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Does it REALLY need a month dedicated to it? He sounds like a crap starter to me.

For that matter, how about we just study and discuss history. What is this need to have a freakin' month-long dedication or holiday for everything? Once there are a gazillion on the books, none of them mean anything anyway, just get lost in the mix.
Exactly, flo. That's why I think McDonnell is a crap starter. He knew it was controversial.

It is not necessary to have a month dedicated to various pieces of history. SOMEbody SOMEwhere will not be represented. Your heritage is your heritage. That doesn't change with a holiday or a month dedicated to it.

JMHO
The War of Northern Aggression was actually about STATES RIGHTS and several other issues that included slavery. I don't agree with the concept of slavery, the only people who should not be free are those guilty of criminal activity, duly convicted and sentenced, and those who are mentally incapable of sustaining themselves within the definition of freedom. I do believe in STATES RIGHTS and presently our most basic freedoms are under assault by over powering Federal government.
Read every state's Secession Ordinance and see what they without fail mention: it is the preservation of slavery, by the way.

But why bother going to the primary sources when you can have a polemicist speak for you, or even better, a revisionist outside the mainstream or even the margins of academic history?

Studying the US Civil War is a lifetime's work and not many conclusions will be made, save that it was fratricide and had multiple causes, but the extension and/or preservation of slavery were at the roots.

The nation had already split in a civic sense: the Methodists, Baptists, the Presbyterians, etc. all had split, over slavery. The Democratic Party split three ways in the election of 1860. The Whigs had already dissolved over slavery in 1854 over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Republican Party was new and made up of former Whigs and Democrats who followed the "Free Soil" doctrine, "free labor for free men," whatever that meant.

Fire eaters like Ruffin and Yancey inflamed the South with fears of slave rebellions and massacres, of the loss of their livelihoods, and a dictatorship of "freedom," i.e., black soldiers.

"States Rights" always rears its head when a vocal group do not like a federal decision, from Jefferson and Madison opposing Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts to the Civil War to Integration. That is to say, neither the "left" nor the "right" have a monopoly on claiming it as "root."

I recommend that those interested in Civil War history and not just a laundry list of battles and tactics, read James Oakes. He points the huge number of "bi-vocational" slave owners who were "middle class" but owned one or two slaves as a symbol of social mobility as well as an income generator beyond his own efforts.

Chattel slavery was foreign to the English Common Law, where everyone was presumed to be free and anyone claiming otherwise had to prove such a claim in court. But the Spanish and Portuguese had taken the Turks and Arabs for their example and justified it. The Americans then followed suit. Refer to George M. Fredrickson's Black Image in the White Mind which goes from the Portuguese trips down the west coast of Africa to the Haykluyts to Jamestown to the United States.

Of course, you might just fall back on the League of the South and "Why the South Was Right." Just do not expect to be taken seriously if you do.
while understand the idea... if black people get a black history month, why is it wrong for white people to want the same thing?

but.. at the same time, i can't really pretend to care. if soem folks want to celebrate national cracker week, the more power to em.
i'm white. i feel no remorse in it, nor do i feel any particular pride in being white. it just is. i don't see haveing pride in soemthing that i had no control over.
i have kids. 2. they are pretty darn good kids. they're smart, kind, helpful and generous. they mind, and relatively good with manners and such. they are independant and like me, they are stong on thinking for themselves instead of just accepting what is told to them as fact.
THAT is something i'm proud of, because i had a hand in it.
but proud of what color you are? that's just as silly as hating someone because they are a different color.
or being proud of where you were born, as if it were a choice you made.
American by birth, southern because this is where my parents lived Smiler
Read my friend Dr. Joseph W. Danielson's new book when it comes out next year. It is about Union occupations of the Tennessee Valley during the Civil War. I edited a large portion of the manuscript and you ardent CSA defenders may be surprised at what warfare did to the people here: abject poverty, roving bands of bandits, CSA and USA agents alike rounding up every spare chicken and cow and ham in the smoke house. One telling observation from a diarist in Courtland was "So much for our Revolution!" once she saw Yankee gunboats coming up the River. The people of Florence heard the cannons from Shiloh and first thought a great storm was brewing to the NW. But it never came. What did come were the dead and wounded and then Yankee gunboats and the US Cavalry. Slaves were called "contraband of war" by the US troops and barely fed as they marched alongside them, and many were abandoned to fend for themselves on barrier islands off Savannah. So much for our revolution, indeed.

