going to criticize that, why not criticize all those Founders who were very cool with the 3/5 compromise? I bet some of those people have places named after them, even in the sophisticated north! Shocking, I know.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:25 am
So, I guess here’s the list from this post of people Matt is calling racists:
John C. Calhoun
Jefferson Davis
Jeff Sessions
Not a LONG list just yet, but it ain’t nothing.
You left out trendy conservative politicians in Dixie.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:26 am
And yet, in Southern practice, slavery did develop a pseudoscience of racial difference that even led to a reinterpretation of Genesis to suit their race-based slave industry.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Take Rt 50 out into Virginia and you’ll find it’s called the “Lee Jackson Memorial Highway”. Farther out it runs the the “Mosby Heritage Area”. No kidding, they’ve got signs of a little guy in silhouette on horseback:
http://www.mosbyheritagearea.org/
I like Virginia pretty well but there are middle fingers to the Union everywhere you look.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
This is a tricky historical question. But northerners have never been willing to recognize the existence of loyal southerners, nor even to recognize that secession tore southern states asunder just as it did the Union as a whole. Nor are they willing, in a post dedicated to shock at stuff named after secessionists, to recognize that stuff named “Calhoun” is also located in places like Missouri, Illinois, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, West Virginia, Nebraska, Minnesota, Connecticut, California, Indiana, New York City, and Washington.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Reader from the South here… it extends much further than that. About every third school in the South seems to be named after a Confederate heavyweight, thus there are Jefferson Davis Middle Schools and JEB Stuart Elementaries an especially large number of Robert E. Lee Highs (which has been in some places shortened to “Lee”). There is a Deshler High which is named, again, after an fallen Confederate general. There at least two high schools named after Nathan Bedford Forrest – a Confederate officer, but also a founder of the KKK. Incidentally, one of the cities in which NBF High appears, Gadsden, AL, also bears a statue honoring Forrest in its main square.
What makes it borderline bizarre is that these schools are often located in majority African-American areas… such that Robert E. Lee High will be like 99% black. And, there are a lot of mascots termed “the Rebels” or something to that effect. So you might see a football team, the Robert E. Lee High Fightin’ Rebels perhaps, whose players are literally all black.
Of course this isn’t limited to just Confederates, but also segregationists. Consider for instance that in Alabama anything run by the state which is relatively young is named after one of the Wallaces, George or Lurleen. Thus in Alabama two of the bigger two-year, vocational-type institutions are “Calhoun Community College” and “Wallace State.”
So anyone with a sense of history in the South understands good and well what all this means. The place is littered with homages to white supremacy – all in the guise of promoting “heritage,” of course. And while people occasionally protest the more egregious examples (see: the controversy over the University of Mississippi’s mascot (the Rebels) and also its common name (”Ole Miss”) as well as the fight to get rid of one of the NBF high schools) largely these things go unremarked in the public sphere. Don’t think for a minute, though, that it doesn’t impact the perception of race.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am
DTM: I had that conversation with a South Carolinian from the upstate (classic redheaded “Scotch-Irish” guy, went to Ole Miss) who was the same. You can see the slight unease that comes from explaining it to an outsider. The days of Jackson and Calhoun clearly inspire nostalgia towards a time when SC was central to American history, albeit for reasons that don’t bear up so well.
retake 11th grade american history
Ah, “ike” was clearly taught American history in the South, where you’re lucky if you make it past Reconstruction into the twentieth century.
Bob: don’t forget the Beauregard. It’s a bit like having three generations of “Abraham Grant” in the family.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am
In Minneapolis, we have a lake named after this jackass. Why? I have no clue. We are about as north as it gets.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Yeah, sorta like the way Yale named a residential college after Calhoun in 1932, and to this day defends against renaming it by invoking tradition.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:34 am
MDS you beat me to it. As a northerner raised in part in North Carolina, I can tell you that the cultural dissonance of finding a Calhoun college at Yale of all places really threw me as an 18 year old. I couldn’t get my head around it. Still can’t as an alum several years later.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I live in Alabama, and I have friends who went to John C. Calhoun Community College. I bet I do not know five people who could tell me anything about him.
FWIW Jorge Posada went there.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:35 am
But northerners have never been willing to recognize the existence of loyal southerners, nor even to recognize that secession tore southern states asunder just as it did the Union as a whole.
Perhaps southerners could educate us northerners about this important issue by making monuments to these people, naming schools and highways after them, and sending statues of them to the Capitol to replace Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Calhoun.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I’ve long thought that Matt needs to spend more time outside the Northeastern urban belt. Take a long drive down Rt 15 through Virginia, N.C. and onto Myrtle Beach. Get to know places like Culpepper and Florence. I haven’t been to Florence, SC for a long time, but it used to look like it’s been hit by a nuclear weapon. Spending time in these kinds of places is a good way to better know the depth of white supremacy in the South and also the depth of the struggles to overcome and defeat white supremacy. The Southern version of white racism is still an enormous blight on American society, but many of the virtues of American culture have been developed in fighting against racism. That’s hard to understand unless someone’s spent time in the belly of the beast.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Ya but the biggest problem in the South today is anti-racism. So if everyone just stopped them racists, then Southerners might be willing to accept a few Federal tax dollars from Ohio and Michigan to help their own unemployed keep the lights on.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:40 am
There was also a proud and tradition among Southern commoners to flee from draft and desert their armies. North Carolina, in part due to the Unionism in the Appalachian areas (given the mountains’ hatred of the Piedmont / Coastal planter elites and their slavery) had among the highest rates of flight and desertion.
This wasn’t just draft avoidance — it was resistance. As the war progressed, the number of Southern ordinary folk rejecting the illegitimate war of secession grew to levels that even the leadership recognized.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Yeah, sorta like the way Yale named a residential college after Calhoun in 1932, and to this day defends against renaming it by invoking tradition.
Uh huh, because we all know meaning has nothing to do with the identity of the speaker or the context in which it’s spoken. Plainly Yale is intending to celebrate secession!
May 6th, 2009 at 11:42 am
From the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Jefferson Davis. What a long strange trip it’s been.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:43 am
While driving through Tennessee I was somewhat taken aback to pass Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park. The website says:
I guess it’s a good thing that they don’t mention the Klan thing.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:44 am
By your logic anything named Stuyvesant or a whole host of other named sites within NYC maintain the same legacy of white supremacy and slavery. Its hard to understand the difference between these place names and Jefferson Davis Highway. Better yet…what about Wall Street, which reminds us constantly of the armed beachead established on Native American land, and the resultant genocide that purged the North almost entirely of its native inhabitants.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Why are we stopping with the Confederacy? All American history has been based on white supremacy. We need to abolish all traces of it before we can get on with remaking America. Washington, Jefferson, even Lincoln all must go. The government that killed the Indians and stole their land must be overthrown. Was it the Confederacy that did that? I don’t remember. I’m not “historically informed.”
We all know that this country wasn’t founded on egalitarian democratic ideals , no matter what the Declaration says. White, rich men had the power. We should repudiate this and tear up the Constitution and write a new one. We should turn the country over to the oppressed minorities, namely blacks, Native Americans, and Mexicans. White women don’t count because they have been racists too. I say we model our new country on South Africa. Perhaps Matt can spend a year there taking notes and report back to us how to go about the transformation.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I just posted a blog about this very issue specifically as it relates to actions taken in Oklahoma. check it out: http://themightyliberal.blogspot.com. Comment there freely as well.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Ever heard of Calhoun college at Yale?
I’m a Calhoun! It’s an awful thing to be…
May 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Nice catch, El Cid, but I should point out that Appalachia tended toward free-soil politics (eg., “West” Virginia) because, as you pointed out, they didn’t stand to benefit from industrialized Southern slavery in the mid-19c.
Texas, also, was divided, but that was likewise a function of the local political differences, in this case between settled white Texas and the former Nueces Strip.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am
The revisionism that the “late unpleasantness” was not about slavery, but about something else (the usual code term is “states’ rights”) began almost before the last echo of the cannons died away. Before it broke out, it was obvious that a conflict centered around the maintenance and extension of teh “peculiar institution”. Missouri compromise, anyone? Then, once this matter was settled by force of arms, all the sudden in the South the reason for the war was morphing into something, anything but slavery.
Just a bit of cursory research will find guys like Calhoun denouncing secession in around the war of 1812 as total baderdash (because the New England states were opposed to going to war with Britain then) but suddenly it was on the table when their peculiar institution was being gored.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Glenn wrote, I was on a tour of the Capitol a few months ago, and it’s apparently the law, or at least tradition, that each state can put up two statues of any famous person they like.
I was visiting the Capitol a few years ago with a friend from Canada. He thought it amusing that some of the statues from Southern states were traitors.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I think the media should do a penetrating expose on southern white men, to find out which ones are pro-American, and which ones are anti-American.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:49 am
to correct an earlier comment, Route 30 is the Lincoln Highway, not Route 1. They cross paths in west Philadelphia.
Route 30/Lincoln Highway was the first coast to coast highway in the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Highway
May 6th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Sure, you have to denounce Southern / GOP treasonism and neo- (or paleo-) Confederate racism when it rears its hideous, reptilian heads…
…but on the other hand, you don’t want to assume that all the rest of our history is so devoid of ugly moments, as has been mentioned regarding the previous inhabitants (Native Americans).
May 6th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Nonreality wrote, The government that killed the Indians and stole their land must be overthrown. Was it the Confederacy that did that? I don’t remember. I’m not “historically informed.”
Difference is that most of us Northerners don’t spend our days fetishizing the folks that did that.
E.g., I appreciate the role Northern generals played in defeating the Confederacy, but cringe when I see the stuff about what they subsequently did with the Indians.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:52 am
John C. Calhoun was one in a long line of racist Democrats, including Woodrow Wilson. The Democratic Party has quite a history.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
If you go to Montgomery here in Alabama, everything is named after George Wallace.
Wallace was elected to his last term as governor on the strength of the black vote. No, I’m not making this up…
May 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Nate wrote, Its hard to understand the difference between these place names and Jefferson Davis Highway.
LOL! Are you kidding? Very few people know what those names in NY represent historically. Many many people, OTOH, know what Davis and Lee represented.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Ah, it appears as if the South is rising again in this thread.
Point being that there are certain things that count as part of collective American history, for better or worse, and Calhoun’s career is actually one of them; Jefferson Davis’ fame comes from being what is now called a “rebel leader” or a “warlord”.
I’m still surprised that the Cherokee casino in western NC accepts $20 bills.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
JM: Also, it was the eastern portion of Texas which was amenable to plantation-style agriculture — an economic system which really only worked profitably for certain crops.
Historical maps of cotton production, such as this map from 1860, parallel the agricultural with the political / social system.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Yes, and there was also quite a bit of irrational fear in the north about “the slave power.” Poor Zachary Taylor’s unquiet bones!
IIRC, a generation of US politicians, north and south, cynically exploited the mistrust between these two civilizations in the US before it all went boom.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:55 am
wow, consider me ignorant! i had no idea my own progressive city of Minneapolis had our famous lake Calhoun named after such an awful human being. boggles the mind.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Re: Mosby
For those interested in him and local history, I recommend a book called Ranger Mosby.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Matt: Go back to ASJr’s Age of Jackson. The original states rights controversy was about tariffs that supported Northern mfgrs at the expense of Southern planters. Calhoun latched on to nullification to serve the economic interests of his state. He even hooked up with Biddle to fight Jackson. IOW narrow economic interests were the driving force for States Rights and Calhoun then. I don’t see anything comparable today. It’s a cranky socio-political movement unsupported by any economic interest of substance. It’s a joke.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I love getting into arguments with pro-Confederacy revisionists who loudly insist the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, but with State’s Rights. When pressed just what “right” was being impinged upon, they literally can’t provide a single answer that doesn’t have something to do with the institution of slavery. The Southern antebellum establishment was as UNDEMOCRATIC an institution as ever existed in this country. They held the threat of scecession over the country for decades in order to force Congress to enable them to expand slavery and its odious rules onto the rest of the country. When the territory gained after the Mexican-American War made it impossible for the South to reign supreme under the 1820 Mason-Dixon line rules, then you had things like the Fugitive Slave Act inserted into the Compromise of 1850. Obviously, it is ironic that the Fugitive Slave Act was written by Indiana Senator Jesse Bright, the only Senator removed from Congress for treason.
The comical thing is that the Southern economic system was ALREADY faltering by 1860, having already been surpassed by the burgeoning Industrial Northeast. So, they threw a snit and plunged the country into a Civil War because they wanted their backwards economic system based on buying and selling of human beings to not only remain in place, but to be expanded to the rest of the country.
I had a brother in law who attended BEDFORD FORREST HIGH SCHOOL in Florida. What made me really sad is that he literally had no idea why that was so problematic.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Nonreality wrote, We all know that this country wasn’t founded on egalitarian democratic ideals , no matter what the Declaration says.
(yawn)
The difference is that, while the Declaration’s ideals certainly weren’t truly realized at our Republic’s beginning, they’re something to admire and strive for. Similarly, while Jefferson’s owning of slaves was loathesome, there were many ideals he espoused which were admirable.
What were the admirable actions and ideals espoused by Davis and Lee?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Indeed.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
76, you are completely correct about Wallace and the black vote in his last election.
Wallace was ultimately a cynical and craven politician who embraced Segregation and all of its ugliness in order to gain and expand his own political power. He might have apologized for being a bigot, but he never exactly disavowed what a craven coward he was for going down that road to begin with.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Right. Woodrow Wilson was, of course, a Southern segregationist Democrat by birth and tradition, though later would find success in the Northeast (NJ). His father supported the Confederacy and owned slaves.
The weird thing is how the Southern segregationist Democrats then served as the entire bedrock of the Republican Southern Strategy / Reagan Revolution, and today’s Republicans blame Southern segregationist Democrats for their racism while welcoming them into the party, as long as they change from (D) to (R).
It’s like how they never could forgive Robert Byrd for not switching to become yet another Strom Thurmond Dixiepublican and for apologizing for and denouncing his previous racism.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Indeed.
Yeah, you would think that set of Republican talking points would have been shelved for good sometime last year, but I guess there are always a few stragglers.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
When the “it wasn’t about slavery” idiots start rearing their troglodyte heads, I always like to trot out the Declaration of Secession issued by my home state, Georgia. Here are the first two lines:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
Nope, not about slavery at all!
May 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Opposition in Texas to the Confederacy is easy to map because the state held a referendum on the issue. The hill country (still a progressive bastion) and the Rio Grande Valley (thoroughly non-white) said ‘no,’ along with a couple of counties near Amarillo (I think).
East and West Texas are still hotbeds of vicious racism to this day, though the problem can be found everywhere.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I live in Alabama, and I have friends who went to John C. Calhoun Community College. I bet I do not know five people who could tell me anything about him.
You had me at “I live in Alabama,” Mark.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
85. Robert E. Lee was far more liberal on slavery than Jefferson.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
As a Southerner, it gets old being stuck between neo-Confederate nincompoops who want to venerate things we should all oppose, and non-Southerners who appear to think the only sins of racism and oppression took place in the states of the Confederacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Why blame Republicans for the Democratic Party’s racist past? Calhoun was a Democrat. Wilson was a Democrat. Harry S Truman was a member of the Klan. The Klan was aligned with the Democratic Party. Democrats nominated Klan members to the Supreme Court.
You can’t change that history, and you can’t blame that on Republicans. It wasn’t a Democrat who freed the slaves…
May 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
“In regard to labor, two systems obtain: one that of slave labor, the other that of free labor. Of the two, the first is, in our judgment, except so far as the feelings are concerned, decidedly the least oppressive. If the slave has never been a free man, we think, as a general rule, his sufferings are less than those of the free laborer at wages. As to actual freedom, one has just about as much as the other. The laborer at wages has all the disadvantages of freedom and none of its blessings, while the slave, if denied the blessings, is freed from the disadvantages.
We are no advocates of slavery. We are as heartily opposed to it as any modern abolitionist can be. But we say frankly that, if there must always be a laboring population distinct from proprietors and employers, we regard the slave system as decidedly preferable to the system at wages.
It is no pleasant thing to go days without food; to lie idle for weeks, seeking work and finding none; to rise in the morning with a wife and children you love, and know not where to procure them a breakfast; and to see constantly before you no brighter prospect than the almshouse.
Yet these are no infrequent incidents in the lives of our laboring population. Even in seasons of general prosperity, when there was only the ordinary cry of “hard times,” we have seen hundreds of people in a not very populous village, in a wealthy portion of our common country, suffering for the want of the necessaries of life, willing to work and yet finding no work to do. Many and many is the application of a poor man for work, merely for his food, we have seen rejected. These things are little thought of, for the applicants are poor; they fill no conspicuous place in society, and they have no biographers. But their wrongs are chronicled in heaven.
It is said there is no want in this country. There may be less in some other countries. But death by actual starvation in this country is, we apprehend, no uncommon occurrence. The sufferings of a quiet, unassuming but useful class of females in our cities, in general seamstresses, too proud to beg or to apply to the almshouse, are not easily told. They are industrious; they do all that they can find to do. But yet the little there is for them to do, and the miserable pittance they receive for it, is hardly sufficient to keep soul and body together.
And yet there is a man who employs them to make shirts, trousers, etc., and grows rich on their labors. He is one of our respectable citizens, perhaps is praised in the newspapers for his liberal donations to some charitable institution. He passes among us as a pattern of morality and is honored as a worthy Christian. And why should he not be, since our Christian community is made up of such as he, and since our clergy would not dare question his piety lest they should incur the reproach of infidelity and lose their standing and their salaries? . . .
