Southern pride gone wrong!

[BillSears]

I feel like watching North and South now.

See, I'm a true Disney guy. I have this song going trough my head...

Two brothers on their way
Two brothers on their way
Two brothers on their way
One wore blue and one wore grey

One wore blue and one wore grey
As they marched along their way
The fife and drum began to play
All on a beautiful morning

One was gentle one was kind
One was gentle one was kind
One came home one stayed behind
A cannonball don't pay no mind

A cannonball don't pay no mind
If you're gentle or if you're kind
It don't think of the folks behind
All on a beautiful morning
All on a beautiful morning

 

[princessmom29]

The "actual history book" that you posted references a controlled emancipation of freedom for slaves to force them to fight for the confederate army (great choice: be a slave or die to protect our rights to keep you a slave). It does not reference emancipation from freedom because slavery was wrong. It also was a plan that never took effect, so can you perhaps see why I don't accept this as "the South's great plan to free the slaves"?

Put another way, are all the plans of previous Presidents "fact", if they never took effect? How many plans have never gone into effect through the years? With our current political gridlock, we're seeing them left and right from the left and right!

Furthermore, given that is the only document you can provide, I'm sorry but I'm unwilling to accept that your version of history has any legitimacy. I think, quite honestly, that you are living in a world of revisionistic history that fits more with your Science Fiction fantasy book than what actually took place. Not hate. Not bias. Just my opinions.

Yes, all of those plans that do not come to pass do indeed exist. Taht is a fact. All of the measures proposed as law that never passed exist as well. It happened. Sorry, you don't want to believe it, but it is the same as those who don't beleive dinosaurs existed. Not believing in something doesn't make it go away or mean it never happened.

 

[saturn11]

But once war became inevitable through the secession of the rebel states, war was the only option left.

i do think you might be having a little bit of revisionist history here. war was NOT the only option, as the consitution provided the right of any state to secede if it saw fit. i think thats what the previous poster was referencing when he said many in the north didnt want to fight. they understood that right and didnt see the issue. i for one am very glad lincoln was adament in preserving the union and have no sense of "southern pride" even though i live in NC. i see the view point of the conferates though and do think they were well within their rights to secede.

 

[princessmom29]

I think you will find, to the majority of people, the confederate flag, does, indeed, represent racism and hatred. I actually think that the people who think it doesn't are in the minority. It has been a symbol which has long been associated with the KKK, and I am sure that everyone is VERY clear on their beliefs. Actually, I think you are having difficulty seeing past your own bias. Simply because you insist that it does not represent these things to you does not make it so for everyone. As a matter of fact, in my area, it is widely referred to as a "klan flag."

...and yes, people are overly sensitive about symbols such as swastikas and southern flags, particularly people whose relatives were tortured and killed in gas chambers under this symbol, or people whose relatives were lynched or tarred and feathered or drug to death behind moving vehicles under that flag.

I have never heard the term "klan flag" and most people in my aquaintance of whatever color don't hold any of those beliefs about the flag. I find that more folks from the North feel that way than here in the South. Ironic isn't it, since racism is supposedly still prevalent here and the north has "moved on"? I think everyone hasd their share of baggage courtesy of their heritage. I have American Indian ancestry from part of my family, but I don't let hate for what happened to them consume me. I have amcestors who fought and died in the civil war as well, and family members that went through hell on the homefront. I don't get what it shouldn't be just as acceptable to be proud of that heritage??

 

[luvsJack]

It doesn't? Oh ok, for a minute there I thought the Civil War actually happened. Thanks!

the flag in question did not fly as a national flag to the Confederacy. It was a battle flag. so, it did not "fly over slavery". That would have been first the American flag and then the Stars and Bars.

The Civil war happening or not happening has NOTHING to do with her statement.

 

[wvjules]

I have never heard of the Klan Flag either and I live near a large Klan area.

After all bazillion pages of this thread the bottom line is:

People will see the flag the way they want to see it. People will interpret the motivation of the civil war as they want and no one will make the other side change their mind.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

i do think you might be having a little bit of revisionist history here. war was NOT the only option, as the consitution provided the right of any state to secede if it saw fit. i think thats what the previous poster was referencing when he said many in the north didnt want to fight. they understood that right and didnt see the issue. i for one am very glad lincoln was adament in preserving the union and have no sense of "southern pride" even though i live in NC. i see the view point of the conferates though and do think they were well within their rights to secede.

