The Heritage and the Legacy of the Confederate South

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I can't help but assume you are describing a re-enactment or a dream.

M. E. Wolf
I assumed it was a reenactment based on this: "How some of the blacks played slaves, and some played freed men and historically correct, they stayed with the white troops in the same units..."

If it was meant to be a dream about the past, um, they weren't playing back then.
 
Everyone talks about the heritage of the Confederate South. But what is this heritage? What did the Confederate South actually leave us? We who are left here in this part of the country... We the people who are descended from those people who seceded, and who left the Union forever. What did the people who were living in the nation known as the Confederate South actually leave to us by their secession from the union?

After the war, these people did not say much of anything. There was a situation known as the Silent South in the which Confederate veterans and their families refused to discuss anything that happened during that time period.

Southerners to this day are eternally slighted by Hollywood, completely despised by the official historians who make them all out to be some sort of racist monsters of intolerance, and have encouraged a multitude of contemporary disdain for anything having to do with their 'lost' cause.

The symbols of the Confederate South are eternally heralded as absolute symbols of racism even though men like HK Edgerton on Facebook and his black Confederate 'flagger' friends insist otherwise, the symbol is internally seen as being one of blatant racism. At no time is it seen as what it truly is; a symbol against the collectivism of the American political party system of its day. The politics are never mentioned, never allowed to be mentioned, and are officially and completely ignored.

Even though there was never any stated law condemning the act of unilateral secession, and any condemnation of the Confederate South must be pieced together from after-action SCOTUS 'opinions'
and militia acts which were originally designed for completely different purposes, as well as implications and other vague remembrances, there was never any amendment to the Constitution passed giving the general government the right to invade a state in order to bring it back into the Union. And, to this day, there still does not exist such as a thing. It all basically falls under Alexander Hamilton's implied nonsense; this reading between the lines to suit the present purpose insanity.

Yet there does exist one thing, and this thing seems to be the most powerful force of all. There seems to be this undying and unmitigated hatred for the Confederate South and its active secession from the union to the embarrassment of the sectional president Abraham Lincoln. in truth, this hatred comes off as looking absolutely ridiculous from the viewpoint of a neutral outsider, yet this does seem to be the intended purpose of those people who lost the civil war; for none of those people wanted to go under minority rule, none of them wish to give up their political power in their own state to a group of freed slaves who were being convinced that their freedom had come from the northern invasion rather than from where it had truly come from; the South seceding from the union in the first instance, and condemning slavery as an art form in North America forever. No Southerner wanted to live under a federal top heavy United States of America, especially if it was to be run like the northern states ran their own governments up there. True there were southern 'unionist' sellouts, but those who were called True Confederates believed completely in the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal.

So what did these people leave us?

They left us one thing; they left us the fact that they had existed; that they had done what they had done for the reasons that they actually did these things, and that they did not care in the least what the North ever thought of them. They did not mind to be thought of as traitors, nor as criminals. They fought and they died trying to keep their country as they envisioned. And they would have their country, or else they would disappear in the process. And they chose to disappear.

In their silence, they did not expect us to believe as they did. They actually said nothing at all about any of it, and only spoke in their diaries and in their letters about the actual events as they knew them to be. the Confederate president indeed offer his apologia in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, but an apologia is not an apology; it is a defense of one's opinions or conduct. The rest of the South offers no such thing, nor did it care to offer any such. The South never surrendered. Appomattox was the surrender of Lee and the 8,000; not of the Confederacy. The Confederate South never surrendered; it chose to be destroyed, instead.

The flag still exists. Like unilateral secession, the present-day government has neither the will nor the right to ban the flag in a law, or an amendment, like some sort of a swastika of racism. Those of such a political nature are completely disappointed time and again when they attempt to remove the symbol from consideration.

The important thing is that the South seceded from the union; anything else is a mere footnote to that event.

I did not know what the South had left us until I went to my first Civil War reenactment, and I drove to that side of the field where the big Confederate flags were flying impudently in the wind. It is quite a rush for a Southern person to stand there and see those flags, and indeed, that flag in particular... beating against the breeze.

The Betsy Ross flag must have surely felt the same way in the sight of those patriots of the Spirit of '76 of whom Thomas Jefferson ever mentioned with the greatest reverence. There is something thrilling about being completely despised, and yet feeling in your heart that you are, when it all shakes out, on the side of right as you see it.

It is a thrill that no one but a Southerner would understand, and it is worth all of the vitriolic venom and rage for the honor of standing in its shadow.