The average life–working life, we mean–of the girls that come to Lowell, for instance, from Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, we have been assured, is only about three years. What becomes of them then? Few of them ever marry; fewer still ever return to their native places with reputations unimpaired. “She has worked in a factory” is almost enough to damn to infamy the most worthy and virtuous girl. . . .
Where go the proceeds of their labors? The man who employs them, and for whom they are toiling as so many slaves, is one of our city nabobs, reveling in luxury; or he is a member of our legislature, enacting laws to put money in his own pocket; or he is a member of Congress, contending for a high tariff to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich; or in these times he is shedding crocodile tears over the deplorable condition of the poor laborer, while he docks his wages 25 percent. . . . And this man too would fain pass for a Christian and a republican. He shouts for liberty, stickles for equality, and is horrified at a Southern planter who keeps slaves.
One thing is certain: that, of the amount actually produced by the operative, he retains a less proportion than it costs the master to feed, clothe, and lodge his slave. Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences who would retain all the advantages of the slave system without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slaveholders.”
Orestes Brownson 1840
May 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I grew up in a town on the Virginia/North Carolina border and this kind of thing is just the norm. I lived in a mixed middle class neighborhood, but we were very close to one of the more ritzy parts of the county, and some of the street names in that community were just awful. Right by the Carlisle school, which was a very well known private school, there was Jefferson Davis Drive, Stonewall Jackson Trail, and Jeb Stuart Road. Good times.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Re: the Appalachian South: From my limited reading, the folks there hated both the slavers and the slaves. Feel free to jump in, but I’ve always wondered why an “East Tennessee” was never formed, as I thing the Unionist sentiment was every bit as strong there.
On another note, As a native WVian with family roots there from well before statehood, I’ve been amused since HS that my county bordered Calhoun, Clay and Webster counties. I’m betting that there are fewer Webster counties in the old slave states than Calhoun counties in the free ones; I only saw the 3 Midwest ones.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
El Cid, if it makes you feel better, Southerners are at least WAY OPEN about their racism, where Northerners have a tendency to hide it pretty well.
Of course, no one in, say, Boston, holds celebrations commemorating the 1970’s busing riots. New York City doesn’t hold a parade celebrating the Nativist draft riots during the Civil War. Southerners, on the other hand, seem to revel in their total defeat in a “rebellion” held for purely immoral reasons.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Shakes, again you’re obsessed with past Democratic racism, but you conspicuously ignore just WHY Dixiecrats left the party to become Republicans in the 1960’s. When SOUTHERN DEMOCRAT Lydon Johnson used Republican votes to get the Civil Rights Act passed, for some reason Republicans instead of letting the Democrats split in half, freaked out that black voters might begin to vote Democratic, and adopted that idiotic “Southern Strategy”. Sure, it helped the GOP in the short run, but permanently ceding the black vote to the Democrats and alienating every other non-white voting bloc seems to have caught up to them.
Think about it. All Nixon had to do was let the Democrats split apart over Civil Rights, but nooooooooooooooooo
May 6th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
the South wants to secede? Fine. Let them go.
Let’s see how they do without all the federal tax money they take from those damned yankees and Californians. They can give us back science too and they can have creationism. If they get ill, just pray to Jeebus. He’s omnipotent, right?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Orestes Brownson? I’m tickled by what Poe had to say about him, that he “has not altogether succeeded in convincing himself of those important truths which he is so anxious to impress upon his readers.”
FOX uses northern Catholics like O’Reilly and Hannity to lead a mostly southern political movement. Brownson was just ahead of his time.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
This. This is it. This is the neo-Confederate dreck which has been in style among conservative Southerners since the ‘lost cause’ bullshit of the 1920s and again in the 1950s and again in the Reaganite flowover. That’s what I’m talking about regarding venerating the reprehensible.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The Klan was aligned with the Democratic Party
Yeah, and then Nixon took all the Klansmen with him and they all loved Reagan. Who do you think you are bullshitting with this stuff? Do you imagine there is someone stupid enough to fall for this?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
e. nonee moose, yes, you’re exactly correct, Wallace changed his tune, and indeed received black support. But historically he’ll be remembered as the face of segregation. And that’s the way a lot of people in the South view him, although there are of course many who will point out what you yourself have identified. Nonetheless, to most Southerners he will always be the man who made the stand in the schoolhouse door.
A lot of people on here are twisting what is being said here. No one is suggesting that the history of the non-South US is devoid of this, and yes there are certainly instances of nomenclature reflecting historical figures who are, shall we say, illiberal in the extreme, outside of the South.
The difference is, in the South, it’s ubiquitous. It’s a pattern. It’s celebratory. The pattern reflects a belief in the Lost Cause, the revisionist perspective on the antebellum South which envisions slavery as paternalistic, and Southern society as benignly paternalistic and ultimately as more worthy than the industrial North. This belief is held by most of the middle-upper classes, as reflected in, well, naming their kids Jefferson Beauregard and sending statues of Confederate generals to the statuary hall in Washington and attending fraternities/sororities that have costume balls in which the men dress like Confederates and the women dress like Scarlett … in addition to naming every damn thing after some Confederate or another. This belief is also bought into to some extent in the lower classes, as illustrated by their adoption of the rebel flag and other confederate imagery (”the South will rise again” appears frequently on cheap airbrushed t-shirts, for instance).
No one is suggesting we erase history. The Southern states have chosen, however, to use this history to make a not-so-subtle point. The fact that they have done so, and continue to do so, is indicative of a respect for more than just these persons’ places in history – its indicative of a respect for the content of what they stood for, white supremacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I think a lot of people on this thread, MY most definitely included, would benefit from reading Lawrence Goldstone’s Dark Bargain, which is a blow by blow description of how the Constitution was drafted and then passed. IIRC, the 3/5 of a man clause was the result of a compromise between South Carolina and Massachusetts, where the Southern slave interests got to keep owning their slaves, and the Northern shipping interests got to keep supplying them. Sail away….
We are none of us pure on this issue, and often those who assume the mantle of purity are doing so for the most tendentious reasons.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Because they’ve eagerly lapped up the Democrat’s racist vomit and subsisted on it for forty years. They own it now. Absent that, the Republicans would dry up and blow away.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Why blame Republicans for the Democratic Party’s racist past?
Perhaps, just perhaps, because modern Democrats repudiate it and modern Republicans embrace it?
Moron.
As a Southerner, it gets old being stuck between neo-Confederate nincompoops who want to venerate things we should all oppose, and non-Southerners who appear to think the only sins of racism and oppression took place in the states of the Confederacy.
Indeed. The usual line, which is valid with qualification, is that there is at least a collective recognition for some kind of atonement (however superficial) for collective evils done in the process of building the nation. But if people are going to slap a Dixie flag on chunks of their history, it’s really not for Yankees to apologise on their behalf.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I didn’t think I’d have to point out that Brownson wasn’t defending slavery but pointing out the hypocrisy of northern pretensions. Something that is alive and well today.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
We are none of us pure on this issue
Well, most of us. Impure on other issues, to be sure.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Last month as I was doing my VA tazes, I noticed the state seal on the cover of the instruction book, with a guy holding a sword standing on a dead guy, with “Sic semper tyrannis” as the caption. Seeing how this is what John Wiles Booth said right after he shot Lincoln, I think this counts as a giant middle finger towards the Union. It’s the state motto for God’s sake!
On the other hand, growing up out west everything (schools, roads, towns, counties) is named after some colonel or other whom you can bet was involved in the genocide of the natives.
Apropos of nothing, Maryland’s motto is “Manly deeds, womanly words.” WTF?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Riffing on pseuodnymous in nc’s quote:
As a former Democrat, it got old being stuck between creative class nincompoops who falsely smear their political opponents as racist, and then act like nothing happened, and other nincompoops who really are stone racists.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Said it before and I’ll say it again – calling people racists appears to be one of Matthew’s very favorite activities on his blog. He seems to call someone a racist every other day or so.
I’m trying to figure out how to put this as sensitively as possible, but…hitching your star to the party of racists, which just happens to be the party where all the nation’s white supremacists reside, and whose policies for the last forty years have been calibrated to leverage racial division into electoral success does not make *you* personally a racist.
Just morally repugnant.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
You mean aside from regurgitating the common defense of slavery as preferable to the abominable regime of industrialists in the north?
Other than that? No. No defense of slavery here. Other than, you know.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
There’s a Jefferson Davis Presidential Library in Biloxi, Mississippi.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Let’s not forget that during the 1980 election, Reagan chose PHILADELPHIA,MISSISSIPPI of all places to give a “State’s Rights” speech. Yet, conservatives to the last man are utterly surprised that African-Americans think that they are racist.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I’m struck by how many of these comments, purporting to understand American history, the South, and the Civil War, are founded on the caricature of an idea that could be stated as “one side was good, and won; one side was bad, and lost; and the descendants of the bad side won’t admit it and are thus still bad.”
I’m 33, grew up in a small town in Virginia, have never voted Republican, would call myself fairly liberal on most issues (2nd Amdt is the big predictable exception)…and somehow, when I read these sneers about Robert E Lee I want to tell the writers to shut their stupid presumptuous mouths, piss off and go back to their northern homes.
I’m not saying that, so much as disclosing the impulse and stating that I’m not sure it’s a totally invalid impulse. Kvetching about how things in the South are named for Southern Civil War leaders is just silly. Anyone understanding history would be shocked if they weren’t. What, in your minds, ought the case to be? Should every high school be named Deer Lakes or Mountain Run or whatever? Renamed for civil rights leaders? When would all this renaming have happened – the early 90s?
I expect a lot of this finger pointing and name calling feels easy to those doing it because southern white people are “the other.” And fair enough – but it would be nice if you showed a little more awareness of yourselves. Really, Yglesias’ post is far more measured (or equivocal) than some of the dreck that followed it.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Do they still celebrate Lee-Jackson-King Day (in lieu of MLK Day) in VA?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Never posted here before, but as a lifelong Southern white Democrat, I just have to chime in and say thanks to my fellow Southerners for trying to explain us to our fellow Northerners, and fellow Northerners, at least many of those commenting here, you just might be as guilty of intolerance as you accuse many of my fellow Southerners of being. The South’s history is not only about slavery;It is a class thing and a traditional thing. Good, bad, or indifferent, that’s our history.
Why should you have a problem with roads and stuff named after historical figures from the Civil War period? I mean, after all, every single town has a street named after Martin Luther King, plus there are many towns and counties in my state named after Columbus, Madison, Monroe, Jefferson, and Washington. There is a town and a county named after LaFayette, for heaven’s sake.
This current notion on the part of some Republicans who are espousing secession only insures that the more of this that is covered in the media, the sooner Republicans marginalize themselves out of existence. It is actually entertaining to watch and will also probably insure that some of the more extreme ones begin to lose their bully pulpits.
For example,go to this article in my local newspaper about Erick Erickson’s comments on Justice Souter:
http://www.macon.com/198/story/706158.html
May 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
John C. Calhoun, in addition to being pro-slavery, was also Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Vice-President of the United States.
But please, do continue to believe that the south and the south alone is unable to properly address the evil in its history.
Really, there is not a square inch of the United States that has not been touched by genocide, slavery, segregation, or discrimination. But that does not prevent the square inches outside the the south from sitting in judgment of those within.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I got misty-eyed for you, lambert. I don’t know how you coped.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
@Todd: MLK has his own holiday in VA now. Lee-Jackson day is a separate state holiday. They changed it back around 2000, when they were racistly neglecting to change all the highway signs and tear down all the confederate statues.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Todd, it is Friday before MLK day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee-Jackson_Day
May 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Lambert, you prick, NOBODY IS CLAIMING PURITY. THAT’S A STRAWMAN ARGUMENT.
The historical racism of the North IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FUCKING FORM JUSTIFIES THE CONTEMPORARY RACISM OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
How do you not get that?
And when we’re talking about Federal money, we’re talking about New York and California money.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Southerners are neither a race nor have they been literally enslaved.
English. You speak it?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
“Yeah, and then Nixon took all the Klansmen with him and they all loved Reagan. Who do you think you are bullshitting with this stuff? Do you imagine there is someone stupid enough to fall for this?”
To my knowledge Nixon and Reagan were not involved in or with the Klan. Don’t blame the Democratic party’s past on Republicans.
Because they’ve eagerly lapped up the Democrat’s racist vomit and subsisted on it for forty years. They own it now. Absent that, the Republicans would dry up and blow away.
I don’t think the Republican party is racist, and it certainly doesn’t share the racist past of the Democratic Party. Without the “Demorcrat’s racist vomit” Republicans would “dry up and blow away”? Racism is the only thing that Republicans are about? Really? That is saying something.
Perhaps, just perhaps, because modern Democrats repudiate it and modern Republicans embrace it?
Moron.
I don’t agree with you. I am not a Republican, but I don’t know any that embrace the racist past of the Democratic Party. As far as Democrats repudiating their own past, I don’t see it much. I don’t think it was even mentioned in the original post that Calhoun was a Democrat. I don’t think Democrats confont their own history very often if at all these days.
One guy posted a link to a picture of Obama. What does that mean? Has electing Obama absolved the Democratic Party of it’s racist past? I guess he really is magic.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Oh, and as far as the South goes, coming over the bridge from DC, and seeing the main drag through Northern Virginia named after the chief traitor in an insurrection whose main purpose was to perpetuate the enslavement of blacks tells you pretty much all you need to know.
The biggest strategic blunder Lincoln made was to *not* have traitors like Robert Lee, Davis and the rest of them court-martialed and hanged for treason. In retrospect it’s given them an undeserved legitimacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Wow. What a pack of dunderhead yankee pseudo-sophisticates.
Matt, it appears that a lot of your commenters like their history really, really simple. A nice smooth puree of baby food with no icky little chunks in it. In their discussion of the South, I’m seeing the mirror image of the pat, simple certainties that conservative pundits toss about.
Guess what, guys? American history is complex and full or moral ambiguities. The appearance of clear villains and heroes is often merely an optical illusion caused by distance and your own particular regional pride. Just because the north couldn’t use slaves doesn’t mean it was free from racists, many of whom have their own statues that you obliviously revere.
And you all don’t know jack about Robert E.
Tell you what: don’t cross the river. Stay in pristine Maryland, or amid the pure and crystalline swamps of DC. Virginia man don’t need you around, anyhow.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Drew, you are absolutely right. If you notice I did point out that the only Senator expelled from Congress for Treason in the entire history of the US was from INDIANA. But, in Indiana (where I was from), there aren’t statues to him erected all over the state.
Yes, much of the genocidal actions of the US have a tendency to be whitewashed and politely brushed aside. But unlike the South, we don’t CELEBRATE our barbaric actions of the past.
As has been pointed out, when our current President was born to a mixed race couple in 1961, it would have been ILLEGAL IN 19 STATES for his parents to have conceived him. There are still millions upon millions of Americans who vividly remember the Southern insanity during the Civil Rights Era. Maybe when there is no one left to give witness to that period perhaps the South won’t feel so besieged. On the other hand, if you didn’t have Republicans like Jeff Sessions and Trent Lott so eager to celebrate those halcyon days, maybe the South could finally heal.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
114. I see you enjoy your little game. I’m pretty certain the thrust of Brownson’s passage is not to defend slavery but to attack capitalism and northern hypocrisy. You prove the point, however, that to do both today makes one a “NeoConfederate.”
May 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Why, it’s part of the Democratic party’s racist history, of course! I thought you should know. Also:
Dixiecrats: past. “Southern Strategy”: until recently the bulwark of the Republican party.
Looks like feigning ignorance is all you’ve got left. Not that I’m surprised, but ….
May 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
@ Donald and @dww44,
I get what you’re saying, and I, as a black southerner, grew up around a lot of white people who could be easily demonized in the ways you mention.
I’m just saying, though, that while I certainly wouldn’t expect all the streets to be renamed, you’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely happy about driving along Jefferson Davis highway.
Yes, it’s tiresome when some northerners just assume that everyone in the south is a racist hick, but it’s equally tiresome to act like racism in the south is vestigial.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Virginia man don’t need you around, anyhow.
Ah, right. Lynard Skynard’s famous rebuttal to Billy Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” How many blacks did you guys hang from trees down there, again?
As you say, It’s complicated…
May 6th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
That’s nice, dear.
It’s just that I’m familiar with these old pro-slavery talking points and you’re not. So it’s no wonder the context eludes you. Ignorance is like that.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
To those of you in the South who think we in the North do not get it; you have a (small) point that things are complicated. Fine. But consider our position, these Confederate heroes are put forward as THE symbols of the South. From our perspective it looks like celebrating a society whose foundation was slavery (and that rebelled against the Union). If you don’t like the image this sends, then perhaps you should have more regional pride in Jazz, Gospel, southern Revolutionary war figures, and modern Southern Presidents. If you did that, I might be able to see celebrations of Confederate heroes as just one of many typical ways of honoring Southern-dom.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Southerner, here. Just not stupid.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
IBC, to be fair, Skynyrd was responding to Neil Young, not Billie Holliday.
Is the discussion off track enough to make passing references to Drive-By Truckers’ marvelous “Southern Rock Opera” CD?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Some of the Calhoun names and whatnot in the Midwest was probably part of a trend to name some counties, cities, and such for state and national politicians of the time. So in Michigan, for instance, you have Calhoun county, but also Jackson, Monroe, Van Buren, Livingston, Ingham, Eaton, Berrien, and Branch counties, who were all (except for Monroe) members of Andrew Jackson’s various Cabinets.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Several posts criticize Matt for pointing out facts about our country’s shameful racist symbols and institutions. These comments say things like “Matt calls people racist”. No, he’s not “calling” them racists, he’s pointing out the FACT that they ARE racist. Name calling is one thing, historical fact is another. America has a deep dark stain on its past. The fact that America did not have any meaningful civil rights legislation until 1964 is shameful in itself. For a country trying to sell itself as the beacon of freedom and equality, there’s a lot of work still to be done. When we name highways, libraries, schools, etc, after racist monsters it says a lot about how much further we have to go.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
“Have you seen the Confederate Cemetry in places like Alexandria or Chattanooga vs. the National Cemetries? The National Cemetries are cared for while the Confederate Cemetries are overgrown and run-down. Those grounds should be cared for as well.”