Exactly - When push came to shove, Lincoln decided to suspend habeus corpus and start a war that would destroy the union in order to preserve it. He did this knowing full well that it would permanently destroy the constitution, and it has.

Lincoln preserved the Union, but he destroyed the Constitution. States rights ceased to exist the day that the Civil War began. The states lost their only legal recourse to avoid overbearing federal legislation. The United States of America ceased to exist, and now the states have to beg for scraps at their master's table.

Fans of Abraham Lincoln simply need to read a bit more history. He did not support the abolition of slavery. He was simply a man trying to preserve power. He was, in my view, the worst president in our history.

 

[luvsJack]

Your hate and bias will lead you to believe whatever renforces that world view you have chosen. I guess you are ignoring the actual history book I posted and taking pot shots at this point. I don't have hate in my heart for anyone, but it is sad to see the South vilified over and over by those that do. As you said, mabye we should let go of what happened 150 years ago instead of still crucifying Southerners over it agian and agian. Mabye then it would be easier for southernenrs to let go too. As for the "problems with our state" we have our share, but so does everyone else. Many of ours are blown completely out of proportion as well by folks who see the south as full of ignorant hicks.

ITA Its amazing to me that there are so many that want to just immediately start putting down the south and anything that represents it but yet when a southerner begins to defend their region they are immediately "still fighting the war".

Maybe you should have asked the pp why she is not out fixing what is wrong in her OWN state?

 

[BellvilleDad]

Ya'll can argue what the war was about all day long, and in the end it doesn't matter. The ending result was the same. Slavery ended.

But another fact remains also and that is that flying the Confederate flag has nothing to do with racism for most people. Yes, the KKK carries one. They also carry a Bible. Should we not allow that to be displayed either?

It is a symbol of the old South, like it or not. And many, many Southerners are proud of coming from the old South. And many, many Southerners get really tired of being told what symbols they can and can't have and what flag they can and can't fly.

Give them time. They're working on it.

 

[badblackpug]

I have never heard the term "klan flag" and most people in my aquaintance of whatever color don't hold any of those beliefs about the flag. I find that more folks from the North feel that way than here in the South. Ironic isn't it, since racism is supposedly still prevalent here and the north has "moved on"? I think everyone hasd their share of baggage courtesy of their heritage. I have American Indian ancestry from part of my family, but I don't let hate for what happened to them consume me. I have amcestors who fought and died in the civil war as well, and family members that went through hell on the homefront. I don't get what it shouldn't be just as acceptable to be proud of that heritage??

Nobody is holding any "hatred." ...and as I said before, I am sure that everyone will agree that racism exists everywhere. My point is the majority of people do associate that flag with white supremacy groups, and why would someone not only prominently display a symbol that they knew that their neighbors would find offensive? Everyone is free to have their beliefs, but it isn't necessary to rub them in everyone's face. It would be akin to me flying a flag with a swastika on it in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, then expecting everyone to assume I meant it as a symbol of good luck. Whether you like it or not, the meaning behind that flag has evolved, and not for better, over the years.

Things change with usage over time. "Gay" is no longer though to mean happy, it means homosexual now. The swastika isn't a symbol of good luck or the sun any more. Through it's use by an infamous group it has come to symbolize something else. Unfortunately for, you and some others, the same has happened to the southern flag. Though I have no statistics on it I would wager to say that more people have negative connotations when seeing the confederate flag than have positive.

 

[NY Disney fan]

Fans of Abraham Lincoln simply need to read a bit more history. He did not support the abolition of slavery. He was simply a man trying to preserve power.

And where would this country be today if it remained split into two nations? Look at what is happening in Europe right now. At least our debt crisis is self-inflicted.

 

[wvjules]

And where would this country be today if it remained split into two nations? Look at what is happening in Europe right now. At least our debt crisis is self-inflicted.

Where does your crystal ball tell you this country would be?

 

[DarthKTrava]

Yep, and all those poor southern boys picked up arms so they could keep their slaves. LOL.

Most southerners didn't own slaves. Those that did were in a minority. But they spoke louder thru their money. Not to mention when the southerners went to war, they bought their way out; paying poorer men to take their place in the Confederate army.

 

[FireDancer]

And where would this country be today if it remained split into two nations? Look at what is happening in Europe right now. At least our debt crisis is self-inflicted.