I haven’t been on this forum too long, but even so a pattern is clear. Every week or so there is a new post that repeats a narrative that has been thoroughly and completely debunked. So I will repeat my response,

1) The southern cause was NOT a noble one, it was a rebellion to to preserve an institution, slavery, that deserved to die.
2) The nation and the south are better off because the rebellion failed.
 
Regardless of how they got to today, I thank God every day for the South having a moral compass which is the heart and soul, today, of this country. Its intersting when the bottom was falling out of the ANV and the South in general, that the "revivalist moment" began and/or expanded in the confederate army. Im not particularly religious either. <snipping modern political references>, that is one level of commitment, when u r willing to give your life, for what you believe, that is quite another.
The revivalist movement in this country really did start rather earlier than you're suggesting, and it started originally with antebellum New england Trancendentalists. You are correct though that it seems to have gained rather more momentum in the south post-war.

Lastly all those jokes about Southerners being stupid are ridiculous. They seemed to be pretty crafty in the CW against immence odds and resources. I know the North ( I would include the <snipping modern political references> coast in that characterization) have MIT and Cal Tech., Et Al. but quite a few geniuses resided and ride at Triangle Park, and other souther institutions.
I'm not sure what the relevance here is; I haven't seen anyone on these boards making any such jokes. Considering that a majority of regular posters have more southern-born ancestors than northern, that would be bizarre.

I suppose it would depend upon what exactly the North was agitating on at the given time...

1). Hey, we'd like to secede from England. How about it?
It wasn't secession; it was revolution. The colonies weren't part of Great Britain, they were colonies of it; to compare the Revolution to the southern slaver aristocracy's insurrection is asinine. The colonies had no representation in their government, while the southern aristocracy was over-represented in the antebellum Federal government.

2). Hey, these articles are not enough. How about a Constitution? (one of New Yorker Hamilton's pleas).
Finally you admit that you object to the existence of the Constitution; does this mean that you'll stop invoking things it doesn't actually say as evidence in your favor now?

3). Hey, we need some working capital at the North. Hw about a Central Bank? (Big Mistake)
Which is relevant to the Civil War in what way?

4). Hey, we need to federally assume war debts, as some in the North are dragging their feet... (Compromise of 1790).
This is something that is, again, Constitutionally mandated. You really should read the document in question so that you can at least pretend to craft arguments that don't reveal your open disdain for the institutions of the Republic.

5). Hey, we need to be best buds with the Brits, no matter what... (Most favored Nation Status, Jay Treaty)
Because, you know, alternatively the nascent US could chose open hostility towards the largest navy in the world.

6). Hey, how about some Protectionism? 1816-1838 Thirty (22 years) Years Tariff Wars.
Which are, again, not relevant to the Civil War, to say nothing of not being a regional issue.

7). Hey, 3/5's of your slaves keep voting against us, wanting to move out West, and they keep making us feel really bad about bringing them over here... how about just cutting them all loose, all at once?? That'd be great.
The 3/5ths clause was added into the Constitution to appease the southern states and granted them disproportionate political power in the Federal government, to say nothing of the fact that slaves couldn't vote. It is interesting to see modern opposition to the abolition of slavery, but then again, what did we expect from someone who keeps deputizing rather archaic and scientifically inaccurate views of race into his argument?

I'm am descended varyingly from sixteenth-century Spanish settlers of what is now New Mexico, members of multiple tribes... and southerners, from families whose presence predates the Republic. My ancestors owned slaves - a lot of slaves; one of the batteries that fired on Ft. Sumter abutted my family's land on James Island, and with the exception of the New Mexicans and a couple of the West Virginians, all of those who fought in the war fought for the Confederacy, in regiments from Kentucky, Texas, Virginia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. None of this means I must have fidelity to their mistakes, and it certainly doesn't mean that I need to have a fanatical devotion to entirely modern political positions that attempt to reorganize American history into a feel-good tale for the inexplicably self-righteous.
 
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CONFRONTING THE VICTIM MENTALITY
A victim mentality is one where it is always someone else's fault for bad things happening to you. Further than this, it can be an expectation that things will go wrong, because `bad things always happen to me'. A victim blames others for their circumstances - when something happens, they don't take responsibility for their actions.


The most effective way to overcome the victim mentality is to start taking responsibility for every action and circumstance in your life - as you seek in every possible way to take responsibility for your life, you will begin to see that: Although I cannot control my circumstances, I can always control my response!


When we embrace this attitude, life's circumstances will no longer control us, because we have been freed to choose how to respond!

