Civil War

Here is a vignette from the 19th century memoirs of a Civil War veteran. Like millions of white southerners, this writer never owned a slave and held slaveowners in contempt. Yet he viewed the struggle against the North as a holy cause to preserve the republic’s Constitution, and passionately joined the battle against the invaders.

http://www.knowsouthernhistory.net/Articles/History/WSI/was_it_only_about_slavery.html

 

A beautiful post, Kiffin. We can dream, can't we?

Lady Eagle,
Stonewall's distant cousin on my father's side...so I've been told.

 

Being an Alabama boy, a State's Rightist, and living in Ireland where the nations are slowly but surely giving away their sovereignty to to the EU, I think I would have fought for the South.

 

Dr Bob, just wondering if you have seen the movie "Cold Mountain" that starred Jude Law and Nicole Kidman?

 

Born in Florida, grew up in Florida and Alabama, would have fought furiously for the Union. I've got too many black friends. In fact, I'd probably be helping with the Underground Railroad and preaching against slavery to whoever would listen.

 

Scott,

I don't think "black friends" is the issue. I have loads as well. The issue was the disintegration of state sovereignty and the establishment of a national level hegemony.

I too would have been preaching against slavery.

 

The subject of Black Southerners who served in the War for Southern Independence is a missing chapter in American history. Over the last century, only a small number of books have addressed this subject - an amazing phenomenon when we consider that many War Between the States topics are covered literally hundreds and thousands of times.

As Edward Smith, Dean of Minority Affairs and Professor of History at American University, remarked in the August 1991 edition of The Civil War News, "to admit that blacks actually fought for a cause which in the minds of many 20th century Americans now stands exclusively for slavery and oppression is unacceptable to many in the country concerned with only politics and not with the realities of historical record."

SOURCE

In Mississippi on Feb. 1, 1890 an appropriation for a monument to the Confederate dead was being considered. A delegate had just spoken against the bill, when John F. Harris, a Negro Republican delegate from Washington, County, rose to speak:

"Mr. Speaker! I have arisen here in my place to offer a few words on the bill. I have come from a sick bed. Perhaps it was not prudent for me to come. But sir, I could not rest quietly in my room without contributing a few remarks of my own. I was sorry to hear the speech of the young gentlemen from Marshall County. I am sorry that any son of a soldier should go on record as opposed to the erection of a monument in honor of the brave dead. And, Sir, I am convinced that had he seen what I saw at Seven Pines, and in the Seven Day's fighting around Richmond, the battlefield covered with the mangled forms of those who fought for their country and for their country's honor, he would not have made the speech. When the news came that the South had been invaded, those men went forth to fight for what they believed, and they made no requests for monuments. But they died, and their virtues should be remembered. Sir, I went with them. I, too, wore the gray, the same color my master wore. We stayed four long years, and if that war had gone on till now I would have been there yet. I want to honor those brave men who died for their convictions. When my mother died I was a boy. Who, Sir, then acted the part of a mother to the orphaned slave boy, but my old MISSUS! Were she living now, or could speak to me from those high realms where are gathered the sainted dead, she would tell me to vote for this bill. And, Sir, I shall vote for it. I want it known to all the world that my vote is given in favor of the bill to erect a monument in HONOR OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD."

When the applause died down, the measure passed overwhelmingly, and every Negro member voted "AYE".

SOURCE

A Modern Day Black Confederate

H.K. Edgerton was formerly the President of the Asheville, North Carolina NAACP and a long time advocate for the disadvantaged and others left out of the mainstream of society. HK could be seen almost everyday walking down the street counseling young people to stay off of drugs, running drug dealers out of the area as he tried to help the poor and unrepresented in Asheville, NC. He gradually learned about the truthfulness of the Southern Cause and Southern heritage through his brother Terry Lee, who was the family's first Confederate. Although Terry Lee's ideas and true understanding of history and politics was on occasion an embarrassment to the President of the Asheville NAACP, over time HK began to realize that Terry was right. HK Edgerton's embracement of the cause of truth in history and heritage for all the people of Dixie has propelled him into the public limelight here in NC and now all across the United States.

Mr. Edgerton is an honorary life member of the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and an honorary member of the Zebulon Vance Camp # 15 in Asheville, NC and the Morganton NC Camp # 836

SOURCE

 

My black friends weren't too fond of slavery, and several of them can find direct ancestors who were freed as a result of the end of slavery. I still would be fighting many of you to end slavery.

It's sad, really, that people discount slavery as being a factor in the South's secession. People can come up with as many "state's rights" issues as they want, but the main right of the states they were upset about was the reality of slavery in the South.

And I'm a big fan of federal government myself, so I don't have an issue there, either. To imagine what Florida would do if it could do what it wanted without national supervision is frightening to me.

 

You are right that slavery was a issue in the War for Southern Independence, but even Abraham Lincoln admited that it was not the main issue. A mere month before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln wrote to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley that his "paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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."

And as you can see in my previous post, there were, and still are, black confederates who supported and continue to support the side of the South in the War Between the States.

 

My parents were both from Texas, but I was born in Montana. We moved to Houston when I was 4 years old. The welcoming committee of neighborhood kids beat me up for being a "yankee" (anyone not a rebel, by default to them, was a yankee). It was six years before we moved from that hellhole.

I think I'd've moved West or become an Abolitionist. My sister and her family would have probably been confederates. They don't fly the flag, but they do make disparaging remarks about yankees.

A question for you rebs: do you all say the "Pledge of Allegiance" willingly? Does the part "one nation, under God, indivisible" bother you?

Also, do Missourians consider themselves Southern?

 

That pledge came almost 100 years after the war. The Feds proved their point, the nation is indivisible and states have lost virtually all rights.

 

What is notable about the history of the pledge is the conjunction of socialism and nationalism. There’s nothing overly socialistic about the wording of the pledge, after all it mentions God and notably does not include any reference to equality. On the other hand the pledge is explicitly nationalistic, going so far as to call what was once a confederation of sovereign states "one nation…indivisible."

At face value it might seem that only an unreconstructed "neo-Confederate" could object to the word "indivisible." Walter Williams, for example, refuses to say that word during the pledge. But it’s not just because he is a Southerner. Rather he knows that the Founding Fathers – or at least the anti-federalists like George Mason – would never recognize any republic as "indivisible." The United States were born in an act of secession, after all. An act of treason, in fact, which makes the notion of a pledge of allegiance more than a little ironic. If our revolutionary forefathers had had the kind of loyalty ethic embodied by the pledge, there wouldn’t be an America for anyone to pledge allegiance to.

SOURCE

 

Then I guess you consider the premise of this thread to be meaningless. Fair enough.

 

The original version, "..one nation, indivisible.." was written in 1892, not quite a hundred years later.

So, that would be a 'no' for you and a 'yes' for NP?

 

One of the first things they taught me in "sales" -

A piece of the pie is better than none.