Im all in favor of Confederate Cemeteries, I just wish that there were more of them and as full as possible
But no, the Nation takes care of the graves of our nations fallen war heroes, not traitors
May 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
dw, … it’s because of what those figures represent. And again, it’s that these are not isolated, but are generally uniform. And I’m a Southerner, died in the wool, even took a military history class on the Civil War, and admired Lee for his daring while sneering at McClellan. But try as we might to point out that Lee was better on slavery than Jefferson, it remains the case that Lee actively fought against the US in the defense of slavery. He is a traitor, perhaps a noble one in some respects, but a traitor nonetheless. This is what the Northerners can’t understand, and I can see where they’re coming from – while we may not think of them as such, they can be viewed as traitors. Of course, if you go back far enough Americans begin as traitors, but victorious ones at least. Perhaps that’s the difference – the North won, so our heroes are their B. Arnolds.
But there is more to it than that, and you know it. It’s not just that the South has chosen to name some items after Confederates – that’s understandable. It’s that they’ve utilized this symbolism to an extreme degree. Try as you might, one cannot divorce racism from the South’s position in the Civil War. The combined effect of honoring persons that are in truth rebels AND who were rebelling for the purpose of maintaining their herrenvolk democracy, their racial caste society, and further to do so in such great numbers… again, its indicative of a lack of regret. And also of a sense of pride. The world outside the South largely feels that race-based slavery is a great sin, such that the South should be apologetic. Let there be no doubt that the non-South suffers its own sins… but let’s not stray from the original point, which is that many in the South don’t feel regret, and instead celebrate what is, in truth, the manifestation of white supremacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
As has been noted repeatedly above, no one is saying the North – or anywhere in the US – is free of racists and racism, past and present. There’s plenty of awful stuff to go around.
However, only one region of the country fought a war in an attempt to maintain their practice of buying and selling other human beings.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Perhaps southerners could educate us northerners about this important issue by making monuments to these people, naming schools and highways after them, and sending statues of them to the Capitol to replace Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Calhoun.
That’s not the point–I imagine these people would not meet your standards either. The point is that these discussions always address the problem very simplistically. Visit the Blount County, TN courthouse, where the memorial to the war lists twice (at least) as many Union dead as Confederate dead. And then visit the local high school, nicknamed the “Rebels.” Try to make sense of that. And once you’ve separated the myth from the reality, the actual treason from the subsequent politics, then try to tell me that support for RE Lee highway is somehow an indication of actual support for armed rebellion in 2009.
I’ve always wondered why an “East Tennessee” was never formed, as I thing the Unionist sentiment was every bit as strong there.
Well there was a “Republic of Winston,” located in northern Alabama. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Winston When Winston was liberated by Union troops, the county formed the Union Army’s First Alabama Cavalry.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Why didn’t Lincoln just kill ALL the Southerner whites then? Wouldn’t we all be better off? You know, sometimes it’s necessary to eliminate people that stand in the way of your agenda. Any ideology worth its salt will tell you that much. Southern whites weren’t about to cooperate during Reconstruction. The North could have accomplished real reconstruction if they just put them all in prison or killed them.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I’m still grooving on the image of “pure and crystalline swamps.”
May 6th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
“Why should you have a problem with roads and stuff named after historical figures from the Civil War period? ”
“What, in your minds, ought the case to be? Should every high school be named Deer Lakes or Mountain Run or whatever? ”
this is a good point. i mean, after all, if you go into any town in germany you will find “hitler square” in the center, with “joseph goebbels highway” leading in one direction and “hermann goering road” crossing it downtown. and the town hall adorned with statues of rommel.
what can they do? it’s just part of their glorious history.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
He had a hole in his head.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
My favorite argument so far is that northerners are allowed to have stuff named after racists and proto-secessionists because northerners aren’t racist.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
IBC, to be fair, Skynyrd was responding to Neil Young, not Billie Holliday.
How does that make a difference? “Strange Fruit” was pretty un-nuanced, too, right? The whole lynching issue was a lot more complicated than just “right vs wrong.” Lots of historical-economic aspects to consider…complicated social dynamics…etc…
May 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Halfdan, you just don’t get it. It’s not support for friggin’ armed rebellion, it’s support for what what motivated the armed rebellion.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
”To those of you in the South who think we in the North do not get it; you have a (small) point that things are complicated. Fine. But consider our position, these Confederate heroes are put forward as THE symbols of the South”
400 years since Jamestown was founded but defenders of “Southern Heritage” are only concerned with defending the 4 years that they committed Treason in defense of Slavery
And they say we don’t understand it? We understand very well
May 6th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
JM
I’m quite familiar with proslavery rhetoric. I’m also familiar with the states’ rights talking points that have too often been connected with racism. This is unfortunate, since northern elitism, industrial capitalism, and self-government are legitimate subjects for discussion. The South can share most of the blame for why said subjects are not discussed but labeled racist and discarded on demand.
Furthermore, as is the norm on this blog, you are showing yourself to be a condescending ass.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
IBC, it’s bad enough that Southerners get their history wrong, but let’s not compound that mistake by making MUSICAL history errors in regards to the genesis of “Sweet Home Alabama”.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Why didn’t Lincoln just kill ALL the Southerner whites then? Wouldn’t we all be better off?
As one commenter put it up-thread: for the same reason we didn’t kill ALL Germans after WWII. Or ALL the Japanese for that matter.
Though if we’d allowed the Nazi general staff to remain, run for public office in Germany, continue to deny Jews their civil rights for another 60-70 years…then yes, I’d hope we’d come in for some condemnation.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
[...] Via Atrios… Matthew Yglesias notices something… [...]
May 6th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Is the Calhoun after whom the Calhoun College at Yale is named?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Reconstruction would have been much less of a catastrophe had Lincoln lived. Johnson was impeached for actually trying to run reconstruction as Lincoln intended, but his political enemies saw it as being soft on rebels.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
IBC, it’s bad enough that Southerners get their history wrong, but let’s not compound that mistake by making MUSICAL history errors in regards to the genesis of “Sweet Home Alabama”.
My (not very clever point) was that the content of “Alabama” or “Southern Man” is pretty much identical to “Strange Fruit.” The only difference being that a Canadian hippy makes an easier target.
It’s pretty illuminating that Van Zant spent the next five years backing away from the song’s message, and its adoption by knuckle-dragging racists as a kind of modern day anthem.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
The prevalence of Native American mascots says otherwise.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
However, only one region of the country fought a war in an attempt to maintain their practice of buying and selling other human beings.
Except of course for the parts of that region that did not, or the parts of the other region that did.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
in response to mutiliple people:
Jeff Davis Hwy. It depends on why it was named. If it was due to 1950’s de-segreation backlash then I’m not for it. For example, I lived in Georgia when there was a big uproar about the flag. At first I didn’t care if they kept the battle flag on it or changed it. Then I learned that the battle flag wasn’t added until the 1950’s as an anti-desegreation protest. At that point, I felt that they should change the flag. The flag that they changed it to was butt ugly. I would’ve gone back to either the colonial or pre-1861 flag but they didn’t and went with the stupid compromise flag. Ray Barnes lost his bid for re-election to Sonny Perdue for that. Would I have voted that way if I had still lived in Georgia, no. Barnes was a much better Governor than Sonny Perdue has been.
Cemetries The national cemetries in those cities are run by the NPS. The confederate one’s are not. I don’t know who is in charge of them, probably the Daughters of the Confederacy.
It’s an issue that gets painted with a broad brush. And, led to Reconstruction, Jim Crow, “heritage not hate” and the Southern Strategy.
I’m not here to defend any of that. Mainly, because I believe that slavery is wrong. Jim Crow was wrong. The Republican’s Southern Strategy of playing up racism as hate is wrong.
But, I’m sick and tired of being lumped into “those racist Southerners” for my 36 years because I happened to have been born in South Carolina and lived in Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Virginia.
It’s the hasty generalization that offends me.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
As to the lake in Minneapolis: why hasn’t it been renamed Lake Wellstone?
May 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
The south actually had a lot of strong Unionists; one of the reasons the Confederacy lost the Civil War is that they had to spend half of it attacking other Southerners who didn’t want to secede (many of whom opposed slavery).
Unfortunately, the neoconfederates have suppressed much of this history.
Read _Lies My Teacher Told Me_ and _Lies Across America_.
You can keep “southern tradition” without indulging in the neoconfederate pro-slavery tradition. It’s just that the neoconfederates have suppressed information about that.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Halfdan, you just don’t get it. It’s not support for friggin’ armed rebellion, it’s support for what what motivated the armed rebellion.
Slavery? Really? You’re right–I don’t get it.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Matt Y called Byron York a racist — what Al is smarting about is that he hit the nail on the head.
A lot of the whites in the South were semi-retarded from beri beri and hookworm. Not to mention illiterate. That’s what comes from being ruled by an “Aristocracy”.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
If you’re going to compare the Confederacy with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, then you might want to throw in the U.S. Federal government into the mix as well. What happened to the Native Americans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, etc. was worse than slavery. Yes, I think mass murder worse than slavery. And yes, Southerners were all part of these horrors, so they can be condemned too.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The prevalence of Native American mascots says otherwise.
It’s not like school mascots are named “The General Custers.” (ok, I’m sure someone has that somewhere)
May 6th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
157. That’s the point. If they were going to achieve real reconstruction they would have had to imprison or kill most southern whites. That doesn’t mean those whites were virtuous, but that is just the reality of human nature, especially at that time and place.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I’m glad we don’t take to silly fetishes and hero worship in the North. I mean, if you tried to put up a statue and massive monument to a corporate lawyer in the Capitol, we’d tell you straight up: you’re crazy.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Point taken about the Native American mascots, but tell you what, I’ll gladly abscond with the Cleveland Indians if Ole Miss drops the “Rebels” nickname.
As for Vietnam, find me a William Calley Highway, and then we can talk.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “A highway named after the political leader of a rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States of America, founded on the principle that democracy was less important than the right of white people to own black people. Right there on signs and everything.”
————–
Er..secession was approved by the democratically elected representatives in the Southern legislatures. One can defend the right to secession without approving of –much less defending –human slavery.
Two thirds of the Confederate Army was too poor to own a slave. They fought to defend their homeland from a foreign invader. Some of them fought for the principle that no Southern gentleman should have to associate with Northern white trash against his will.
It’s kinda hilarious to speak of “democracy” when your position is basically the same as the one the Serbs and Molosevic took toward the Bosnians.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
1. Robert E. Lee was a gradual emancipationist who became convinced long before the Civil War that slavery should be phased out.
2. There were, in fact loyal Southerners. Case in point, native Virginian Major General George Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga. There is a monument to the general in Washington, D.C, at Thomas Circle.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
That there is a strong urge to rebel against any authority in the American persona shouldn’t surprise anyone, we were birthed via a Revolutionary War. There will always be this tension between States Rights and The Republic. As far as The South goes, pride in their “valiant” military was their chief article of faith. Yes their valiant men lost the war (and the Cause) and that fact means that their pride was all they had left. That and a losing battle to encode their “white superiority” into state and local laws and cleanse their populations of blacks. Pride costs a lot. But if a huge percentage of your populations are “poor white trash” and/or “red necks” then pride is sometimes all you have and feeling superior to blacks at least gives you a leg up on somebody. Before anyone gets in a snit over name calling, I’m the proud product of both p.w.t. and r.n. (Alabama Grandma) with Confederate soldiers in the family tree. My crucial split with Southern culture and my ancestors is that I don’t need to base my pride on somebody else’s fall. Alternatively, why do these Southern States need so much support from Northern States in terms of the Federal Balance of Payments (what money states send to the federal government versus what they get back)? Could it be because they marginalized or drove their productive black populations North? Spent too much time and energy making sure blacks didn’t get ahead, forgot to get ahead themselves. Lost in dreams of the “valiant” past and forgetful of the immanent present. There is a relationship there somewhere.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
“…you might want to throw in the U.S. Federal government into the mix as well.”
I can live with that.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Nonreal–I would LOVE to ban Native American slurs from mascot names. IT’S THE REPUBLICANS THAT WON’T LET US DO IT!!!!!
Do you think that’s it’s purely coincidental that racist, segregationist, and anti-labor policies still thrive in the South? Or that perhaps the idolizing of racists, segregationists, and slavers FOR THOSE 3 ASPECTS OF THEIR POLITICS may have something to do with it?
You’re simply playing into Republican antidemocratic racism by allowing the veneration of antidemocratic racists–while denying that they were (largely) unelected racists.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I’ll use the Confederate Memorial in Alexandria as an example. It’s in the middle of Washington Street in Old Town. It’s maybe what 20 feet tall. Do you know what is at the end of King Street opposite of the Potomac River? The George Washington Masonic Memorial which is probably 300 or 400 feet tall at least. Mount Vernon (that’s George and Martha’s House) is at the end of the George Washington Memorial Parkway south of Alexandria.
While New Orleans has Lee Circle it also has Jackson Square.
The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is all about “New Orleans” and “Louisiana” music. Chattanooga has The Bessie Smith Strut in honor of the local jazz great. Southern writers are always honored prominently.
It isn’t my fault that the stupid conservatives in Georgia name a crappy road after Jimmy Carter (Jimmy Carter Blvd) while Ronald Reagan gets a brand new parkway built after him.
People in the South do celebrate other parts of their history besides the Civil War. It’s just no one else focuses on that because it’s so easy to focus on Lee, Davis, Jackson, etc.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Ah, there is nothing like judging history by today’s standards and bad information.
A cyber coke to whomever can tell me which white supremacist said the following (and there is plenty more where this came from):
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races…I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
On the topic of apartheid:
“Such separation if effected at all, must be effected by colonization:…what colonization most needs is a hearty will….Let us be brought to believe that it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or at least not against, our interests to transfer the African to his native clime and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”
May 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Lowell’s Civil War monument is a wing’ed Nike, holding aloft a laurel wreath, facing towards the core downtown, as if laying it on the brow of the city.
To the wanna-be secessionists, I say: Don’t MAKE me come DOWN there!
May 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Exercising a power they did not have, yes.
Strangely, states like Georgia did not.
We’ve already dealt with this.
“Foreign”? How?
The revisionists came too late, and with nothing, it seems.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Like the pic – looks alot like Doc Brown from Back to Future!
May 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Don, Don, Don.
So, you feel scecession in 1861 was ok because it was “democratic”? The underlying reason for the “democratic” scecession was that rich landowners wanted to continue buying and selling human beings as property, and were afraid that their economic system was going to be abolished by a “democratic” Federal government.
It is irrelevant that a bunch of dumb Southerners got suckered into dying in order to maintain the status quo for a system that ironically kept them poor and illiterate. The gag is that the people who argue the loudest for caste systems automatically assume that they’re in a protected group.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Since you’re addressing something that isn’t a defense of slavery, pronounced by someone who didn’t start the Civil War, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Is that due to ignorance or just cowardice?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
170. We have plenty of things named after Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and, somewhere I bet there is a Robert McNamara something or other. We have a Vietnam War Memorial, and many other things built in its name. What? That is to honor the soldiers. Oh, for a second I thought you were making the same argument that the pro-confederates make.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
North kill us, name team “braves.”
South kill north, but not name team “yankees”
White man make noises, mean nothing.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Er..secession was approved by the democratically elected representatives in the Southern legislatures. One can defend the right to secession without approving of –much less defending –human slavery.
I’m not sure how you can conclude that the antebellum Southron legislatures would “democratically elected” without approving of human slavery, though.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
It’s easy to come across as condescending to someone who strangely cannot demonstrate the knowledge he at least claims to possess.
It was your cite. The problem was that you didn’t know much about it. An hour later and gods know how much googling later, I assume you are now somewhat wiser.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Hmmm. I wonder what side the Chosen People took in the War of Northern Aggres.. er, the Civil War. Anyone remember Ulysses S Grant’s General Order 11?
—————-
“1. The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department [of the Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
2. Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
3. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.”
“These people”. Hmmm.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1862)#cite_note-3
May 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Sorry Travis. Not good enough. We all know that Alexandria will celebrate Washington. But why don’t Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Jazz and Gospel, and Faulkner loom as large in the southern imagination as defining Southern Heritage? I’m sorry. They don’t.
Speaking of monuments, I am very proud to live near Lincoln Park in DC, where Lincoln the Emancipator is celebrated ( despite the somewhat parternalistic statue).
May 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Oh I disagree JM. Lincoln – the “hero” who freed the slaves (only in areas in which he did NOT rule) – his racism and white supremacist attitude is most certainly relevant.
Let us speak honestly and in depth on this topic. No sound bites.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis was once called Loon Lake. I think it is time to revert back.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Please point to the use of such mascots as “the Fighting Pox Blankets,” “the Buffalo Decimators,” and “Crates of Cheap Demon Rum.” The use of Native American mascots may not be anthropologically accurate, but it is valorizing, so it’s actually the opposite of what you pretend to argue.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
You’re late. We’ve already dealt with this, too.
The whole thread is basically those who are sick of the old confederate talking points vs. those who are still stupid enough to try and use them.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Fighting and winning the Civil War freed the slaves throughout the United States.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Election by white male property owners isn’t democratic. Were the State Senators even directly elected? Or were they appointed by the Governors?
Since slaves outnumbered whites in almost every seceding state, it’s pretty laughable to call the movement populist.