DEALING WITH THE VICTIM MINDSET
Victims tend to see the control and responsibility for their situations as belonging to others, i.e. the bad things that happen to them are always someone else's fault. This is a destructive mindset, as not only does the victim feel negatively about their current situation, but they also feel powerless to change it.


Victor Frankl survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz by discovering the ultimate freedom "to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to chose one's own way."


Frankl said "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Covey, in his book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", describes this ability to choose our response as his first habit, "Be Proactive".


Covey describes two concentric circles, the inner for influence and the outer for concern. Proactive people focus on the things they can control (the circle of influence) and their influencce grows. Victims focus on what they cannot control (things outside the circle of influence but in the circle of concern) and their circle of influence shrinks.

TRANSITION TO HEALTHIER THINKING
The victim surrenders power over their life to others -- their life is driven by their environment. Proactive people's lives are driven by the values they employ in how they choose to respond. Victims can often be bound by unforgiveness; as Corrie Ten Boom said, "Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me." Releasing others for their failings and accepting responsibility for our own futures is often the required path forward from a victim mentality.


Victims can feel they have certain rights that the world owes them, and are disappointed or angry when the world doesn't deliver. They tend to feel very strongly about "their rights" and they way things should be done for them. Contrast this "in-bound" worldview with Peter Drucker, who discusses his life/work approach in "The Effective Executive." His focus is not "what can I get?", or even "what can I achieve?" but rather "what can I contribute?"

http://healthythinking.org/victim.html
 
Ok I got a on topic question,

Why is it that the presentation of " southern heritage" is always from the viewpoint of just white southerners? As if millions of black southerners don't have any heritage?
And why do presentations of "southern heritage" attempt to push slavery behind a curtain so it cannot be seen??? What are they trying to hide??? Why are they trying to hide it??? We can still see it. It's there. That wool us too frayed and tattered be pulled over anyone's eyes.
 
Even the original confederates understood how their attempt to create/preserve their slavocracy was going to play out in the judgement of history. That is why they focused on promoting it as "States rights" issue.

They could pretend the States rights they were concerned with was not the right to preserve and expand slavery.
 
Even the original confederates understood how their attempt to create/preserve their slavocracy was going to play out in the judgement of history. That is why they focused on promoting it as "States rights" issue.

They could pretend the States rights they were concerned with was not the right to preserve and expand slavery.

Only after the war though. Their writings before and during the war are very honest in this respect.

R
 
Only after the war though. Their writings before and during the war are very honest in this respect.

R

Absolutely, the song they sang after they lost was far different from what they had been singing even decades before the war.
 
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1). Yes.

2). Because neither [immigrants or native born American slaves] are paying their own way, and yet will now have a serious controlling interest in the government.

When voting becomes an act that any one can go and do, the people who are actually paying for the operations of that government then become the victims of those who are not paying anything, and without any more representation than before. It becomes taxation without representation, and the non-paying then vote themselves largesse at the expense of the honest tax payers.
.

Perhaps you should read Edward Baptist's The Half Not Told or watch some of his videos (I believe Pat Young has a thread with the links), because he speaks rather directly about who was 'actually paying' for the wealth of the South--and it seemed to be the 4 million slaves.

That's unless you're simply conflating the antebellum period with some notion of modern politics that you wish to assert. I believe that the contrabands/refugees/freedmen who escaped from the slave owners sought their own property in order to become taxpayers. Some actually took over abandoned plantations and ran them. Others became paid teamsters, cooks, laborers, and eventually, soldiers.

You mentioned your Confederate Heritage pride in the fact that Southerners who were slaves served the Confederate Army and their masters were paid for them an equivalent amount to white men. Seems sort of hypocritical to express one's full measure of good feelings over the bondage in which some Southerners were held, and meanwhile complain that as slaves they weren't taxpayers.

Actually, seems kind of bizarre.
 
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Perhaps you should read Edward Baptist's The Half Not Told or watch some of his videos (I believe Pat Young has a thread with the links), because he speaks rather directly about who was 'actually paying' for the wealth of the South--and it seemed to be the 4 million slaves.

That's unless you're simply conflating the antebellum period with some notion of modern politics that you wish to assert. I believe that the contrabands/refugees/freedmen who escaped from the slave owners sought their own property in order to become taxpayers. Some actually took over abandoned plantations and ran them. Others became paid teamsters, cooks, laborers, and eventually, soldiers.

You mentioned your Confederate Heritage pride in the fact that Southerners who were slaves served the Confederate Army and their masters were paid for them an equivalent amount to white men. Seems sort of hypocritical to express one's full measure of good feelings over the bondage in which some Southerners were held, and meanwhile complain that as slaves they weren't taxpayers.