The task for the South is to recover from our poverty and our history of slavery and work for a biracial prosperous society where Martin King's words may be true as are Jefferson's.
A "quote" to ponder...


"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." Abraham Lincoln Source: August 22, 1862 - Letter to Horace Greeley

Kinda throws a "turd in the punchbowl" don't it?
Lincoln as well as the other Free Soilers were no "great friend" of the black man, free or enslaved by law and custom. But then again, until the second half of the 20th century, was any US president? Well, Harry Truman did integrate the armed forces in 48, but that was all. LBJ probably did more than any other president, with Bobby Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbaum prodding the Justice dept and its marshalls into action. Theodore Roosevelt did dine with Booker T. Washington, but he, too, did nothing more than a few token post master appoints. It is really a shame that over one-third of our country have had to wait so long to become officially visible and full citizens, not that has diddly to do with the Civil War, as the governor of Miss. would say, of course. It has to do with hereditary attitudes of xenophobia and irrational fear of "the other."
It does not have a lot of big words, so you could probably understand it, heck, even I did who only paid attention in Civil War seminars to do seminar paper and get out of there after doing my reading and writing my essays.

It is about the Tennessee Valley and military occupation. The "villain" is Maj. Gen. Ivan Turchin of the Union Army. There are no heroes, as the people of the Valley were so broken as to be starving after both armies got their food and potential food. When the war was over, over 3/4 of the people of the Tennessee were dependent upon rations doled out by the Freedmen's Bureau for basic dietary needs. And I mean basic.
quote:
Originally posted by dogsoldier0513:
quote:
Originally posted by _Joy_:
Does it REALLY need a month dedicated to it? He sounds like a crap starter to me.


Why do we 'need' a 'Black History' month?


We don't. We don't need an ANYthing month. Efforts would be better spent trying to get what you feel is important put in history books, making sure what is in there is accurate as well.
I have no idea, dogsoldier, but if I felt so strongly that our history books are lacking in some area that I vie for a month dedication, I would find out who makes those decisions and go through the proper channels to get it included. If my efforts failed and there were no other recourse, I'd get over it, not see if I could stir up controversy & get my fellow citizens pissed at each other.

JMHO
History books are written by the "Victors".
It is amazing how much ignorance there is out there among people who think they know history and try to condense it to a simplistic answer. You will never convince the historically blind of the many valid reasons the South seceded in order to become a new nation.
How the "North" of 1861 and some of its leaders are currently given the aura of being the moral compass of the nation is frightening. The North had plenty of its own dirty laundry in the abuse of immigrants in sweat shops, as well as condoning slavery within its own borders. Lincoln recognized this when he presented his Proclamation, ( AFTER the invasion) for it called for the freeing of slaves in those states currently "in rebellion" but not for those states which had not seceded, parties he did not wish to offend. It was purely a political ploy to focus an unpopular war (in the North it was extremely unpopular, in case you didn't know) on the simple message of the abolition of slavery. That, the agitators could understand and in their limited way, accept. Like today, these same agitators cannot understand the issue of States' Rights. This phrase conveys nothing to them. Ask them what it means, and they will stare at you blankly like a cow with no glimmer of intelligence. They only understand dumbed-down history, and have learned their history from movies of that period which emphasized the mistreatment of slaves to make them more salacious. If they have read any history at all, they have read liberal revisionist history.
quote:
Originally posted by Aude Sapere:
It does not have a lot of big words, so you could probably understand it, heck, even I did who only paid attention in Civil War seminars to do seminar paper and get out of there after doing my reading and writing my essays.

It is about the Tennessee Valley and military occupation. The "villain" is Maj. Gen. Ivan Turchin of the Union Army. There are no heroes, as the people of the Valley were so broken as to be starving after both armies got their food and potential food. When the war was over, over 3/4 of the people of the Tennessee were dependent upon rations doled out by the Freedmen's Bureau for basic dietary needs. And I mean basic.