I think economic pressure would have eventually reunited the country that existed at the time It would have been the west that was most changed. In the aftermath I think we would be too weak to expand to the Pacific (no more Manifest Destiny) or keep a foreign country from influencing the ultimate outcome of the west (probably couldn't enforce the Monroe Doctrine). The economic fall out of the disconnect between raw materials (in the south) and manufacturing (in the north) would have made it harder for the early innovators to get us into a position to expand that far west as a single country.

This is all speculation of course but it is what I think would have happened. I think allowing the south to secede would have been a bad outcome long term for both countries whether it was done in congress or with war.

 

[A_Princess'_Daddy]

ITA Its amazing to me that there are so many that want to just immediately start putting down the south and anything that represents it but yet when a southerner begins to defend their region they are immediately "still fighting the war".

Maybe you should have asked the pp why she is not out fixing what is wrong in her OWN state?

Well, I'm a he, not a she, but please feel confident that I am working on fixing the issues in my "adopted" state. I serve on the board of the PTA (different name here, but same concept), my wife and I own a chain of restaurants (as an investment; we're admittedly not active in their management) that provide good jobs to about 200 people (and relatively healthy food to hundreds of thousands of people each year), we support several non-profits (particularly special needs causes, the arts and our church) and we do other things, as well. We're not perfect, and we definitely cannot fix all of the state's problems, but we do our best to improve things when and where we can (and it's not even really "our state" as we're both from the East Coast).

To be fair, however, my current state is in the top quartile to top decile in education, health care, economic vitality, life expectancy, and has very low rates of infant morbidity, violent crime, etc. We're also rather low on the "excitement scale", but c'est la vie. We do appear to have a bit of an obesity problem, and a lot of meth production seems to originate here, but overall we are in pretty good shape and we appear to have far fewer issues than Alabama. Also, I'm not still fighting the Civil War (or at least I wasn't until we started this discussion). I am kind of enjoying this debate, however, as I rarely really get into threads like this. I find it kind of fascinating, in all honesty! Unfortunately for purposes of this conversation, my flight it about to board, so I'm going to have to shuffle off for now.

As far as the right to secede, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. Some legal scholars feel that right was reserved to the states, others feel that it was not when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. Personally, I think we're stronger as a nation than as a confederation, so you know where I stand. The legal basis for secession was never settled in a court of law, however, but rather on a battlefield, and the conclusion there was "No, states do not have that right."

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

...I think allowing the south to secede would have been a bad outcome long term for both countries whether it was done in congress or with war.

Perhaps, but the country has been destroyed anyway. Our nation was never meant to be controlled at the top by a group of men. It was meant to be controlled in the local communities across the country. The day that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and declared people who disagreed with the "federal" government criminals, except without the standard rights afforded to criminals, he changed everthing. Local a state government became powerless to effect change. Things only got worse as the government began to enact more and more laws under the "general welfare" clause - and forced the states to abide by them.

The men who had a hand in writing the Constitution all warned against allowing broad federal powers. They made it clear that the only way to maintain a meaningful freedom was to keep the powers restricted to local or state governments - governments small enough to be controlled by the people.

So, America exists today, but it is not a shining beacon on a hill top - and it gets worse every day. And, because of the changes started by Lincoln, we are powerless to change it.

We have no idea how this might all have played out if the Southern states had been allowed to walk away. In the end, I am not sure if that is the most important question. My father always told me that you do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because you have an interest in the outcome. Given the agreements between the states and the Constitution that bound them together, the right thing to do was to let them walk away. No reasonable man can say that the right thing to do was to go to war and watch a nation of young men sacrifice their lives to preserve the economic stability of the North.

The war was started over power and money. Lives were sacrificed for power and money - not freedom - not the abolition of slavery - money. Think about it.

 

[brerrabbit]

I am a Southerner. Sixth generation Texan with a gr gr grandfather who fought for the Confederacy for 4 years and spent some of in a POW camp in Chicago where many a Confederate soldier died and lost three ribs to a gunshot wound in Atlanta. After he recovered he walked back to Texas because there was no other way to get home.

As a result my family has and always have had strong opinions about the War of Northern Agression. There are three PHD's in history, education, and plotical science in the family and I am currently working on my Masters in History. We talk occasionally about our family's role in the South and are fortunate to have a lot of documents from history in the form of letters and correspondence between family members. Translated that means my family was a bunch of packrats.