It’s also easier to act populist when you arrest all the loyalists, then neglect to ever have an actual election.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
#177 yawn.
everybody recognizes the lincoln-douglas debates, stormy. this is old news.
lincoln had repellently racist views for most of his life. everybody knows that too. his late friendship with frederick douglass suggests that he might have been, in h.l. gates phrase, a “recovering racist”. but we’ll never know how far he would have recovered.
for the purposes of this thread, it really doesn’t matter.
because on the question of the morality of slavery, lincoln never faltered and he never wavered. he was always opposed to slavery and always favored its extinction. his views on the best way to do it changed over the years. his favorite method would have been gradual, legislated, compensated emancipation.
but he never, ever doubted that slavery was wrong and a crime against humanity.
whereas, the southern confederacy was built on the cornerstone of slavery, as its principle theorists all acknowledged.
look–you can scare little children with quotes from lincoln showing that he was a racist. but it really doesn’t work around grown-ups, okay?
in other words: southern apologists lose another round. give it up.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Louis Armstrong thought so highly of the Southern veneration of the jazz music he helped to popularize that he left New Orleans and made good on his vow never to return for the last decades of his life.
Southerners don’t particularly talk about Flannery O’Conner either, but that’s not surprising because her stories portrayed Southern Protestants as insane, illiterate morons.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
No JM, you did not deal with it. You blew it off.
Let’s ask YOU some questions (feel free to take them one at a time):
1. Who first legalized slavery?
2. Who first attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves?
3. How was slavery abolished in the North?
4. How were the freed blacks treated in the North?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
no section of the country gets a pass.
the entire country does share in the shame of it’s horrible inability to deal adequately with its history of racism.
however, the south does have a different burden. i won’t repeat what has already been said about its history, but i can state what just about any african-american knows from experience: living or traveling in the south even today can be a difficult, unpleasant, degrading experience where you might just find yourself in a circumstance where someone lets you know in no uncertain terms that you are not welcome.
that’s not to say that such a thing may not happen somewhere, somehow in northern cities or towns. but, as someone who has traveled extensively, by car, in the south and in every other state in this country, there is no question that southerners feel less constrained about displaying hostility and letting black folks that they are not supposed to be in a particular place. either by simply ignoring you while you sit at a table in a restaurant or by glaring in an obviously hostile manner when you walk into what is supposed to be a public retail space.
some folks – including many african-americans – find this up-front hostility preferable and somewhat quaint. i guess there is something to be said for someone showing their true self, rather than going through the motions of being civil to someone, just because…
but to pretend that it is not a fact of life in america in 2009, and that to ignore that it is connected to the fact that the south simply refuses to deal adequately with his pitiful history, well, that is exactly why the entire country cannot do something as simple as offer an apology for the original sin of slavery.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
The Daughters of Confederate Veterans has built at least one statue for every single general-rank officer in the Confederate Army…
Except two. There are exactly two Confederate generals who were not honored with statues by the DCV.
In a bizarre coincidence, there were also exactly two Confederate generals who later advocated for voting rights for black Americans.
And in an even more bizarre coincidence, they are the same two generals.
So, in conclusion, equating pride in the Confederate cause with racism is a delusion of “Yankee trash,” and has absolutely no support in the historical record.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Ah, but do they recognize that Lincoln was responding to charges of being pro-”miscegenation”?
This is what makes people like Stormy useful to their betters: they can distribute agitprop without actually having to understand it.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
1. Who first legalized slavery?
2. Who first attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves?
3. How was slavery abolished in the North?
4. How were the freed blacks treated in the North?
Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan, and… ummmm… oh, Ronald Reagan!
May 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
In defense of George Wallace, he was a regenerate racist and “apologized for his earlier segregationist views to black civil rights leaders. He said while he once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. His term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black appointments to government positions.” quote from Wikipedia entry on George Wallace of Alabama. There is some video footage out there of his reconciliation with black leaders. It’ll make you believe in the glory of America.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Please read thread before commenting.
kthxbai
May 6th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
The Civil War was fought by the South to maintain slavery status quo. The Civil War was fought by Lincoln after provocation, in order to preserve the Union.
So there were TWO reasons the Civil War was fought, for anyone still arguing one or the other as prime…
The Republican Party is racist. How many races are represented by Republican voters in Washington D.C.?
One. White. There are no Republican elected representatives serving in D.C. who are not white. It is a racist party because no one of any truth or sanity would join the Republican party unless they were white and interested in white hegemony, if not supremacy.
There are no arguments to the contrary, because the proof is in the results. The best proof always is.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
But why don’t Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Jazz and Gospel, and Faulkner loom as large in the southern imagination as defining Southern Heritage? I’m sorry. They don’t.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. You really don’t.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Harry S Truman was a member of the Klan.
Apparently he gave them a $10 membership fee when running for office in 1922, but decided not to join because he didn’t like their positions (in particular on Catholics).
Anyway, Truman integrated the military — he’s probably the biggest civil rights president between Lincoln and LBJ. But, as with Robert Byrd, today’s Republicans hold people’s racist past against them if and only if they repented for it. The truly unforgivable thing is to have pursued progressive policies later.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
JM, I see you are a product of public school education. Let me help you out:
1. Who first legalized slavery?
The Northern Colony of Massachusetts
2. Who first attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves?
The Southern State of Virginia.
3. How was slavery abolished in the North?
By a system of Gradual Emancipation that allowed the Northern slave owners to remove their property to the South, sell the slaves, and thereby divest themselves of the human responsibility while making a handsome profit.
4. How were the freed blacks treated in the North?
The free Northern black was living as a second-class citizen in conditions which were in many ways not as good as those for the southern slaves.
As an added bonus- NEVER did a slave ship sail under a confederate flag. Always, they proudly displayed the flag of the United States.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Well, 197, since you asked:
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was revolutionary because it explicitly banned the institution of slavery either in the territories, and strictly forbade any potential states from adopting it upon admission to the Union.
In fact, with the advent of the Louisiana Purchase, many Northerners fought strongly to PREVENT the expansion of slavery into those new territories. It was the SOUTH that freaked out and forced the Mason-Dixon line in the Compromise of 1820 to stave off a Civil War. In fact, each attempt the North made to try and prevent the expansion of slavery was met with fiercer and fiercer resistance from the South (leading to such ill-fated attempts at appeasement such as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act)
If not for the Civil War, just when do you suspect that the South might have given up the Peculiar Institution? Considering Brazil didn’t abolish state-sponsored slavery until 1897 and retarded its economic growth for damn near a century because of holding on to slaves too long, just what kind of shithole would the South have turned out to be?
Let’s face it, burning your sorry asses to the ground might have been the best thing to happen to you. The North did you a favor.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
186. What knowledge did I fail to demonstrate? The passage was self-explanatory. No matter. You were determined to present it in whatever form helped your cause best, which is why you selected very short segments and neglected others that present the issue it its totality. And this is why, when I proved that I know what I’m talking about, you resorted to insults and accusations.
192. In fact it is nice to see a few people who can discuss the issue without either collapsing into racism on one side, or anti-southern hysteria on the other. You are not one of them.
If you don’t care for my views, or Brownson’s, perhaps you’ll like another Yankee, Robert Lowell. That is, if you can take a breath from your important blogging and consider a significant piece of poetry.
For the Union Dead
by Robert Lowell
“Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.”
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound’s gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die–
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year–
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .
Shaw’s father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son’s body was thrown
and lost with his “niggers.”
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the “Rock of Ages”
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
When Ronald Reagan chose to announce his bid for the Presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, that was all I needed to know that, yes, Ronald Reagan was a racist pig who used the nod and the wink to gain the racist white Southern vote.
Listen, fools: This is all codified in American Political Science 101. It was called the Southern Strategy. And it worked.
Now that dog won’t hunt. We have a black President, and a regional Republican Party. They can go straight to h*ll for all I care. Obstruction is all they’ve left themselves, the corner they’ve finally painted themselves into.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
They’ll be bringing up Margaret Sanger next.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
1) Wonder if Matthew ever heard of Judah P. Benjamin?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_P._Benjamin
May 6th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Damn. Can’t you get anything right?
Your red herring doesn’t mean squat. Feel free to play with it, if that’s all you’re up for.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Jesus Christ, Stormy, did you really just play the “Southern Slaves might have had it better than free blacks in the North” canard? Is that really how you want to argue this?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
2) Or David Levy Yulee?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Levy_Yulee
May 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
1. Who first legalized slavery?
The Egyptians.
2. Who first attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves?
King David.
3. How was slavery abolished in the North?
The passage of laws via the democratic process.
4. How were the freed blacks treated in the North?
Better than slaves.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
3) How about Dr Simon Baruch ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch#Early_life.2C_education.2C_and_career
4) If we’re gonna be throwing stones at glass houses, let me note that the Confederacy looked as much like an affirmative action program for Jewish American politicans as it was a defense of slavery.
Although admittedly there was that “defense of property” thing.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Speaking of monuments, I am very proud to live near Lincoln Park in DC, where Lincoln the Emancipator is celebrated ( despite the somewhat parternalistic statue).
Of course, Mary Bethune on the other end of the park looks like she’s giving Abe a look that says, “If you don’t stop condescending to that brother, I’m gonna come over and punch you in the brain.”
May 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
stormy, that’s really pretty pathetic. if you think any of that proves anything, would you care to tell us what you think it proves?
and for your added bonus, would you like us to explain to you why there were never any c.s.a. flagged slave ships? maybe because *no one at all* was importing slaves during the c.s.a.’s short, pathetic, and morally repulsive lifespan?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Read it again Pete:
which were in many ways not as good as those for the southern slaves.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I think this is my favorite bit of neo-confederate stupidity, since it’s already been explained by one of dumbass’ own talking points. It’s the risk the regurgitator runs, not understanding his own content.
At any rate, Stormy, the post was about the celebration of of slave power in the south. We have already dealt with northern complicity in slavery (short version: they don’t celebrated slavers, southerners do), but then again that would require that you read instead of cut ‘n paste the same irrelevancies you’ve probably been hiding behind since the days of gopher.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
1. Who first legalized slavery?
2. Who first attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves?
Note the shift in language. Gee, I wonder why he didn’t ask “Who first attempted to prohibit slavery?”
No, but really, the fact that the UNION outlawed the slave trade before the Confederacy came into existence is incredibly important.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
So, in conclusion, equating pride in the Confederate cause with racism is a delusion of “Yankee trash,” and has absolutely no support in the historical record.
Strawman. I don’t think anyone is arguing here is making that argument. Rather the argument is that the names of bridges, high schools, and parks is a poor proxy for public support for the political beliefs of those people for whom they were named.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
On the issue of Native American sports mascots outside the South: there’s been steady pressure to change that practice for about 40 years, and a large number of colleges and universities have changed their mascots as a result. Off the top of my head, Stanford, Dartmouth, Cornell, Syracuse, and St. John’s all changed from “Indians” or its equivalent to some kind of color. There’s a controversy over the Univ. of Illinois Chief Iliniwek (sp?), as well. And there have been long fights to get the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians to change mascots (or at least logos), as well.
I think the best equivalent outside the South I can think of is Conquistador/Mission stuff in California. There’s a huge statue of Father Junipero Serra on Interstate 280 south of SF, and lots of sports teams named after some aspect of the Spanish conquista. It’s not identical, and there is some political pressure to change the practice, but there’s still not enough critical thinking about what the mission system meant and did, and what it now means to celebrate it publicly.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Still pushing the “states’ rights” == “RAAAAAAAACISTS!!!!!!” meme, I see. It’s a transparent tactic to marginalize opposition to the cancerous growth of the Federal government. However, the fact that the states’ rights advocates of 1860 were racists does not mean that the states’ rights advocates of 2009 are racists.
Contrary to what Yglesias and other liberals would have you believe, it’s quite possible to support the 9th and 10th Amendments without opposing the 13th and 14th Amendments.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
It proves that he can repeat what he read on Stormfront.org.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“Southern Slaves might have had it better than free blacks in the North”
Actually, slaves had free health care. In that, they’re much better off than the wage slaves of today.
Some cretins have chimed in with the ‘fact’ that slavery is a non-racist institution, that in ancient times it was a simple situation of economics that people found themselves in.
But they forget that the Southern slave laws were VERY race-dependent; that 99% of all slaves were black, by design; they were easier to keep down, identify and to treat as sub-human.
Something that goes on to this very day.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Stormy wrote:
4. How were the freed blacks treated in the North?
The free Northern black was living as a second-class citizen in conditions which were in many ways not as good as those for the southern slaves.
“Stormy”? Is that a StormFront reference?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
ibc: lol
May 6th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
This would be a much stronger argument if the “states rights advocates” of the present and recent past didn’t constantly defend the nobility of the Confederacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
… which was OK with the practitioners of the Southern Strategy until they lost control of said federal government.
Have some tea.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
“This would be a much stronger argument if the “states rights advocates” of the present and recent past didn’t constantly defend the nobility of the Confederacy.”
it would also be stronger if the so-called “states rights advocates” immediately abandon their position whenever a state tries something slightly left of center.
as soon as oregon or california experiments with medical marijuana or right-to-die laws, then ashcroft, scalia, and the entire republican chorus stops singing the “federalism!” chorus and switches to the “supremacy clause!” chorus.
there has never, in the entire history of the union, been a “states rights advocate” who was not an unprincipled scoundrel.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
From # 58:
I’m a native of Florence, though now I live up north (in Va. Beach). I just wanted to point out the Florence was, in fact, hit by a nuclear weapon.
Otherwise, this is an interesting thread. I’ve always thought of myself as a more ‘enlightened’ southerner who views the WbtS as a tragic mistake. But treason? That’s a tough one for me.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
MWL, no offense, but many people can’t help but wonder if States’ Rights = Racist because the phrase “States’ Rights” was used early and often by racist Southern governors who resented having to have integrated schools and all races being allowed to vote. When a sitting Senator like Mr. Sessions is on record calling the Voting Rights Act “intrusive”, then one can’t help but suspect that folks in the South with some 1950’s era racial axes to grind have latched onto this whole sovereignty nonsense as a means of undoing a few decades of progress.
Tell you what, if you truly feel that states are sovereign, then next time a tornado takes down one of your cities, don’t come running to us for help.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
sorry–my #232 should have read “did not immediately abandon”.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Sorry, botched up my link.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Feh. With the exception of Mississippi, every state that included the Confederate battle flag into their state flag did so during the civil rights struggle.
Who equated “states rights” with racism? That would be the racists, who deployed “states rights” rhetoric (along with “heritage,” etc.) each and every time their racist traditions were threatened.
Gee, I wonder what was happening in 1956?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
JM, gotta return a phone call.
However, you say the post is about the celebration of slave power in the south. My question is why don’t we discuss the celebration of slave power in the north, because there is plenty of it.
May be back in a bit.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Funny that this thread should follow closely on the thread about post-liberation politics in South Africa. Lincoln’s stated policy of “malice toward none, charity toward all” finds an echo in the post-liberation gestures by Nelson Mandela to create fraternal bonds between the former oppressors and the formerly oppressed — in a context where every symbolic act threatened to arouse the visceral fears or aggravate the wounded pride of the vanquished Afrikaaners.
As a result, you still see monuments to Afrikaaner nationalism all over the place. And while the post-apartheid regime has undertaken some prominent renamings (Jan Smuts International Airport => OR Tambo International Airport; Pietersburg => Polokwane), the map of South Africa is still littered with place names and street names taken from the historical heroes* of the Afrikaaner nation: Piet Retief, Andries Pretorius, Paul Kruger, Louis Botha, Christian DeWet, and many others.
One imagines that this will still be the case a century from now, and some latter day Yglesias will grumble about it, and some latter day Travis will show up to aver that Apartheid wasn’t really about racism.
*According to one member of the post-Aparthied Naming Commission, Nelson Mandela personally intervened to overrule a decision to rename the H.F.Verwoerd Dam, which carried the name of the very architect of apartheid. (The name change has since been carried out, as with most place names that honored Verwoerd; some pills are just too bitter to swallow in the name of reconciliation.)
May 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I hesitate to jump into the murky waters of “what is history? what is advocacy?” But I can’t help but notice that Calhoun, Tennessee, about 10 minutes from where my mom was born, was named for John C. Calhoun in 1820 in honor of his role in negotiating the Calhoun Treaty by the partially Cherokee founder of the town. Calhoun (formerly Benton) County, Alabama, on the other hand, was renamed in 1858 by slave-owners displeased with Benton’s divergence from Calhoun’s views. And Calhoun College, at Yale, was named in 1933 for the “alumnus, statesman, orator.”
All of these memoria were politically charged at the time they occurred, but only one was for the pro-slavery reasons Matt suggests. Now all of John C. Calhoun’s multiple involvements in our nation’s history are conflated. But names are hard to change. (I guarantee you if someone tried to rename the town in Tennessee all of its 496 residents would continue to call it Calhoun.) So it seems all we are doing is pointing to the historical motivations for having named it Calhoun in the first place, and I think we would do well to distinguish the actually racist reasons on Matt’s long list.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I wonder if Matthew knows what got Harvard’s $35 Billion endowment started 200 years ago?
Shipping trade, yes, –but trade in what?
A few more years living in Virginia and he’ll have a Southern accent.
I’ll bet he already has a closet fetish for Panama Hats and white linen suits.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Correction: South Carolina flew the Confederate Battle Flag over their state capitol, beginning in 1962, by itself. It was not incorporated into the state flag.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
The only people celebrating slave power in the north are neo-confederates in the south, and then only to change the subject from the South’s celebration of treason and racism.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
But JM, the leaders of those states (and the KKK) were democrats. Those opposing the civil rights were democrats.
That’s why I find it so interesting that blacks follow those who continue to keep them in chains- invisible, but chains none-the-less.