LOL.. good come back

however, the "no" was because i don't care.
of all the things people get into, the civil war was one i never understood.
i mean, if you wanan play-pretend and wear silly costumes and run around and pretend you connect with those guys, then get in your SUV when your done and drive to your air conditioned home and order up a pizza and knock back a 6er because you really felt liek you were a part of history out there today, you go right ahead.
however, i have no interest in it, not en re-enacting, or reading books or seeing movies or tv shows on the subject of the civil war.
i was born and raised in alabama, and i've had the civil war shoved in my face until i'm sick of it. maybe there were god awful things that your friend wrote about, but i'm not interested. just like i'm not interested in a national whitey month.
if it involves the confederacy, the union, the war between the states, the civil war, or god help us ' the war of northern aggression'
i'm not watching it, not reading it, not listening to it.
THAT is why i sad no to your buddies book.
and with the subject matter in mind, i'm sure it doesn't use a lot of big words. if the only thing he can come up with to write about is the civil war, i wouldn't expect him to use many big words at all.
(there, we both took petty shots, are we even now?)
quote:
Originally posted by _Joy_:
I have no idea, dogsoldier, but if I felt so strongly that our history books are lacking in some area that I vie for a month dedication, I would find out who makes those decisions and go through the proper channels to get it included. If my efforts failed and there were no other recourse, I'd get over it, not see if I could stir up controversy & get my fellow citizens pissed at each other.

JMHO


i thought it was interesting, in my 11 year old daughters history text book at hibbitt, the Trail of Tears was explained as:

"a time when most of the native americans decided to relocate far to the west. many died on the long journey."

that's it. talk about revision.
a guess the next chapter is about the plague in europe? "people got sick a lot, and some of them died."
and Crispus Atticus was "a guy that got shot"

ahhh.. condensed history - 1/3 less filling Smiler
quote:
Originally posted by CageTheElephant:
quote:
Originally posted by thenagal:
if it involves the confederacy, the union, the war between the states, the civil war, or god help us ' the war of northern aggression'
i'm not watching it, not reading it, not listening to it.


Then why do you keep showing up in this thread?
It's touches on all of the above...


it's a fair question - and one i asked myself as i was writing that.
i decided the answer was because i *was* interested in how the debate for/against a national whitey month was going to go.
i'd acctually intended to just lurk along and read, but couldn't resist the temptation for that one smartypants answer, that required a 2nd reply, which lead to this one.
i did contribute a little to the ' revised history' side track that's developed in this thread Smiler
And let us not forget the immortal and IMMORAL words of the Vice President of the Confederacy, the heinous racist Alexander Stephens, who surely, given his high office, must have known what that war was really about. I have copied below a prior post I put up in a string in which the tired old argument was being made that slavery was not really a big factor in secession or the war that followed and that Confederate Memorial Day is a noble observance:

This highly regionalized holiday exists only in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. As described in today's Times Daily (Page 2B), The Alabama Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, says that it is "...proper to recognize the sacrifices of people he believes 'legally seceded from the United States to defend their homes, families and economic system."

And just what was that "economic system?" Well, it is clearly defined later in the article by a quotation from Mississippi's declaration of secession, adopted in 1861, which says:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun."

Looking to an even higher authority within the United States of the Confederacy, we find these utterances by its Vice President, Alexander Stephens, who, in his so-called "Cornerstone Speech," said:


"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted."

Stephens went on to say

"(Jefferson's) ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. ... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition."

Now--over and against all this clear explication for the basis of secession, we still hear the relentless cant of those who wish to ignore history and argue that secession was not about slavery, but about "states' rights." I seem to remember that during the civil rights strife of the 1960s and 1970s, there were many voices in the South who tried to make the same argument about racial segregation. "States' rights" is, obviously, a more noble motivation for one's cause than slavery or racism, so it is not surprising that defenders of slavery and racism would seize upon "states' rights' as justification for enslavement of their fellow men and women and for denial of constitutional rights on the basis of skin color.

Celebrants of Confederate Memorial Day--go ahead and do whatever it is you do on this day, but please do not trot out the old and stale and just-plain-wrong notion that it was "states' rights" that drove the secessionist cause!
Very informative post beternU. I can only speak for myself however. I DO NOT APPROVE OF SLAVERY NOR REPRESSION OF A PERSON BASED ON RACE, SEX, ETC. I am simply proud of where I was raised. I love the colonial influences in architecture, the influences on cuisine from the many different cultures, the temperate climate of the south, and the pleasant drawl of a southerners voice. That is only naming a few but I promise they are all good and not the vile things people remember. In my first post I agreed with the celebration but now I'm just content about what makes me who I am.
quote:
Originally posted by beternU:
Now--over and against all this clear explication for the basis of secession, we still hear the relentless cant of those who wish to ignore history and argue that secession was not about slavery, but about "states' rights." I seem to remember that during the civil rights strife of the 1960s and 1970s, there were many voices in the South who tried to make the same argument about racial segregation. "States' rights" is, obviously, a more noble motivation for one's cause than slavery or racism, so it is not surprising that defenders of slavery and racism would seize upon "states' rights' as justification for enslavement of their fellow men and women and for denial of constitutional rights on the basis of skin color.