Actually, seems kind of bizarre.

You know, I find it odd that the vicious modern attitude toward slavery - universally shared by all who are 'up with the eagle, and down with the cross' on these pages - are not called down for being 'modern' in their assessments of the true Northern views of slavery from the period. Abolition was at best a minority. Lincoln said not to paint him with the abolitionist brush. Slavery was to Lincoln a tool for negotiating the willing return of the South into the will of his own party's political Northern manifesto... and had nothing to do with the blacks as people, or anything other than property.

Slaves do not vote, and neither do illegal aliens... originally. But when you confer upon them the status of a citizenship, and make them a citizen... when they do not have a vested interest in keeping the taxes down... why should they be able to freely vote themselves such largesse from the common purse at the expense of the residue who do pay for such things? There is nothing fair about it.

In the slave condition, they were as dependents upon their masters, like children. Children do not vote until they are emancipated from their parents by age (18).

Every civilized empire that has ever been has been created through a form of slavery. There has never been one yet that did not rely upon involuntary servitude. The institution has never died, and it has never been completely stopped. The
fact that the North would not allow the South to take their slaves and be rid of the North, who ever sought to live off those earnings of the South, in the most hypocritical way imaginable (tariffs), while calling themselves the Free States... which is a fantastic lie if you are still taking money from the very act, itself... should tell you that the South was ready to cease to be profitable, or anything at all... rather than to willingly continue under the Northern political agitations.

The vast amounts of sheer disgust that you read hereupon are in fact period feelings, though not towards slavery, at the time, as an art form... but rather of the 'hated' Celtic South, in its own right.

At least in those days, they had the good decency to own up to that, and say that it was Secession, and not so much over what Thomas Jefferson called The Noisy Pretenders to Exclusive Humanity - (the pretender bleeding hearts). This started way back in 1820...

Jefferson to Lafayette - 26 December, 1820

"With us things are going well. The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards us, but we shall ride over it as we have all others. It is not a moral question, but one merely of power. Its object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of a president, and the noise will be kept up until that is effected. All know that permitting the slaves of the South to spread into the West will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the "noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity." In the meantime, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power."


It was not really Secession, so much as it was the political differences between the two white races, each culturally trying to control their own destiny. It is just that one was trying to do it at the expense of the slave-owning other...

Oh. I almost forgot. The neutrally-balanced benevolent internet will not give you the full quote unless you hunt for it. This is a reference to the earlier Firebell in the Night letter, concerning the Missouri Compromise... and this is the part which took place some months earlier, in April of 1820.


"...but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence."
Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes (discussing the Missouri question), Monticello, 22 April 1820

Now, where to find my references:

Inter-library loan, for a few dollars postage!



The first book is entitled Reclaiming the American Revolution by William J. Watkins Jr. It is at the address below:
Oldham County Public Library 308 Yager Ave., Lagrange, KY 40031.

The second book is called Liberty, State, & Union – The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson by Luigi Marco Bassani. This book was written in 1963 and rereleased in 2010 by Mercer press.








 
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Radical abolitionists were a minority but anti slavery sentiment in the north was not.

You want to ignore the fact that slavery was phased out in the north. How did that happen?

You keep harping about freed slaves living off of the "tax payers" perhaps you can enlighten us how exactly this was done back following the civil war.

Then you can explain why it is so much better when a minority (slave owners) can support themselves off the labor of slaves.
 
You know, I find it odd that the vicious modern attitude toward slavery - universally shared by all who are 'up with the eagle, and down with the cross' on these pages - are not called down for being 'modern' in their assessments of the true Northern views of slavery from the period. Abolition was at best a minority. Lincoln said not to paint him with the abolitionist brush. Slavery was to Lincoln a tool for negotiating the willing return of the South into the will of his own party's political Northern manifesto... and had nothing to do with the blacks as people, or anything other than property.

Slaves do not vote, and neither do illegal aliens... originally. But when you confer upon them the status of a citizenship, and make them a citizen... when they do not have a vested interest in keeping the taxes down... why should they be able to freely vote themselves such largesse from the common purse at the expense of the residue who do pay for such things? There is nothing fair about it.

In the slave condition, they were as dependents upon their masters, like children. Children do not vote until they are emancipated from their parents by age (18).