So here is my opinion. The war was fought about slavery. Not the human suffering of it, not the slaves, but their economic worth. At the time it was estimated that the sum value of all slaves living and working in the South was in the billions (5 to 6 that is). It represented the majority of the wealth of the South. Unfortunately for those living there a very small percentage of Southerners held the wealth (estimates were 5% of the population held 90% of the wealth). Northern legislatures realized this and struggled with it. Since most of the money in the South was a result of agriculture and the federal government felt the pressure for additional revenues to fund the country's growth and they knew the South was in the minority in Congress the pushed hard and won increased tariffs on cotton and other agricultural goods exported from the south. The next step was to contain slavery and not allow it to grow beyond where it currently exsisted. Texas was admited to the Union in 1845 with the caviate that it could be divided into 5 states if Congress so decided. The provision was there so that 3 non slve states and 2 slave states would be created to maintain the non slave majority.

As battles were fought in Washington the Southern states continued to lose the legislative battles and eventually the call came for anti slavery measures to further force the issue. As the war begain the wealthy Southerners turned the discussion from a loss of personal wealth (the end of slavery) into a discussion of violations of states rights in order to incite the masses who mostly owned no slaves to fight the Union for them.

Lincoln hated the idea of slavery and was against it but in fact did write the letter to Greely. The idea is that as much as he opposed slavery he loved the Union more and would do anything to preserve it, including allowing slavery to continue.

The war was extended for four years simply because the Union was largely opposed to it and as a result used limited resources. It was estimated that less than 20% of the population of the north we effected either by serving in the military, seeing any battles or losing any loved ones. On the other hand that number was over 80% for the Confederacy as nearly every man of age participated in some way and almost every citizen saw the effects of war or went with out food, medicine or other necessities as a result of the war.

So yeah we in the South tend to take it more seriously because most natives that have been here for 3 or four generations have family effected by it.

As for the Lady flying the flag, while it is her right to do it I don't agree with it. They have said it is okay for the Westboro Baptists to protest at military funerals, but hey that don't mean its right, or moral, or eeven very inteligent.

People like them do it not for any show of respect to the flag or the men and women who died fighting for it but rather to garner attention for themselves.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

...The legal basis for secession was never settled in a court of law, however, but rather on a battlefield, and the conclusion there was "No, states do not have that right."

Exactly - and it had to be resolved in battle because it was very clear (at the time) that the secessions were legal. The "Deep South" states were leaving. It was a done deal.

ETS - If a bully rules the playground, do his rules constitute right and wrong? Might makes right when it comes to this sort of thing?

 

[luvsJack]

Well, I'm a he, not a she, but please feel confident that I am working on fixing the issues in my "adopted" state. I serve on the board of the PTA (different name here, but same concept), my wife and I own a chain of restaurants (as an investment; we're admittedly not active in their management) that provide good jobs to about 200 people (and relatively healthy food to hundreds of thousands of people each year), we support several non-profits (particularly special needs causes, the arts and our church) and we do other things, as well. We're not perfect, and we definitely cannot fix all of the state's problems, but we do our best to improve things when and where we can (and it's not even really "our state" as we're both from the East Coast).

To be fair, however, my current state is in the top quartile to top decile in education, health care, economic vitality, life expectancy, and has very low rates of infant morbidity, violent crime, etc. We're also rather low on the "excitement scale", but c'est la vie. We do appear to have a bit of an obesity problem, and a lot of meth production seems to originate here, but overall we are in pretty good shape and we appear to have far fewer issues than Alabama. Also, I'm not still fighting the Civil War (or at least I wasn't until we started this discussion). I am kind of enjoying this debate, however, as I rarely really get into threads like this. I find it kind of fascinating, in all honesty! Unfortunately for purposes of this conversation, my flight it about to board, so I'm going to have to shuffle off for now.

As far as the right to secede, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. Some legal scholars feel that right was reserved to the states, others feel that it was not when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. Personally, I think we're stronger as a nation than as a confederation, so you know where I stand. The legal basis for secession was never settled in a court of law, however, but rather on a battlefield, and the conclusion there was "No, states do not have that right."

and you seem so sure that the poster you were speaking to is not doing anything to help the situation in her state?

I didn't say that I thought you WERE still fighting the war. I said that is what southerners are accused of when we defend our state or our region. But of course, again you bring up who won, why? Is it really that important to you?

 

[CandyMandy]

ITA Its amazing to me that there are so many that want to just immediately start putting down the south and anything that represents it but yet when a southerner begins to defend their region they are immediately "still fighting the war".

Yes, they can put it out but can't take it.

And in the process, show how their deep intolerance makes them...just like that racial supremacist stereotype they are so obsessed with.

But that's O.K, because we're used to that song.

la
la
la
la