Just for fun, if you dont’ know him yet, I would like to introduce you to Zo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C2CjR-kvVM
May 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
As an added bonus- NEVER did a slave ship sail under a confederate flag
Perhaps because the British navy had begun ruthlessly enforcing the armed interception of slave ships for several decades before the confederacy existed? Or that Confederate ports were blockaded for the duration of the rebellion?
May 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
My favorite is still the Po-white Parkway
May 6th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hmmm, the traitor states’ tradition lives on:
Less than two-thirds of southerners and Republicans pledge allegiance to the USA.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
“the celebration of slave power in the north”
this is just delusional. there are no “celebrations of slave power in the north”.
of course the north was involved with the slave trade for several centuries, and has nothing to be proud of there.
but that’s the point: we are *not* proud of it. we repudiate it.
it is not so hard to reject a part of your own heritage. we here in the north do it. would you like to watch?
northern states were involved with slavery in the early days of our country, so slavery was part of the northern heritage. i reject it. and i will not celebrate any northerner whose primary aims and achievements were the establishment, preservation, or defense of slavery.
and now, i’ll go back to celebrating the positive things that the north accomplished. it’s really easy.
that’s all that southerners have to do. you just say: yeah, slavery was part of our past, and then we made it worse by armed rebellion intended to preserve slavery. but we reject that now. and we reject all of the people who defended slavery. now let’s get back to what we *do* have to be proud of.
jesus–if you’re tired of being accused of racism, just quit celebrating the fucking racists, okay?
May 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
[here, Stormy pretends that half a century didn't happen]
See? It’s easy when you pretend that the last half century of American political history didn’t happen.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Here in Memphis, we have parks named after, and statues of, both Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest. (Forrest himself is buried in Forrest park.)
We also have a “Confederate Park”, which is where the Davis statue is located.
I’m not sure any city in America can top that.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Those opposing the civil rights were democrats.
…who, after LBJ and the Civil Rights revolution made their traditional party home inhospitable for them, began a migration to the Republican party that utterly transformed the political geography of the United States.
Perhaps the most specious of the vast multitude of canards one hears from the TidoS apologists.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Ah, gotta love the neo-segregationists/neo-successionists.
Woody Allen, circa 1960’s; “When I was a kid, my parents used to always tell me, if a strange man approaches you on the street and offers you candy and asks you to get into his car…
Go.”
May 6th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
As for Vietnam, find me a William Calley Highway, and then we can talk.
Shhhhhh! For Chrissakes! If Limbaugh gets wind of this, he might well pick it up and run with it!
May 6th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I watched racist Southern whites abandon the Democratic party, capped by Tom DeLay redistricting the last of the rural “crossover” voters out of significance. Then I learned about the Dixiecrats and how that migration began before I was born.
Then along comes some idiot who pretends that that never happened, who wonders why African Americans aren’t as angry about Byrd’s KKK membership sixty years ago than they are about Katrina.
Welcome to the Pwnership Society, Stormy.
Population: you.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Stormy,
1. Yes, in 1964, more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act. The Dixiecrats indeed felt that LBJ completely betrayed them.
2. HOWEVER, for some unknown reason, Nixon and the GOP failed to take advantage of their support of Civil Rights and the burgeoning split in the Democratic Party, which would have insured that they would have been competitive if not dominant for black votes. Instead, they got so freaked out that blacks might be willing to vote Democratic, that Nixon advocated the Southern Strategy. This change in tactics welcomed Dixiecrats to the GOP with open arms and all but guaranteed 90% black support for the Democrats.
3. Whatever the millstone the 1964 Civil Rights vote might have been around the Democrats’ neck completely went away when Ronald Reagan chose to give a speech in 1980 about States’ Rights in the same city where one of the most notorious Civil Rights murders of the 1960’s occurred.
4. You find virtually no left-leaning pundit extolling the virtues of the Confederacy. On the other hand, Pat Buchanan has written many many columns on such virtues.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Count me as another person who was utterly aghast to discover that some states have put statues of Lee, Davis, and other traitors in Statuary Hall in the Capital. I was so angry that I went over the the informational person there (I think she was from the National Park Service actually) and complained, eventually asking her something like “What’s next, statues of the Rosenbergs and Benedict Arnold?”
May 6th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
#253–
i wouldn’t worry, kr. as i recall, calley actually felt bad about it later on and expressed some contrition.
if you want to win rush’s admiration, you must be *unrepentantly* evil.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Ah, right. Lynard Skynard’s famous rebuttal to Billy Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.”
Uh, no. It was a riposte to Neil Young’s Southern Man. And appearances notwithstanding, the Van Zandt family considered Neil a friend, and the taunting all in good fun (so, at any rate, was I credibly told once by one of the younger brothers).
May 6th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
One. White. There are no Republican elected representatives serving in D.C. who are not white. It is a racist party because no one of any truth or sanity would join the Republican party unless they were white and interested in white hegemony, if not supremacy.
So the non-white Republican elected officials outside of DC don’t count?
Congratulations. You earned the “Stupidest Fucking Thing Said In The Comments Section of A Blog” award.
It’s the hasty generalization that offends me.
Unfortunately, the left feeds of hasty generalizations. Didn’t vote for Obama? You’re a racist. Supported the tea party protests? You’re a racist. Vote Republican? You’re a racist.
It’s a lot easier to shout somebody down than to engage in a civil debate.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Gee Shakes, that is some real dope political history there, and I can tell you know tons about the history of party affiliation and race relations in the United States.
What year did Wilson leave office? Of which political party was Hoover, who secured the Southern vote by overtly abandoning his party’s previous advocacy for African Americans? What was the name of the very next Democratic president, and what was his expressed opinion about some Americans being relegated to second-class citizen status?
What was the orchestrated walk-out at the 1948 Democratic Convention about anyway?
Which side of that argument nominated a presidential candidate from a former border state who held a civil rights platform and desegregated the military, and which side lost the argument and the future of the party for good?
Who was the president who instituted an even more sweeping civil rights platform upon his election in 1964, what was his party, and what was the platform of the candidate he ran against? What was the “Southern Strategy” anyway, and which party employed it?
Of which party was the Senate Majority Leader who announced in 2002 that our nation would be a lot better off if only the segregationist candidate had won the Presidency in 1948? What year did that segregationist candidate finally change his party affiliation, and why did he do that?
Of which political party was the Virginia politician who hung a Confederate flag in his governor’s office as late as 1998, and what was it that derailed his campaign for re-election to the Senate in 2006? Of which political party is the hugely influential radio host who delighted in coining the term and song, “Barack the Magic Negro” as a form of commentary on a Presidential election?
Which year do you want to live in? What year is it today, who is the President, and which party elected him? Hmm?
May 6th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
but that’s the point: we are *not* proud of it. we repudiate it.
1. Southerners embrace slavery when they embrace slave-owners and defenders of the institution of slavery. Those who say it’s for “other reasons” are obviously being disingenuous.
2. Northerners do not embrace slavery when they embrace slave-owners and defenders of the institution of slavery. Everyone knows it’s for other reasons.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
kid bitzer, good for you. Like you, I also repudiate slavery. It is a filthy disgusting endeavor. But it is a part of history. Not just US history, but the history of the world. It is as much a part of history of the North as it is the South. And that’s the point.
Lincoln used slavery as a tool of war used to influence world opinion. Lincoln was afraid the world might look at the South with sympathy.
The purpose of the war as to prevent a consolidated federal government. This “war” began at the time the Constitution was created. Hamilton was all about a monarcy and strong central government. Jefferson said “Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but a monarchist bottomed on corruption. This argument carries on even now.
The Story-Webster school (if not familiar with it please google), and later Lincoln, of “one people, one nation indivisible” maintains that the United States was originally formed into one central government with the states serving as nothing more than mere political subdivisions of the central government- the states do not represent independent, sovereign, political units but are mere provinces of the federal government, subservient to the rules, laws, and edicts of the US Government. This is the very logic Lincoln used when he went after the South.
The war was fought in an effort to preserve the boundry in which the central government of the US exercised its authority and maintain the sovereign American states within a constitutional framework.
It has been estimated that 80% of the confederate soldiers were not slave owners. Who can honestly claim that the soldiers for the south, most of whom were not slave owners, went to war against a superior foe, endured 4 long years of hardships, all so a few rich guys could keep their slaves. It’s illogical and makes no sense.
General Robert E. Lee, General Joseph Johnston, General A. P. Hill, General Fitzhugh Lee, General J.E.B. Stuart – none of these Confederate Generals were slave owners, and that is just a partial list.
The men who fought for the south were fighting for the same principles their forefathers fought for in the War for American Independence- the right to self-government.
The North did not engage in a selfless sacrifice for human freedom and equality. That’s a myth.
General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall noted that the real issue between the North and South was political and economic. The North needed to protect its industrial expansion with high tariffs, and the Southern Agriculture needed free trade.
The North was making the South their personal milch cows.
When Lincoln was asked why the North should not let the South go, he replied “Let the South go? Let the South go! Where then shall we get our revenues!” (Cited in Memoirs of Service Aflort, Raphael Semmes, pg 61).
The fear of losing their commercial advantages to the South was a prime factor in the North’s attack on the South.
Check the New York Times archive. Just before the first shots were fired, they ran story after story about how the commerce of the North would be lost to New Orleans, and to the rest of the South because of the low Southern tariff. They even admitted that their reason for fighting the South was not the result of differences in principles of constitutional law or slavery, but only because their profits might be lost if the South was successful in their bid for independence.
March 30, 1862
The predicament in which both the Government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over…If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at a less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage…
If the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons, to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets.
With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn inot our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers…
Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple…The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North…
We now see clearly whither we are tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question-one of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad…
We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched.”
And THAT boys and girls is the real reason the War between the states.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
More horrible stuff:
J. Edgar Hoover Building is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover_Building
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars named after Woodrow Wilson, strong supporter of KKK.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
The whole lynching issue was a lot more complicated than just “right vs wrong.” Lots of historical-economic aspects to consider…complicated social dynamics…etc…
Lynching? historical-economic aspects? Lynching?
May 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
but that’s the point: we are *not* proud of it. we repudiate it.
it is not so hard to reject a part of your own heritage. we here in the north do it.
No you don’t. I worked in and visited Manhattan all the time. Used to see Columbus Circle and that huge statue of Christopher Columbus there quite a bit. The left loves them some Howard Zinn who cast Columbus as nothing but a greedy savage who razed villages, killing men women and children and taking many other as slaves.
Yet there he is. Celebrated for all to see.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Shorter Halfdan: 1760, 1860? When slavery’s concerned, what difference does a century make?
Shorter moron trolls: 1860, 1960? When civil rights are concerned, what difference does a century make?
May 6th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I’m from the north (most recently Boston), but I’ve lived in upstate SC for the past 7 years.
I can state here, unequivocally, that Charlestown, MA was by far the more racist place to live.
All this holier-than-thouism from people (likely Democrats) who feel superior because they live in the north instead of the south reminds me a lot of Sarah Palin’s assertion that people from small towns were superior. Um, no.
To paraphrase: You coach Little League in the Blue States and we have gay [and black] friends in the Red States.
It’s time for a little more introspection. Yes the South needs a LOT of improvement, but painting everyone who lives here with a broad brush is mentally lazy and befitting of the GOP, not our side.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Pseudonymous,
Yeah, pretty much. The difference is politics.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
there has never, in the entire history of the union, been a “states rights advocate” who was not an unprincipled scoundrel.
This is so true, if it were on a bumper-sticker, I would be willing to put it on my car–and I’d actually glue it on there, not cop-out by using of those magnetic thingies with which right-wing neo-confederates are always flaunting their tissue-thin patriotism.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
And THAT boys and girls is the real reason the War between the states.
This is, of course, completely disingenuous. As numerous others have pointed out, you cannot separate the conflicts over constitutional interpretation or economic policy from the fidelity of the South to the peculiar institition. Nor can you imagine these same conflicts boiling over into seccession and bloody warfare if not tied up in the emotive politics of the same.
The Civil War without slavery is unimaginable. The Civil War without treason is literally impossible. Ergo, Treason in Defense of Slavery. The latter, of course, is a deliberately provocative formulation, invented (thanks, LGM) in response to the deliberate disingenuousness and even obtuseness of the neo-Confederate apologists. You can argue, as one prominent states rights advocate did, that slavery is nothing more than “bad facts” in the debate over states rights. But then you have to explain the curious, historically persistent overlap between zealous advocacy of states rights and indifference to, or even hostility to the empowerment aspirations of Black Americans.
While distancing myself from the overheated rhetoric of some of the commenters here, I take the stance that Southerners deserve to embrace their heritage in its full richness, with the proviso that they have to bend over backward to avoid celebrating or even apologizing for racism and treason. And that the neo-Confederates have utterly failed to do. Get that fucking chip off your shoulder and eat that crow a little more lustily, and the rest of us might show you a little malice toward none and charity toward all.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
It’s a whitewashing of genocide and a minstrel show, but your defense of it as “valorizing” does illustrate how unwilling the nation is to accept the evil in its past.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
The Nazis were people too, guys. They had families and everything. Enough with the simplistic sound bites, there were a lot of historical-economic aspects and complicated social dynamics to consider.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
How dare you all question the historical significance of one of the president’s relatives: Jefferson Davis?
Also, if your cousin were president would you be openly be critical of him like the former vice president is of the current president?
Also, with the POTUS and former VPOTUS being cousins, does that not imply that the current POTUS probably has a little bit of the instincts and quirks present in the former VPOTUS?
May 6th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I can state here, unequivocally, that Charlestown, MA was by far the more racist place to live.
The canonical formulation is “The Southerner doesn’t care how close you [i.e. a black person] get as long as you don’t get too “big”. The Northerner doesn’t care how big you get as long as you don’t get too close.”
My trajectory has been roughly the reverse of strega nona’s, and I will concur that racism exists in the North as in the South. Let’s get that red herring out in the open so we can dispose of it forever.
The major differences I have observed are (1) the implied threat of violence was closer to the surface in the South; (2) the tolerance for overtly racist utterances “in polite company” is vastly, vastly higher in the South IME. Northern hypocrisy? Maybe. But over generations, it can’t help but make a difference in the overall prevalence of racism that to make a boldly racist statement in front of your “social betters” in the North is to brand yourself a buffoon, whereas to do so in some parts of the South is to brand yourself as dangerously indiscreet.
That said, some of the bravest, most liberal-on-race-matters souls I know are Southerners (and Democrats, natch).
May 6th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
In my many visits to southern Civil War Battlefields, it became quickly apparent that a LOT of the people in Dixie STILL think the South should have won.
I’m a very outgoing personality who likes to absorb as much of the culture as possible when I visit anywhere (in other words I’m kinda gabby!). So, I’ve made my observations based solely on conversations with people living in the surrounding areas during my visits. I’ve never seen a poll on this and wonder if one exists.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The Nazis were people too, guys. They had families and everything. Enough with the simplistic sound bites, there were a lot of historical-economic aspects and complicated social dynamics to consider.
And remember, don’t you dare cast aspersions on those neo-Nazis who romanticize Hitler. The war was really about helping the ethnic Germans of the Sudatenland, and nothing else. Did you know that very few soldiers in the Wehrmacht killed any Jews?
Oh, and let us not forget that anti-Semitism was quite prevalent in 1930s England and in the US.
Therefore, it’s ludicrous to think that there should some shame associated with erecting statues of Hitler everywhere.
Aryan Pride, Q.E.D…
May 6th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
There are possible arguments to be made for many of the debatable “Southern Heritage” monuments, memorials etc. However, there is no argument for the Jefferson Davis Highway.
I have no problem with memorials to brave young men who died for a bad cause. The foolishness of young men is probably all that gets so many to die for good causes, condemning them for it when they die for a bad cause seems petty. I can understand memorials to those who performed significant historical actions, like Lee. I don’t favor it, but understand it.
What I don’t understand is a memorial to Jefferson Davis. He was a boob. If I were a Virginian, I would want his existance forgotten. The only memorable thing about him is that he was the incompetent head of a dysfunctional government formed to lead an ill-considered rebellion to defend an immoral cause. That, and he formed the North American Camel Corps. Both seem more worthy of forget-ials than memorials
May 6th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
In my many visits to southern Civil War Battlefields, it became quickly apparent that a LOT of the people in Dixie STILL think the South should have won.
In an abstract kind of way, sure. Lots of people root for the Confederates. But they’re not thinking “damn I want to own me some slaves to pick my cotton while I’m drinking mint juleps where’s my gun.”
May 6th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
The Jefferson Davis Highway is a manifestation of that late 20th Century phenomenon known as the “Fuck You Jane Fonda Gambit”.
This is one of the core aspects of the politics of resentment, and the governing philosophy of the late 20th century GOP. It can be described as “Vote for us, and we guarantee we will do as many things as we can to try to piss of Jane Fonda.”
All other political considerations–even raping the Treasury–take a back seat.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that it be easier for Northerners to be magnanimous about all this if Southern racists had been truly vanquished as a political force after the Civil War. It’s not enough that the neo-Confederates (and their apologist brethren) want to minimize the crimes of their forebears; they want to assume the mantle of victimhood, too!
Case in point: I find Travis a lot more sympathetic in 176 than in 25.
Continuing the theme of 239, one reason Nelson Mandela was so successful at peacefully reconciling South African whites to majority rule was that he was maximally indulgent on symbolic matters, refusing to treat all of Afrikaner history and culture as irredeemably tainted (indeed, he charmed his White interlocutors in the Constitutional negotiations by his knowledge of the Afrikaans language and its major poets). At the same time, he was utterly uncompromising on the principle of nonracial democracy (at a time when conservative whites were holding out for some kind of group representation), and he insisted on a full and honest accounting of the crimes of Apartheid as a condition of bestowing absolution (amnesty) on the perpetrators. (Indeed, several perpetrators were denied amnesty and subsequently prosecuted because they refused to honestly acknowledge their culpability in certain crimes.)