Every civilized empire that has ever been has been created through a form of slavery. There has never been one yet that did not rely upon involuntary servitude. The institution has never died, and it has never been completely stopped. The
fact that the North would not allow the South to take their slaves and be rid of the North, who ever sought to live off those earnings of the South, in the most hypocritical way imaginable (tariffs), while calling themselves the Free States... which is a fantastic lie if you are still taking money from the very act, itself... should tell you that the South was ready to cease to be profitable, or anything at all... rather than to willingly continue under the Northern political agitations.

The vast amounts of sheer disgust that you read hereupon are in fact period feelings, though not towards slavery, at the time, as an art form... but rather of the 'hated' Celtic South, in its own right.

At least in those days, they had the good decency to own up to that, and say that it was Secession, and not so much over what Thomas Jefferson called The Noisy Pretenders to Exclusive Humanity - (the pretender bleeding hearts). This started way back in 1820...

Jefferson to Lafayette - 26 December, 1820

"With us things are going well. The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards us, but we shall ride over it as we have all others. It is not a moral question, but one merely of power. Its object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of a president, and the noise will be kept up until that is effected. All know that permitting the slaves of the South to spread into the West will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the "noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity." In the meantime, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power."


It was not really Secession, so much as it was the political differences between the two white races, each culturally trying to control their own destiny. It is just that one was trying to do it at the expense of the slave-owning other...

Oh. I almost forgot. The neutrally-balanced benevolent internet will not give you the full quote unless you hunt for it. This is a reference to the earlier Firebell in the Night letter, concerning the Missouri Compromise... and this is the part which took place some months earlier, in April of 1820.


"...but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence."
Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes (discussing the Missouri question), Monticello, 22 April 1820

Now, where to find my references:

Inter-library loan, for a few dollars postage!



The first book is entitled Reclaiming the American Revolution by William J. Watkins Jr. It is at the address below:
Oldham County Public Library 308 Yager Ave., Lagrange, KY 40031.

The second book is called Liberty, State, & Union – The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson by Luigi Marco Bassani. This book was written in 1963 and rereleased in 2010 by Mercer press.
Hmmmmmmm. Revealing.
 
You know, I find it odd that the vicious modern attitude toward slavery - universally shared by all who are 'up with the eagle, and down with the cross' on these pages - are not called down for being 'modern' in their assessments of the true Northern views of slavery from the period. Abolition was at best a minority. Lincoln said not to paint him with the abolitionist brush. Slavery was to Lincoln a tool for negotiating the willing return of the South into the will of his own party's political Northern manifesto... and had nothing to do with the blacks as people, or anything other than property.
Only thing I really find odd is that you're trying to somehow rationalize southern slavery. Guess what? Even if the north was racist (and they were) and even if the north was hypocritical (somewhat true to an extend) slavery was still a bad thing and the south fighting a war in an attempt to preserve their peculiar institution was still no noble cause.
 
But when you confer upon them the status of a citizenship, and make them a citizen... when they do not have a vested interest in keeping the taxes down... why should they be able to freely vote themselves such largesse from the common purse at the expense of the residue who do pay for such things? There is nothing fair about it.

So its fair to deny someone political rights or keep them enslaved just because they are too poor for your liking or might vote a way you dont care for? And not everything we vote on is about taxation.


The vast amounts of sheer disgust that you read hereupon are in fact period feelings, though not towards slavery, at the time, as an art form... but rather of the 'hated' Celtic South, in its own right.

Total rubbish (though I am starting to fee disgust toward you).


Jefferson to Lafayette - 26 December, 1820

"With us things are going well. The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards us, but we shall ride over it as we have all others. It is not a moral question, but one merely of power. Its object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of a president, and the noise will be kept up until that is effected. All know that permitting the slaves of the South to spread into the West will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the "noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity." In the meantime, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power."

You have brought this letter up before and I pointed out that only a liar or a fool could write such **** (see part I underlined). I lean toward liar in Jefferson's case.
 
The vast amounts of sheer disgust that you read hereupon are in fact period feelings, though not towards slavery, at the time, as an art form... but rather of the 'hated' Celtic South, in its own right.
If that were true, why was abolitionist literature not full of screeds against the Southern Celts?

As a Celt myself (mycelt?) I am getting tired of this late found Celtic identity among modern Lost Causers.
 
Hmmmmmmm. Revealing.
Painfully revealing. Then again, some of his stuff is cribbed directly from Stormfront and the League of the South, and at least one pile of dreck was actually plagiarized from an extremist anti-First Amendment zealot.

Also, I keep wondering if dear Six's head would explode were he to learn that the largest Celtic-descended populations were in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.
 
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