Celebrants of Confederate Memorial Day--go ahead and do whatever it is you do on this day, but please do not trot out the old and stale and just-plain-wrong notion that it was "states' rights" that drove the secessionist cause!


Slavery as the cause???

The hypocrisy of the matter was that the North had used slaves as it long as it could feasibly do so.
The American Revolution proved to be the real liberator of the northern slaves. Wherever it went, the British army gave freedom to any slave who escaped within its lines. This was sound military policy: it disrupted the economic system that was sustaining the Revolution. Since the North saw much longer, and more extensive, incursions by British troops, its slave population drained away at a higher rate than the South's. At the same time, the governments in northern American states began to offer financial incentives to slave owners who freed their black men, if the emancipated slaves then served in the state regiments fighting the British.

When the Northern states gave up the last remnants of legal slavery, in the generation after the Revolution, their motives were a mix of piety, morality, and ethics; fear of a growing black population; practical economics; and the fact that the Revolutionary War had broken the Northern slave owners' power and drained off much of the slave population. An exception was New Jersey, where the slave population actually increased during the war. Slavery lingered there until the Civil War, with the state reporting 236 slaves in 1850 and 18 as late as 1860.
The business of emancipation in the North amounted to the simple matters of, 1. determining how to compensate slave-owners for the few slaves they had left, and, 2. making sure newly freed slaves would be marginalized economically and politically in their home communities, and that nothing in the state's constitution would encourage fugitive slaves from elsewhere to settle there.
But in the generally conservative, local process of emancipating a small number of Northern slaves, the Northern leadership turned its back on slavery as a national problem.

By the 1850’s the influx of immigrants into the North provided the “industrialized” North with an unending supply of cheap…or “sweatshop slaves”. Many living and working in worse conditions than their Southern counterparts, and just as much seen as lower class citizens.

As far as slavery being a horrible institution? Yes, with hindsight of the 21st Century…but in 1860 , for the agricultural South it was survival, and a workforce that by United States LAW, notice I said LAW was LEGAL, and a slave was PROPERTY.

And yes, it was about States Rights…we’re not talking “morality” but LAW.
It was the STATES RIGHTS to have slaves,,,even if it meant keeping the institution in place, it was still LEGAL, and, as a state [steɪt] being: 9. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) (often capital) one of a number of areas or communities having their own governments and forming a federation under a sovereign government, as in the US
these “communities” were made up by the people” of said State, slaveholders included.


1. The Northern states repeatedly failed, or refused to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, passed by the U.S. Congress, and return escaped slaves to their (Southern) owners, depriving the “State” of their property.

2. The U.S. Government was restricting property rights (slave owners) by allowing no slaves in new territories. Which would also limit travel, as no slave owner could move into “new” territory and take his “property” with him.

3. The growing power of a Federal Government that repeatedly made broken promises, and took a direction that did not consider the interest of the Southern States.

So, no one has said slavery wasn’t a factor, but, again, it was legal, and a States Right to
to practice it.

And since we are quoting “racist” Vice Presidents, lets not leave out a quote from a future President, one whom seems to have done a lot of “waffling”…

"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 which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything." Abraham Lincoln Source: September 18, 1858 - Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois
quote:
Originally posted by thenagel:
quote:
Originally posted by _Joy_:
I have no idea, dogsoldier, but if I felt so strongly that our history books are lacking in some area that I vie for a month dedication, I would find out who makes those decisions and go through the proper channels to get it included. If my efforts failed and there were no other recourse, I'd get over it, not see if I could stir up controversy & get my fellow citizens pissed at each other.

JMHO


i thought it was interesting, in my 11 year old daughters history text book at hibbitt, the Trail of Tears was explained as:

"a time when most of the native americans decided to relocate far to the west. many died on the long journey."

that's it. talk about revision.
a guess the next chapter is about the plague in europe? "people got sick a lot, and some of them died."
and Crispus Atticus was "a guy that got shot"

ahhh.. condensed history - 1/3 less filling Smiler


Please take your daughter to Cherokee, NC, this summer and include the Native American/Cherokee production, "UNTO THESE HILLS". My 12 year old also loves The Museum of the Cherokee, worth the $9 admission.

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