May 6th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Of course, if you think about it, probably more than a few Southerners think that they actually WON the war. Their cognitive dissonance has enabled them to think that nearly a million people died because of a dispute over the power of the Federal government. Considering the GOP still thinks they are the overwhelming majority, it’s probably no surprise there is so much Confederacy admiration in its ranks.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
It is apparent many here feel the need to hang on to their mislead belief that the war was about slavery. That’s fine. If nothing else it certainly beats giving up intellectual laziness and curiosity, and studying the real reasons behind the war.
That’s all fine and dandy but as the old canard goes “Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.”
The same politics and economics that lead to the first civil war are being replayed as we speak. If may behoove you all to inform yourselves about the reality of the civil war, the causes, the politic environment, the arguments for and against, etc.
Have a great day all.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
It can be described as “Vote for us, and we guarantee we will do as many things as we can to try to piss of Jane Fonda.”
Curiously, the Reconstruction-era Republicans did much the same thing (only substitute “Johnny Reb” for “Jane Fonda”). I can even sort of sympathize with the Southerners who reject Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day) as a national holiday; it was deliberately designed to rub their noses in the defeat. Of course, symbolic middle fingers were a poor substitute for political reform at the end of the day, at least if you were a Black person in the late 19th century South.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
“Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.”
Just the other day someone in this forum expressed interest in burning Atlanta again (or at least some of its northern suburbs). I wouldn’t go that far, but maybe we could compromise by bulldozing Spartanburg, SC and redistributing the entire housing stock of Union County, NC to the residents of downtown Charlotte (”Who needs 40 acres and a mule when you can have 3,400 square feet and a riding lawn mower?”).
May 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
stormy, you’re a pathetic wanker from first to last.
you find one quote from a newspaper editorial talking about the economic consequences of secession, and you infer from that that the civil war was not caused by slavery?
you really have no idea how history is studied or understood, do you?
or are you just intentionally glossing over the missouri compromise, the compromise of 1850, the dred scott decision, and the entire rest of the contents of the lincoln-douglas base other than the parts where lincoln pandered to his racist south-illinois audience?
the south was willing to break up the union in order to preserve slavery. lincoln was willing to tolerate slavery–for the time being–in order to preserve the union. everyone at the time of his election in 1860 knew that this was the great fault-line. no one then felt the need to lie about it. it’s only after the south lost that it started trying to re-write history to pretend that the war was not “about” slavery.
the rest of your propagandistic nonsense is just re-hashed pro-secession white-supremastic ignorance. you are not persuading anyone.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
For Stormy…
It is apparent many here feel the need to hang on to their mislead belief that the war was about [the Jews]. That’s fine. If nothing else it certainly beats giving up intellectual laziness and curiosity, and studying the real reasons behind the war.
The fact that “the war” was not solely about “the jews/slavery” does nothing to make the “neo-Nazis/mainstream Southerner’s” fetishization of “Hitler/Davis” less repugnant.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
It is apparent many here feel the need to hang on to their mislead belief that the war was about slavery. That’s fine. If nothing else it certainly beats giving up intellectual laziness and curiosity, and studying the real reasons behind the war.
Hilarious. You can read an analysis of the Confederate Constitution here.
Stormy’s argument boils down to “The Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about the fact that the South wanted slavery to always remain legal, which is totally different.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Knecht Ruprecht, you said
1. Yes, let us ignore – or pretend- that Northern racism does not exist and has been “truly vanquished.”
2. It’s not enough that the North continues to portray the South as a bunch horrid, inbred, uneducated, racist, rednecks – they must portray themselves as some great sophisticated, enlightened, selfless, society who single handily is responsible for the salvation and freedom of an entire race of peoples, while pretending they bear no HUGE guilt of their own – like a Brown Shirt denying the holocaust.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Barbar, forget someones analysis of the Confederate Constitution. Read it for yourself. It reads in part:
Sec. 9. (I) The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
(2) Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp
May 6th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Why would anyone, Southerner or no, fail to understand why honoring traitors is repgunant?
May 6th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
#289–
you just keep going from sad to sadder, stormy.
you think that codifying restraints on trade is evidence of enlightened attitudes? that’s like arguing that when argentina embargoes the importation of foreign beef, it’s because they’re vegetarians.
look: the confederacy was created in order to preserve legal slavery. the fact that it put regulations on importation means *nothing* to the contrary.
this is almost as pathetic as your earlier claim about there being no c.s.a.-flagged slave-ships.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
In other words, Stormy, they were encoding slavery into the constitution, how idealistic. I wonder if the slave importation prohibition was a humanitarian gesture or were they just afraid of becoming minority slave masters? De Toqueville thought the South wouldn’t secede because they weren’t strong enough to stop a slave revolt on their own.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Not that I would want to get in the way of neo-Confederates having entertaining spitting contests with people who just recently discovered that Jeff Davis was a traitor . . . but, welcome to the real world!
The former Confederate states have been worshipping their Confederate heroes for 140 years, at this point. Back in the days when every southern town had a roster of dead and mained men to mourn over, people did not begrudge them their heroes all that much. They lost the war, after all, and paid an horrible price for their arrogance and bigotry–bigotry not just against blacks, but against the white northern “mudsills and dirty mechanics” they thought couldn’t whip them in a fair fight.
The culture of remembrance became morally abhorrent decades later, when the old racism re-captured the south, enforced Jim Crow, and began exporting their more rigorous brand of racism to the north. Northern attempts to accomodate Southern “feelings”–some of them shared by a lot of Northern Whites–meant that racial segregation was actually on the upswing in the north until the time of FDR. When Marion Anderson was banned from singing at Constitution Hall in 1939, it wasn’t because some ancient tradition of the DAR. The ban had been put in place by a Southern born administrater only a couple of years previous.
If you find streets and roads named after Confederate heroes so shocking, try making a mental list of the most famous army bases you’ve heard of in the news over the past few decades:
Fort Bragg, Fort Lee, Fort Hood, Fort Meade, Fort Knox . . . note that the first three were named after Confederate generals!
May 6th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Where’s my Benedict Arnold Expressway!?!?!
May 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Oy! Are you people being obtuse or are you really this uneducated on the matter. Look, I know it fits your agenda to call anyone who dare challenge the populace message a racist, etc. Fine. Call me what you will, but the facts remain so.
The South, like the North, believed the practice of slavery would die out.
Unlike the North, who abolished slavery in the United States by taking their own slaves south and selling them for great profit, the south decided to let it die out.
However, the North did not stop participating in slavery. They were still engaging in the slave trade down in Brazil and so forth – flying that U.S. flag.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Stormy, you nincompoop, the Confederacy was perfectly happy to uphold the already-existing ban on the importation of slaves from Africa because the ban was a protectionist trade barrier protecting the domestic “slave production industry”.
New Slave States in the West + ban on importing slaves from Africa = massive new slave-selling market for Confederate plantation owners.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
It’s not enough that the North continues to portray the South as a bunch horrid, inbred, uneducated, racist, rednecks – they must portray themselves as some great sophisticated, enlightened, selfless, society who single handily is responsible for the salvation and freedom of an entire race of peoples
I’m not sure who you’re referring to here, stormy. Certainly not me. I was born a Southerner, my great-great uncle fought for the CSA, and my father donated money in his great uncle’s name to refurbish the monument to confederate veterans in the courthouse square of the county seat. Neither the history of the South nor the present is all racism and squalor, and the history of the North isn’t all glory and enlightenment. Who here said otherwise?
I also spent a lot of time in Germany, and folks there know that if you want to make any hint of a positive statement about anything that happened between 1933 and 1945 (as in, I sure do like that one song by Zarah Leander’s“, you need to preface it with a ritual self-abasement to make dead certain that your interlocutors know that you don’t harbor any irredentist sentiment. If you fail to do so, or if you start with “they were misunderstood” or “they had legitimate grievances” or “it wasn’t as bad as they say” or “others were just as guilty” or “one can distinguish between the inhuman parts and the proud heritage parts”, then people think you are a bad person, and rightly so.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
“The South, like the North, believed the practice of slavery would die out. Unlike the North, who abolished slavery in the United States by taking their own slaves south and selling them for great profit, the south decided to let it die out.”
no, stormy, once again you are wrong. here is the commissioner of confederate louisiana, writing to persuade texas to join the rebellion:
“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.”
http://www.etsu.edu/cas/history/docs/secaddtotexas.htm
perpetual slavery. got that, stormy? that’s what the confederacy wanted.
you keep spinning and lying, stormy. but as long as you are arguing on behalf of traitors and slave-holders, you are going to lose.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
It’s not enough that the North continues to portray the South as a bunch horrid, inbred, uneducated, racist, rednecks
I guess the feeling is contagious.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
In other words, it would be illegal for a new Confederate state to ban slavery. So much for state’s rights!
May 6th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
The South, like the North, believed the practice of slavery would die out.
That’s an absolute lie. The South did everything they could in their power to perpetuate and expand slavery to all of the newly added states and the the territories. And if they could have forced free states to adopt slavery, they would have done that, too.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
the south decided to let [slavery] die out.
Now you’re just deliberately trolling, right? Read the fucking CSA constitution!
Jeezus.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
280. I’m probably more symphathetic in 176 than in 25 because I expand upon my beliefs and reasoning than the reactive just going off the handle “Here we go again…”
I’m a Southern liberal. You know what it was like living down here during the Bush 43 years? But, I spoke my beliefs fought the good fight and watched conventional wisdom slowly turn the tide.
In 2004, I lived in a Blue County (Orange FL) but in 2008 I lived in a Blue State (Virginia). Virginia, the same state that so many have bashed in these comments.
Al Gore, the great environmental crusader of our time– from Tennessee. Yeah, he went to private school in DC and went to an Ivy but he lives in Tennessee. And, as a former Tennessean, I’m ashamed that the Volunteer State did not vote for him in 2000. We would be a better place today.
I grew up in Chattanooga. The Civil War is pretty prominent there. In a majority of the old neighborhoods there are cannons and/or markers in people’s yards. They document both the Union army and the Confederate army. Chickamauga Battlefield is just south of the Tennessee/Georgia stateline. Fourth of July fesitivities occur there with the Chattanooga Symphony.
I lived in Atlanta. Sherman’s march to the sea was the best thing that ever happened to Atlanta. I’ve been to the King Center and the Carter Center. Atlanta proudly proclaims it’s Civil Rights era heritage as “The City too Busy to Hate.”
New Orleans had the most intergrated society (racially speaking) when Louisiana joined the US. Was it perfect, far from it. Horrible history occurred there as well. Slave trading most prominently. I know about Louis Armstrong’s quote. But, I also know of the efforts since then to recognize him as well. (Louis Armstrong Park and Louis Armstrong International Airport)
So David, when I respond to your comments and you reply sorry ain’t good enough. I take offense. You want to paint us all as redneck idiots who are too illiterate to know better. That generalization comes from before the Civil War and continues to the present day thanks to some in the Republican party.
There are those of us trying to fight that stigma every day.
This debate is the exact opposite of what I experienced on the Mall on 1/20/2009. Funny, no one cared then that I came from the South.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Joe from Lowell: which two Confederate generals supported voting rights for blacks, which cost ‘em their statues?
May 6th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
303: I feel your pain, Travis. I’ve been there myself. The trouble is that you have guys like Stormy making superficially similar arguments, and you have to row like hell to put daylight between you and them. Sometimes it seems unfair to be tarred with the same brush, but better to tar a few innocents than give any quarter to the neo-Confederates. IMHO, anyone who wants to praise “states rights”, “southern heritage”, or alternative interpretations of the origins of the Civil War, the burden of proof is on you to prove good faith and non-sympathy with unreconstructed racists (which you have done in my eyes, BTW).
May 6th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
you know, travis, i really don’t have anything against southerners who are not confederate sympathizers.
anymore than i have something against german people, if they are not nazi-sympathizers.
whoever is willing to set their face against the sins of the past, i have no problem with.
and indeed, they don’t even need to do that explicitly. it’s not like i meet german people and immediately say “but do you renounce hitler? well, do you?”
with ordinary german people, it just doesn’t come up. because they *have* gotten over it. the vast, vast majority of germans really have put it behind them. now they are the heirs of mozart and einstein and leibniz and goethe and dürer.
that’s all southerners have to do. just give up on this celebrating of the heroes of the confederacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
vast majority of germans really have put it behind them. now they are the heirs of mozart and einstein and leibniz and goethe and dürer.
Indeed, post-war Germany has gone out of its way to celebrate the the countrymen were persecuted by the Third Reich and especially the rare few who engaged in resistance. Go to mapquest.de and type in “Geschwister Scholl” or “Clemens von Galen” or “Martin Niemöller”; you’ll see that every other town has a street or public square named after them. When every white-majority town in the South has a street named after Abraham Lincoln and one after MLK, I’ll take the Jefferson Davis Highways without complaint.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
305. Yep. That’s why I call it a “broad brush”. And, when one uses that instrument quite a few trying to do the right thing get caught up in it. But, of course the irony is that I haven’t argued for “state’s rights”, “southern heritage” (as in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow era Southern version of history) or alternative interpretations on the orgins of the Civil War.
If you forget the past you then are doomed to repeat it doesn’t just work for the Vietnam and Iraq wars. It counts for the Civil War as well. And, because I’ve grown up around those battlefields, hearing Rick Perry and Tom Delay threaten secession is a scary thing indeed.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Travis, (300 comments later) nobody is talking about Southern liberals. Nobody is talking about Southern moderates. They exist! They are great! I want you to have the voting rights enjoyed by many others (myself NOT included–I live in gerrymandered Ohio).
We’re complaining about Southern conservatives, whose federal representatives not only maintain the policies of the Confederates, but are actively threatening secession (in as real a way as was threatened in the 1850s). I don’t see how you can get more neo-confederate than that.
Now, I believe (and I think this was MY’s point) that the idolization of the Confederacy plays a big role in the shocking popular support for, well, secession. These Republicans should be laughed out of office.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Right, no one’s tarring Southern liberals with anything. Well, except for the massively outsized persecution complex they share with the Southern conservatives…
May 6th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I think we ought to give the South a break. People like Jefferson Davis and General Lee were, although racists, valient patriots of the South, and they deserve honours.
Intellectual conformity is not the way to go.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Travis at 303: I went to prep school on Missionary Ridge, and I am touched that you conjure the imagery of my home in the spirit of reconciliation.
That said, the “redneck idiots who are too illiterate to know better” have been an important source of political power and labor. Southern leaders have heretofore been more than willing to stoke their fears and ignorance, to appeal to their sense of resentment and to traffic in coded (and re-coded) language and symbolism for decades. This kind of thing been baked into the power structure down there for a long time, and without the kind of vigilance I am happy to see emerging in this discussion, I think that cogent perspectives such as yours have so often been the opening salvo in a wider effort to obfuscate and divide.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
they deserve honours
You keep out of it, Limey!
May 6th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Travis, I’m glad that New Orleans has been able to posthumously make it up to Louis Armstrong. However, too many Southerners seem obesessed with 1861-65 then its impressive accomplishments in writing and music.
If you really want to see a shitstorm, someone should ask Tim Tebow what his take on scecession is.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Finally, if any lurker out there is wondering if maybe the revisionists have a point, and if maybe you can analytically separate the demands for states rights (or opposition to the tariff, or whatever) from the slavery dispute, I can only recommend that you read the original declaration of secession adopted by the South Carolina legislature just weeks after the election of Lincoln. Try to find any hint that there is an issue apart from slavery that motivated the declaration. You’d be hard pressed to even mine a truncated, out of context quote that would support the revisionist view.
The grievances in that document are spelled out in…erm…black and white. They are exclusively about slavery: that the non-slave states fail to fulfill their obligation to return fugitive slaves, permit abolitionist agitation, encourage and assist runaway slaves, and allow Black people rights of citizenship. Finally, and most importantly, the non-slaveholding states have elected a man to the Presidency “whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery”.
Try as you might, stormy, you can’t interpret that away.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Watching northern liberals talk about the south is like watching American conservatives talk about the Muslim world.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
But, of course the irony is that I haven’t argued for “state’s rights”, “southern heritage” (as in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow era Southern version of history) or alternative interpretations on the orgins of the Civil War.
It was this passage in 25 that set off my revisionism detector:
May 6th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Drive By-Truckers – “The Three Great Alabama Icons” – from Southern Rock Opera
I grew up in North Alabama, back in the 1970’s, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth…
Speaking of course of the Three Great Alabama Icons… George Wallace, Bear Bryant and Ronnie Van Zant… Now Ronnie Van Zant wasn’t from Alabama, he was from Florida… He was a huge Neil Young fan… But in the tradition of Merle Haggard writin’ Okie from Muskogee to tell his dad’s point of view about the hippies ‘n Vietnam, Ronnie felt that the other side of the story should be told. And Neil Young always claimed that Sweet Home Alabama was one of his favorite songs. And legend has it that he was an honorary pall bearer at Ronnie’s funeral… such is the Duality of the Southern Thing… And Bear Bryant wore a cool lookin’ red checkered hat and won football games… and there’s few things more loved in Alabama than football and the men who know how to win at it… So when the Bear would come to town, there’d be a parade. And me, I was one a’ them pussy boys… cause I hated football, so I got a guitar… but a guitar was a poor substitute for a football with the girls in my high school… So my band hit the road… and we didn’t play no Skynyrd either… I came of age rebellin’ against the music in my high school parkin’ lot… It wasn’t till years later after leavin’ the South for a while that I came to appreciate and understand the whole Skynyrd thing and its misunderstood glory… I left the South and learned how different people’s perceptions of the Southern Thing was from what I’d seen in my life… Which leads us to George Wallace… Now Wallace was for all practical purposes the Governor of Alabama from 1962 until 1986… Once, when a law prevented him from succeeding himself he ran his wife Lerline in his place and she won by a landslide… He’s most famous as the belligerent racist voice of the segregationist South… Standing in the doorways of schools and waging a political war against a Federal Government that he decried as hypocritical… And Wallace had started out as a lawyer and a judge with a very progressive and humanitarian track record for a man of his time. But he lost his first bid for governor in 1958 by hedging on the race issue, against a man who spoke out against integration… Wallace ran again in ‘62 as a staunch segregationist and won big, and for the next decade spoke out loudly… He accused Kennedy and King of being communists. He was constantly on national news, representing the “good‿ people of Alabama… And you know race was only an issue on TV in the house that I grew up in… Wallace was viewed as a man from another time and place… And when I first ventured out of the South, I was shocked at how strongly Wallace was associated with Alabama and its people… Ya know racism is a worldwide problem and it’s been since the beginning of recorded history… and it ain’t just white and black… But thanks to George Wallace, it’s always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent. And bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd attempted to show another side of the South… One that certainly exists, but few saw beyond the rebel flag… And this applies not only to their critics and detractors, but also from their fans and followers. So for a while, when Neil Young would come to town, he’d get death-threats down in Alabama… Ironically, in 1971, after a particularly racially charged campaign, Wallace began backpedaling, and he opened up Alabama politics to minorities at a rate faster than most Northern states or the Federal Government. And Wallace spent the rest of his life trying to explain away his racist past, and in 1982 won his last term in office with over 90% of the black vote… Such is the Duality of the Southern Thing… And George Wallace died back in ‘98 and he’s in Hell now, not because he’s a racist… His track record as a judge and his late-life quest for redemption make a good argument for his being, at worst, no worse than most white men of his generation, North or South… But because of his blind ambition and his hunger for votes, he turned a blind eye to the suffering of Black America. And he became a pawn in the fight against the Civil Rights cause… Fortunately for him, the Devil is also a Southerner…
May 6th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny0crAOX6nA
it’s red, white and blue flag
but it ain’t ours
May 6th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
249
See? It’s easy when you pretend that the last half century of American political history didn’t happen.
To be fair, I think Stormy was talking about the slavery of the welfare system there, in a Galtesque sense or something like that.
257: Calley expressed contrition? I didn’t know that. When? In what terms?
259
Didn’t vote for Obama? You’re a racist.
Do you have a link to someone in this thread saying that? Or, hell, I’m not picky, do you have a link to anyone anywhere saying that? If not, I assume you’re hallucinating, which is the more generous possibility.
262: Stormy, were you already aware of the references to slavery in the CSA constitution that people have quoted upthread? If so, why do you believe what you wrote here? Assuming you do believe it.
302
Now you’re just deliberately trolling, right?
Yes, probably. Someone else upthread associated Stormy with Stormfront, but my first thought was of Stormy70, a pro-torture frequent commenter on several right-wing blogs.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Arlen Specter is an absolute loyalist… to himself.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
#320
i thought calley had expressed some regrets for the war crimes, but after looking around, i don’t find it.
my bad. i think i must have confused him with emperor hirohito.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Travis:
Hey, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’ve known lots of liberal southerners, so I know they exist. When I said “not good enough,” I didn’t mean that you weren’t good enough, or that Southerners weren’t good enough, I meant that Alexandria’s Masons honoring Washington, etc., does not make up for the dense archipelago of monuments, roads, and schools honoring Confederates in the South. These certainly indicate that Southern Heritage means the Confederacy in the eyes of many in the South. I would love for Southerners to more loudly proclaim their other achievements.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Re Don Williams @ 187
Grants’ order was rescinded by President Lincoln as soon as he heard about it.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Damn, I’m late to the party agin.
Maybe for some few the Civil War was a noble doomed effort to assert the primacy of the State, and not about slavery. But it was almost always about race, and the fear of the other that the slaveholding upper class used to keep the white trash in line.
My confederate ancestor owned no slaves. I firmly believe he was mislead into fighting, but he seemed to have been a scrapper and in the Mexican war. According to my dad, he was mean old man who hated blacks. I doubt his survival of the Johnson Island prison camp was probably heroic in the squalid way of prison camps.
My wife’s people owned slaves. One ancestor held 3 slaves a the time of the war (out of 15 in this southern county), and they would live with the family after emancipation, probably because they had no place else to go. Another got his ass shot off after as a Union Partisan deserting the Confederate army as a Union Partisan. Of course the High School here has “the Rebels” as a mascot, when the place was called by Confederate officers “a hotbed of Unionism and opposition to the Confederacy”.
The South is in the grip of a sort of identity politics that sell false history. I think a lot the false history comes from Hollywood: some folks really think “Gone with the Wind” and “Birth of a Nation” are history. Racism has been marketed as a regional identity. It’s tied in with sports and Nascar and bad religion and while its as real as “Larry the Cable Guy”, it is all these yobbos really have. Not knowing any real history of the Reconstruction, and the sellout of the freed Slaves by the Abolitionists. And it’s been amplified by the images of a Romantic war. If fighting desperately for a great cause and suffering ennobles, and it doesn’ always, those times are worth remembering. Using that history falsely for advertising and marketing politics should be called out.
Today, in Blue Ridge GA there is a little dedication of a memorial at the Dickey cemetery, the slave cemetery, where a few boulders mark the folk’s graves. None of their descendants live here, having moved away to less racist places. Instead, there is a steady inmigration of nonwhites, and the place is up to 15% hispanic.
I will say that the Southern Persecution Complex has several causes. Nasty generalization and suggestions that ‘you should go ahead and secede’ aren’t serious.
I suggest y’all read Flannery O’connor’s “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” for a good look at the sort of history that has been sold to the South for several generations now..
May 6th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
You are a Yankee and you don’t get it. You guys always want to turn it into a race issue. Its not a race issue. Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun and Robert E. Lee may have been on the losing side but still fought for what they believed in. For Lee it was simply about the South having independence. Those people and those battles are now our ancestors and our history. Though you Yankees would like to pretend it never happened, for us it is a history that is still very real.
I am a lifelong (non-racist) democrat raised by a liberal Southern family and though I know that some of what the South stood for was racist and reprehensible some of it was also admirable and courageous and I am grateful to my fore fathers for fighting for what they thought was right.
Its an extremely complex issue for us. And it is aggravating that Yankees always try to sweep it under the carpet instead of giving it a little respect. It is our history.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
I’ve known lots of liberal southerners, so I know they exist.
That kind of implies (probably inadvertently) that only liberals can be non-racist. Me, I’m cool with conservative Southerners, too, as long as they stay away from the politics of white resentment. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)and Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA) come to mind. They’re not my political cup of tea, but I give them credit for not drinking from that poisoned well.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Debates about race on blogs reminds me of another great Flannery O’Conner story I think was called “The Barber”. It was where a Southern Liberal was trying to argue integration with the racists at the local barbershop, failing to understand that the racists absolutely didn’t want to be convinced that segregation was bad.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Jen, with all due respect. If there hadn’t been people in the North arguing for the dissolution of slavery, would the South have ever sceceded? Seriously, do you honestly believe that slavery was a secondary reason for the Confederacy?
It’s amazing that Southerners like yourself who decry any other group of people having identity politics (like, oh, the Latinos, LGBT, African-Americans), but you take great freaking pains to be Southern first, American second.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
“It’s not enough that the North continues to portray the South as a bunch horrid, inbred, uneducated, racist, rednecks…”
You know, having married a native Southerner and walked among their lands, I can certainly vouch that many Northern stereotypes about the South are unfair and largely inaccurate.
Indeed, I became acquainted with several people who were far more open-minded and tolerant than many Northerners I know.
I also met a significant number of gracious, urbane, highly educated, sophisticated people who are not only horrifyingly and unabashedly racist, but are so thoroughly steeped in libelous, revisionist history of the Civil War that it’s like listening to Ahmedinejad talk about Israel.
There are ignorant hicks in every state of the union, but the South seems to have the vast majority of Americans who hold educated, mainstream views about every subject in the world except race relations, Jim Crow, and the Confederacy.
Of course, your mileage in Dixie may vary.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Re Stormy
Mr. Stormy cites General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall as his authority on the causes of the Civil War. I’ll cite Major General John Fredrick Charles Fuller, one of the formost military historians of the 20th century, as my authority. General Fuller, in his book, “The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant,” states plainly that the main cause of the Civil War was slavery. Had slavery been abolished in the South prior to 1860, there would have been no Civil was.
To further drive home this reality, in 1964, General Robert E. Lee suggested to Confederate President Jefferson Davis that male slaves be allowed to enlist in the Confederate Army in exchange for their freedom. He was summarily turned down by President Davis. Another Southern general, Patrick Claiborne also suggested the same thing and was almost cashiered from the Confederate army for having the temerity to make such a suggestion at a time when the Confederacy could ill afford to lose competent commanders like him.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
…though I know that some of what the South stood for was racist and reprehensible some of it was also admirable and courageous and I am grateful to my fore fathers for fighting for what they thought was right.
I hear this sort of thing a lot, and I don’t get it.
I certainly don’t doubt the courage of Confederate soldiers, and I’m sure that for a great many of them the motive for fighting was along the lines of “I am a Virginian and Virginia is under attack”… which is not something I would hold against them personally.
But name one thing that was “admirable” about what the antebellum South stood for, from an even remotely liberal point of view.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Re Jen
For Lee it was simply about the South having independence.
I am afraid that Ms. Jen is seriously in error. Robert E. Lee went south because his native state of Virginia joined the Confederacy. Had Virginia stayed in the Union (and the vote to secede was very close), Lee would have stayed in the US Army and accepted the field command of that organization which had been offered to him by Winfield Scott.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
That kind of implies (probably inadvertently) that only liberals can be non-racist. Me, I’m cool with conservative Southerners, too, as long as they stay away from the politics of white resentment.
It was inadvertent and the result of specifically addressing Travis’s complaint. But I join you in not having a problem with people who don’t driking from the poisined well of white resentment.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
I’m spewing sentence fragments again.
Should be “I doubt his survival of the Johnson Island prison camp was probably more or less heroic in the squalid way of prison camps.” And “Another got his ass shot off as a Union Partisan deserting the Confederate army.” and “Not knowing any real history of the Reconstruction, and the sellout of the freed Slaves by the Abolitionists, and the economic measures taken against the South after the war (doubled rail rate until the middle of WWII, for example) the public doesn’t have a context for the Jim Crow era.
My dad drug us to Civil war battlefields when we were kids, and what I probably noticed first was that the memorials of Northern regiments were much…grander than the Souths, which in comparison bordered on the pathetic. It was a metaphor for the North advantage of wealth and productivity.
My problem with most ‘Southern’ History is that it stops firmly at Appomattox, and ignores the history afterward, where these men became ‘hero’ and myths about them “history”.
Lee, in defeat, ran a college, and said we must reconcile. His top general, Longstreet, went on to become a Republican and owner of an Insurance Company…
And the crazy Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the KKK and perpetrator of the Ft. Pillow massacre, is said to have abjured racism in his last year. Those men really didn’t want the Jim Crow/Lynching South that politicians made in the turmoil of a defeated nation with no Marshall plan.
I’m just not comfortable with the South being given the role of the Nation’s Jungian shadow,when the real history is such a mess.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
The Taliban is also fighting for what they believe in.
When do people fight for things they DON’T believe in?
What Davis was fighting for was the same thing the KKK fights for: white supremacy.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Matt may have something of an underlying point, but he makes it in an unfair, malicious way that besmirches the people of an entire region of the country. Has he spent any time interacting with people in the South? Yes, they have pride in their history, which is problematic, but this hardly makes them different from other group in the world with a conscious regional history. If Matt wants to say that the South is filled with racists, he should go there and report some data other than lists of town and street names he Googles this morning.
Does he expect that they institute a ‘year zero’ elimination of history in order to complete their penance for slavery and the Rebellion? I’d prefer we not deny history.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
though I know that some of what the South stood for was racist and reprehensible some of it was also admirable and courageous and I am grateful to my fore fathers for fighting for what they thought was right
I can sympathize with the desire to see one’s history in appropriate shades of gray and to pay respect to ancestors who made sacrifices or exhibited bravery. I also think it’s possible to do that without being tainted by the evil done in the name of the same cause, just as many Germans esteem the bravery of Wehrmacht soldiers or Afrikaners honor the heroic resistance of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer war.
For such sentiment to be morally inoffensive, it needs to be coupled with (1) a forthright acknowledgement of the evil that was done; (2) a refusal to whitewash or relativize that evil; and (3) a commitment to guard against the recurrence of that evil. That’s what I meant about the burden of proof being on the individual to prove good faith. Anyone who argues, on the basis of neo-Confederate talking points, that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, has almost automatically failed the test of good faith. (Limited exceptions may be available to distinguished historians with a comprehensive command of the archival record, provided they have a documented and unblemished track record of liberal views on race.)
May 6th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I’d prefer we not deny history.
On this, we can agree. Would that the neo-Confederates felt the same way.
I cheerfully honor the American patriots who launched a revolt against the English crown from my adopted Northeastern home, but I don’t feel the need to get testy if someone points out the historical truth that desire for unbounded westward expansion (with inevitable baleful consequences for the native inhabitants) was a strong motivator for the American Revolution. History is messy, and human beings are broken vessels.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
And Wallace spent the rest of his life trying to explain away his racist past, and in 1982 won his last term in office with over 90% of the black vote…George Wallace died back in ‘98 and he’s in Hell now
Wallace went a long way to redeeming himself in his last term. As governor in the 1970’s he crowned, but did not kiss, a couple of African-American homecoming queens at the University of Alabama. “The people of Alabama”, he told the 1976 winner, “are not ready for me to kiss a black girl.”
In his final term of office, he returned to the tradition of the governor giving the homecoming queen a kiss on the cheek–a Black cheek–at midfield in front of a stadium full of ‘Bama fans. I’d like to hope that that single gesture of decency tugged enough heartstrings (or at least pissed off enough racists) to earn Gov. Wallace his berth in the sweet by and by.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
If we’re gonna be throwing stones at glass houses, let me note that the Confederacy looked as much like an affirmative action program for Jewish American politicans as it was a defense of slavery.
Although admittedly there was that “defense of property” thing.
I’d point out the obvious anti-Semitism of the “defense of property” line, but then someone would accuse me of being unable to differentiate between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
cdc wrote: “However, only one region of the country fought a war in an attempt to maintain their practice of buying and selling other human beings.”
Which practice was codified in the Constitution with the agreement of Northerners. Who, of course, were ever so uncomfortable with it but, alas, what’s to be done?
And once we stomped the evil of slavery out, all good Americans happily returned to the business of exterminating the men, women, and children who already inhabited this continent.
It’s very easy for you to think of the South as particularly evil, but at best you are just looking down at it from a slightly higher level of Hell.
Tear down your statues and rename all your cities and buildings until everything is named after Lincoln and only after Lincoln, or others officially certified to be as pure and saintly, then maybe you’ll have a little more moral heft in this debate. In the meantime, don’t sit in WASHINGTON telling Virginia how we should name our roads, thanks.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
There are number of comments along the lines of “There’s a Woodrow Wilson Center, and Wilson supported the Klan,” or “There’s a Lincoln Memorial, and he was a racist.”
The problem with this effort at drawing an equivalence with Confederate heroes is the vastly different reasons they are being honored. Woodrow Wilson isn’t being honored for segregating the civil service. Abraham Lincoln isn’t being honored for thinking that black people were his social inferiors.
Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest, on the other hand, actually are being honored precisely for waging war against the United States of America on behalf of slavery.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Jen @326: It’s not a genuinely complex issue. You choose to invent complexity in order to avoid confronting the racism on which southern white identity is based, including (so it seems) liberal non-racist southern white identity. You don’t want to make a clean break, so you rationalize…in a way that’s embarrassing to read. That Lee fought for something he believed in is an aggravating rather than moderating circumstance–something so obvious that it’s crazy that I even have to point it out to you.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I can sympathize with the desire to see one’s history in appropriate shades of gray and to pay respect to ancestors who made sacrifices or exhibited bravery. I also think it’s possible to do that without being tainted by the evil done in the name of the same cause, just as many Germans esteem the bravery of Wehrmacht soldiers or Afrikaners honor the heroic resistance of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer war.
I believe that the invasion of Iraq was based on lies and thus immoral. Every time someone acknowledges the bravery of the soldiers there or the sacrifices they have been made I do not insist that they couple it with
(1) a forthright acknowledgement of the evil that was done; (2) a refusal to whitewash or relativize that evil; and (3) a commitment to guard against the recurrence of that evil.
I don’t think you do either.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
The Germans today admit that the Nazis lost the war, and are ashamed of the Nazis. They would never name a major thoroughfare after one of them.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Not to mention, that’s just a giant “fuck you” from Virginia, isn’t it?
Sometimes I think the South is just a giant “fuck you” to the United States.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
I believe that the invasion of Iraq was based on lies and thus immoral. Every time someone acknowledges the bravery of the soldiers there or the sacrifices they have been made I do not insist that they couple it with
(1) a forthright acknowledgement of the evil that was done; (2) a refusal to whitewash or relativize that evil; and (3) a commitment to guard against the recurrence of that evil.
I don’t think you do either.
If I were talking to a bunch of Iraqis who had suffered under the occupation I would. You bet your ass I would, and I think you would, too. Because they’d probably look askance at me if I lauded the bravery of the American GI without those qualifications.
Around 12% of the US population is descended from those who suffered under the boot of the slaveholding system, and the older cohort among them lived through the Jim Crow period. If you share a polity with them and want to enjoy a presumption of good faith in your dealings with them, you owe them them the recitation of 1 through 3 any time you laud the heroism of the Confederate soldier.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Not to mention, that’s just a giant “fuck you” from Virginia, isn’t it?
Not really. The motto was adopted long before John Wilkes Booth gave it his peculiar interpretation.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Continuing the “throwing stones at glass houses meme”, I seem to recall Matthew mentioning his Cuban heritage.
My understanding is that Cuba didn’t ban slavery until 1888.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
If I were talking to a bunch of Iraqis who had suffered under the occupation I would. You bet your ass I would, and I think you would, too. Because they’d probably look askance at me if I lauded the bravery of the American GI without those qualifications.
Point taken. But I infer that you don’t do so around here, and neither do I.
In some cases then, its OK not to acknowledge the evil, and in others it is.
I’ve never praised a confederate soldier for any reason, but I’m ready to admit to the possibility that not every statue, monument, and inappropriately named street in every podunk southern backwater is the proverbial F.U. that they can easily be interpreted to be. Some maybe simple acknowledgments of sacrifice among locals — even though it was made in the name of a cause that is considered immoral. And, even if they were created as F.U.s, it is clear that not everyone down here sees them that way.
I think part of the problem here is that in most wars when the history gets written by the victors, the two sides tend to separate. In the case of the civil war that was not and is not the case. If you ask me and a Japanese person our thoughts on the use of the Atomic bomb on Nagasaki, I’d imagine we might get into a discussion that touched on some of the same issues in this thread. But it just doesn’t come up as often because they live way over there and we live way over here. And as a result, our version of that history is not challenged very often.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
In the case of the civil war that was not and is not the case.
I think this proves too much. Look at the countries where the historical memory of a civil war is still relevant to contemporary politics: Greece, Spain, Argentina, Bosnia, Rwanda (in roughly descending order of one-sided evil). In those countries, those who deliberately preserve and honor the memory of the combatants are unambiguously making a political point.
How can Southern nostalgists expect the former foe to interpret it any differently? The symbolic gesture of honoring Confederate heritage unavoidably has a political content, even if the gesturer intends only an innocuous, non-political meaning.
IMHO, it’s pretty damned magnanimous not to freak the fuck out over celebration of Confederate heritage. The least the Southern nostalgists can do is to reassure the former foe in unmistakeably sincere tones that they mentally separate the celebration of their ancestors from the endorsement of their crimes. But folks like Stormy go out of their way to do the opposite–to antagonize the former foe with specious rationalizations for the crimes of their ancestors.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Don’t forget the great Abe Lincoln. He was a huge racist. Nobody ever mentions that though.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
A couple of words got deleted from the preceding comment. It should have read, “IMHO, it’s pretty damned magnanimous for a Black person not to freak the fuck out over celebration of Confederate heritage.”
May 6th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
I’m ready to admit to the possibility that not every statue, monument, and inappropriately named street in every podunk southern backwater is the proverbial F.U. that they can easily be interpreted to be. Some maybe simple acknowledgments of sacrifice among locals — even though it was made in the name of a cause that is considered immoral. And, even if they were created as F.U.s, it is clear that not everyone down here sees them that way.
No disagreement on any of those points, BTW.
If an FU was involved in putting up a statue in the 1920’s, it was not an FU to the yankees, but to local blacks, to remind them of who’s in charge, notwithstanding which side won the war.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
And by the way, I *intentionally* alluded to “Sweet Home Alabama” because it’s one of those perfect pivot points upon which simplistic southern racists and simplistically pious yankees balance in a perfect equilibrium of not getting it — both for the same reason, even.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
The symbolic gesture of honoring Confederate heritage unavoidably has a political content, even if the gesturer intends only an innocuous, non-political meaning.
To you it does, and to many others. But so to would a “support the troops” bumper sticker to an Iraqi, or the public display of the Enola Gay to a Japanese individual–though the political content to an American is relatively minor in comparison. (Interestingly, when it was displayed at the Smithsonian the controversy was about the display showing too much compassion for the Japanese.) The point is that those insoutherndividuals aren’t around to see the gestures, so we get away with them pretty easily.
Undoubtedly many racists hide behind these arguments of heritage, etc. As you’ve noticed its not hard to identify them when they start talking.
All I’m saying is that if you’re arguing (not you, but some on this thread) that all appeals to heritage, rememberance etc are racist, and broadly painting southerners as ignorant rednecks then you’re merely puffing yourself up to feel superior to others, which is.. um.. kinda racist.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
#353–
wrong, robot. lincoln’s racism has already been dealt with several times on this thread.
along with the fact that it is no excuse for celebrating southern advocates of slavery.
“but, but, lincoln was a racist!” really doesn’t cut any ice. if you want to defend your own racism, you’ll need a different argument than that.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Hey bitzer, how did you manage to get yourself banned from unfogged? I heard about the banning long after the fact, but I have no idea what the context was. Can you post a link to the fateful thread?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
so far as i know, kr, i am not now nor have i ever been banned from unfogged. i saw someone else refer to that rumor, and found it puzzling, but i wasn’t sure how to source it.
no–the only truth to it is that i stopped frequenting the site. lots of fun there, lots of good folks, but i didn’t like some aspects of the vibe.
it’s kinda like–you know when you get bugged driving up and down the same old strip? you want to find a new place where the kids are hip?
yeah, well it was like that.
i mean–maybe i’m wrong, and i’m banned over there. you could ask over there, i guess.
(apologies to matt and other yglesiasts for o.t. convo).
May 6th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
oh–and kr? if you have any recollection where you heard that rumor, drop it in my gmail box, k?
May 7th, 2009 at 1:26 am
I am probably the only person who ever served in the United States Army who went to the Pentagon, filled out a “Request for reassignment,” from Ft Gordon, GA. Reason given for request: “I refuse to serve in the south.” The SSG told me that was not considered a reasonable reason. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the door and told him, “I walk out that door, you call the MPs and tell them that I deserted, because I will be in Canada before you get home tonight. I made a plane reservation for two this afternoon when I flew in last night. I am not serving anywhere in the south. You can send my ass to another tour in the Nam, but no south.”
Under questioning by an officer, with a southern accent, about why? Told him the truth, I served with people from all over the south in the Nam and there was not one of them that I considered human – white, black, mexican or japanese.
They reassigned me to NY City.
I have traveled all over all of the south and I have not changed my mind one tiny bit in the last 40 years. The south can not only secede but I’ll be willing to help anyone from the north, that wants to go there, to move. I realize that some people are ignorant. You can correct ignorance. Stupid goes all the way to the bone. I think something is wrong with the soil or the water.
Seriously, something makes residents of the south, pure stupid. Someone really needs to either check what causes it and start correcting it or get them the hell out of my country. They can take New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Arizona with them even though there are some humans there.
This is 2009 and people are talking about seceding. I rest my case as proven beyond doubt.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:48 am
What’s goin’ on? Palmieri hijack the blog again?
May 7th, 2009 at 3:11 am
What Mr. Bill said @#335:
I came of age in the 60’s and was in Flannery O’Connor’s college and hometown when the 64 Civil Rights Act was passed, the very year that she died. A couple of years later, as a young and single high school teacher, I was the first white person to teach in the first summer HeadStart program in an all-black school. A couple years after that I was part of the first school integration in another small southern city in which young, less tenured teachers in all white schools were swapped with their opposites in all black high schools. I’ve been on the front lines of the long and difficult process of desegregating the society I grew up in, and last fall I walked the streets knocking on the doors of mostly black homes to campaign for Barack Obama.
Last year this small southern city I live in, home of the heretofore mentioned Jim Marshall, elected a white Democratic mayor to succeed a Black Democratic one, its first. One of the former’s first acts was to issue a formal and very public apology to local blacks for the harm done to them by the institution of slavery. There is a confederate memorial here but there is also a main thoroughfare named MLK Jr. Boulevard. There are no Jefferson Davis thoroughfares, but there is an Eisenhower Parkway. One-half of our representation in the Republican dominated State legislature is Republican. There is a preponderance of private and Christian schools here supported primarily by both affluent and not so affluent whites. The public system is trying hard to compete for the support of a dwindling middle class. The largest civilian employer in the area is a military base.
My particular Southern history is complex and I confess to having a great deal of empathy with Jon from Virginia’s remarks in #342 and Travis in #303. I am descended from white sharecroppers on the one side and a landowning farmer on the other. My maternal grandfather was actually born during Reconstruction as the son of a circuit riding Methodist preacher. None of them had it easy, and that was before there was the actual Depression, which only made their lives a little worse than it already was (the boll weevil had already devasted the agrarian economy, which is the only economy that there was). WWII was my parents’ generation’s salvation. I know how hard the road has been that we have all collectively travelled and I very much resent being asked to atone and apologize for roads, disown them even,named after Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest who were certainly wrong in their support of the institution of slavery, but who were nevertheless not reflexively evil men.
In the final analysis, no one, Southern or not, relishes being talked down to, condescended to, ridiculed, or marginalized. Doing any of that during this ridiculous talk of secession by Southern Republicans is only going to make
their arguments more credible, when, if left alone, they will simply do themselves in. Just back off and they will just end up looking silly and unserious and non-mainstream.
May 7th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Re: They were still engaging in the slave trade down in Brazil and so forth – flying that U.S. flag.
There was no international slave trade by the 1860s. It had been banned by international law, and the ban was solidly enforced by the British navy.
Re: Lee it was simply about the South having independence.
Lee did not even believe in secession. He’s a rather tragic figure all in all, who could not conceive of fighting against his native state so he fought for the CSA instead when Virginia joined it.
May 7th, 2009 at 7:33 am
For the record, I think 362 is as pig-ignorant as any Civil War revisionism.
364 is great, and illustrative of my point that the celebration of Southern heritage is a lot more palatable to the former foe when it forthrightly acknowledges the past in all its painful complexity.
And strega nona is a great pseud.
Finis.
May 7th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Ric Caric wrote: “I haven’t been to Florence, SC for a long time, but it used to look like it’s been hit by a nuclear weapon. Spending time in these kinds of places is a good way to better know the depth of white supremacy in the South and also the depth of the struggles to overcome and defeat white supremacy.”
Still perpetuating myths about the South I see. I live in Florence.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:53 am
What dww44 said.
I still blame Hollywood and Popular Culture for much of the stupider Southern Nostalgia and it’s connection to racist politics.
And, in defense of Mr. Calhoun’s appearance in the photo above, the photographic techniques of the time required sitting still for 10-20 minutes or more, often in these sort of clamps that are hidden behind the sitter to keep them from moving and spoiling the picture. The poor frot is probably in great discomfort and wanting to kill the photographer. See:
http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/hia.html
May 7th, 2009 at 8:57 am
[...] that’s what’s going on at Matthew Yglesias’s blog. Read the hundreds of comments on this post (if you can stomach such a thing) and witness folks fiercely battling over secession, [...]
May 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am
kid bitzer very nice. You don’t know a thing about me and you accuse me of being racist. The vast majority of citizens back then were racist. It was a different mind set back then.
May 7th, 2009 at 10:58 am
“you accuse me of being racist.”
uh, no. the word “if” makes a difference.
“the vast majority of citizens back then were racist. It was a different mind set back then.”
uh, yes. that too has been dealt with extensively on this thread.
and it too does not make a difference to the point of the thread, which is that we are no longer back then.
and we no longer have any excuse for worshipping and celebrating people whose main, and in some cases only, claim to fame is that they betrayed their country and killed other americans in order to perpetuate slavery.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:02 am
One of Yale’s residential college is named after John C. There was some agitation to get the name changed, but the college (correctly, I think) said otherwise. Aside from being a stellar orator, John C’.s role was complex, re slavery. Much of his effort was aimed at accommodation and keeping the South in the union.
I think the Texas resolution is kind of fun, since it directs the Feds to repeal certain laws.
Lastly, I didn’t know there were still so many folks who hate Old Glory.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
That Lee fought for something he believed in is an aggravating rather than moderating circumstance–something so obvious that it’s crazy that I even have to point it out to you.
Lee did not “believe in” secession. Whatever you want to fault him for, he was not an ideological brother to Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, or even John C. Calhoun. Had Virginia stayed in the Union, Lee would have fought for the Union. This is not “Lost Cause” mythology. It’s well-documented fact.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I wasn’t just about–democracy not as important as white people owning slaves…etc–it was also about the north(specially northern industrialsits) to use the tariff laws to enforce a northern monoply on manufactured goods way beyond the purpose of such laws-revenue for the federal government. So the civil war was fought, tariffs went through the roof and we got the first gilded age.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Banned? You mean, of its own accord? Decent, slavery-opposing people didn’t have to sacrifice a couple hundred thousand of their sons to get the Cubans to stop being slavers?
Good for the Cubans.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I wasn’t just about–democracy not as important as white people owning slaves…etc–it was also about the north(specially northern industrialsits) to use the tariff laws to enforce a northern monoply on manufactured goods way beyond the purpose of such laws-revenue for the federal government.
You’ll have to unpack that if you want to be convincing. Why should the South object to protectionist measures against manufactured goods? True they would have to pay more for them, but the tarifs also funded the government and didn’t preclude competition for manufacturing those very same goods in the South. The protectionism was aimed against Europe (mostly Britain) specifically. Southerners minded paying for a small monopoly rent to such an extent that they were willing to rebel?
May 7th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Banned? You mean, of its own accord? Decent, slavery-opposing people didn’t have to sacrifice a couple hundred thousand of their sons to get the Cubans to stop being slavers?
Careful Joe, you are likely to get some response about how slavery would have died out in the Confederacy too, so it would have been okay if it had one. Then they could have had their states rights and gotten rid of slavery!
As a preemptive move, I would point out that that scenario was somewhat plausible without an insurrection, but if the Confederacy had one does anyone think that after having won a war for the right to maintain slavery it wouldn’t have become even more entrenched? Even more of an ideological myth binding the Confederacy together? I can’t know for sure, but slavery would have been outlawed much later than in Cuba under such circumstances. And Civil Rights etc? Well, I think we know the answer to that.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
After seeing that picture, its all clear to me now. John Calhoun was…
The Rifleman!
May 7th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Yawn. The simple fact of the matter, which the overwhelming majority of you damnyankees are too dull to grasp, is that the causes of Southern secession and the causes of the War are in no way identical. The South had an interest in preserving slavery, and seceded, in great part (though hardly exclusively), to protect it, or at any rate enjoy it unmolested. Duh. Any Southerner denying that is just being obtuse. Few, in fact, do. However, the North did not go to war to end slavery. You’re a total fucking idiot if you think otherwise; there’s not a shred of historical evidence anywhere to suggest it. Lincoln himself couldn’t possibly have been clearer about why he did go to war: in his inaugural address, he promised the South two things: first, that he had no interest whatsoever in eliminating slavery; second, that if they didn’t pay their taxes, they were going to get hurt. Northern prewar editorializing was almost totally devoid of interest in any war on slavery; it was, however, full of yelling about the economic and social costs (to the North) of secession. Neither did the Confederates fire on Ft. Sumter in defense of slavery; there’s not a fucking shred of evidence anywhere to suggest otherwise. Ft. Sumter was a customs post whose guns covered the most important harbor in the South. Duh.
The really sad thing is that the schools have gone so far to shit now that nuance is beyond most people, and deconstruction is something we use on gender theory, not history.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Wow. Many thanks to Matt and many of the posters in this thread; for years I’ve been bickering with neoconfederate crackers and hayseeds in a few dark corners of the interweb, and even up here in Canada, where the propaganda of Charles Adams, DiLorenzo and the like has infected local conservatives, too. It felt lonely until today. It’s gratifying to see that there are places where a majority of the comments are from people who actually haven’t yet been duped by the “not about slavery, it was all about tariffs, read the New York Times!” revisionist whitewash that is now a full scale industry in the U.S.
With my thanks to all of those loyal Unionists offered, I can’t leave without taking at least a couple of shots: first, if Lee really hated secession so much, then why did he lead men in battle to defend it? It’s always the way the neo-secesh work these days, selectively quoting a paragraph here and there to make their case – Lee was an abolitionist loyalist! Lincoln, a racist! see, there’s a quote! – without ever judging anyone by their actual deeds. General officers from rebel states had no trouble staying loyal to the Union to defend their opposition to treason and rebellion – General Thomas and Admiral Farragut stand out as two examples of Southern heroism, and Thomas did what he did at great personal cost. Why couldn’t Lee be a hero like them if he really shared their beliefs?
I say “general officers” because, of course, Lee was never a “general officer.” He was a retired US Army Colonel. Why Americans allow anyone to refer to these pricks as “generals” or “presidents” or anything else when the secesh couldn’t even get some backwater country like Paraguay to recognize their “government,” I don’t know.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Col Robert E Lee, Retired.
I like the sound of that…
May 12th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Re 50
Not all Northerners.
Lincoln himself said that he wished something could be done to help the many residents of Tennessee that remained loyal. After his death,
Lincoln Memorial University
was founded in East Tennessee.
Re 57
Re 98
Loyal parts of many Confederate States did assert that they were still part of the USA, and were attacked for it. My hometown, Knoxville, TN (pop 400,000 including surrounding area), has a section of the city named “Fort Sanders” after the Union General who died
defending the city from the Confederate Army.
A regional hospital chain also uses the name.
Ironically, many people living here are as ignorant of history as Northerners, and assume that Sanders must have been a Confederate General.
In the North, descendents of slave traders proudly crow about moral superiority while the descendents of abolitionists and anti-secessionists
mistakenly defend very people that their ancestors fought.