In some rather insane news the Washington post reported that the state of Virginia has declared April "confederate history month". Governor Bob McDonnell issued the proclamation that basically says that Virginia will recognize and understand the sacrifices that brave confederate soldiers took to fight the United States of America during the civil war. What the proclamation fails to mention is slavery which was one of the major reasons the civil war even took place. Unlike Bob McDonnell the previous 2 governors refused to celebrate confederate history month because they saw the obvious pitfalls of celebrating the confederacy.
Bob McDonnell campaign booth in 2009
Below is basically why the confederacy is still a lightning rod when it comes to blacks and whites.
2 comments:
Um... history lesson... Slavery was practiced in all thirteen colonies and NY was second to SC in 1776 as the colony with the highest percentage of slaves. Sojourner Truth was born Harriet Van Wagner, a slave in New York.
The liberal guilt, which today besets the North, has at its roots the profits from its vast slave trading which did nothing less than finance the Industrial Revolution. At the Constitutional Convention a continuation of the slave trade was a concession wrung by the Northern delegations from the South which allowed the North to continue the international trade another 20 years, until 1808.
The 1860 census reveals 95% of America’s slaves were owned by just 5% of the population while 85% of Southerners owned the land and structures they lived upon. This clearly establishes a large, independent non slave-holding class of yeoman farmers who later became the rank and file as well as the heart and soul of the Confederate army. To state their motive for fighting was the preservation of slavery is pure nonsense.
Slavery was an inefficient, self-consuming labor system driven by cotton and already well-contained within its own soon to be encountered natural frontiers (the American desert). It required ever newer lands to replace that which it exhausted. The pattern was identical throughout the entire Western Hemisphere. It was doomed for extinction well before the end of the century if left alone.
While the war is now represented as an altruistic crusade by the North to free the slaves the historical facts could not be more contradictory. The 1860 Republican Convention contained a platform plank promising protection for slavery everywhere it currently existed. Lincoln at his first inaugural address offered a constitutional amendment forever protecting slavery. A Congressional Resolution in 1862 reaffirmed the war’s aim was to “preserve the Union, not free the slave”.
The Emancipation Proclamation was met in the North by laws collectively known as “Black Codes”. These laws forbade entry, travel, work or residence by African-Americans in Northern states. The Proclamation was nothing but a clever ruse to stall imminent European recognition of the Confederacy. It freed no one. Slave states remaining in the Union (in the border states) not only retained their slaves, but also benefited from the strictest enforcement of the hated Fugitive Slave Law.
Blacks served willingly and honorably in the Confederate armies. Estimates of their numbers run as high as 100,000. Their motive was the same as their Federal counterpart; patriotism and the desire to disprove the misconceptions about their race. They fought no more to preserve slavery than to preserve Jim Crow during the Spanish-American War, or the doctrine of separate but equal in Korea.
Had the South prevailed Robt. E. Lee would have undoubtedly been elected president (the Confederate Constitution limited the President to one six year term) and just as undoubtedly have taken immediate steps to free the slaves. This single act, proposed as it would have been by President Lee would have been accepted by the South and would have advanced race-relations light years.
As it was Reconstruction was the single most corrupt period of our entire history, pitting newly enfranchised Blacks against disenfranchised and occupied southern Whites. When in 1877 the last of the troops and carpetbaggers left only Blacks remained to face the rage and hatred of a humiliated South. The ugliness of the 1960s can be traced unbroken from the 1860s.
Um... history lesson... Slavery was practiced in all thirteen colonies and NY was second to SC in 1776 as the colony with the highest percentage of slaves. Sojourner Truth was born Harriet Van Wagner, a slave in New York.
The 1860 census reveals 95% of America’s slaves were owned by just 5% of the population while 85% of Southerners owned the land and structures they lived upon. This clearly establishes a large, independent non slave-holding class of yeoman farmers who later became the rank and file as well as the heart and soul of the Confederate army. To state their motive for fighting was the preservation of slavery is pure nonsense.
Slavery was an inefficient, self-consuming labor system driven by cotton and already well-contained within its own soon to be encountered natural frontiers (the American desert). It required ever newer lands to replace that which it exhausted. The pattern was identical throughout the entire Western Hemisphere. It was doomed for extinction well before the end of the century if left alone.
While the war is now represented as an altruistic crusade by the North to free the slaves the historical facts could not be more contradictory. The 1860 Republican Convention contained a platform plank promising protection for slavery everywhere it currently existed. Lincoln at his first inaugural address offered a constitutional amendment forever protecting slavery. A Congressional Resolution in 1862 reaffirmed the war’s aim was to “preserve the Union, not free the slave”.
The Emancipation Proclamation was met in the North by laws collectively known as “Black Codes”. These laws forbade entry, travel, work or residence by African-Americans in Northern states. The Proclamation was nothing but a clever ruse to stall imminent European recognition of the Confederacy. It freed no one. Slave states remaining in the Union (in the border states) not only retained their slaves, but also benefited from the strictest enforcement of the hated Fugitive Slave Law.
Blacks served willingly and honorably in the Confederate armies. Estimates of their numbers run as high as 100,000. Their motive was the same as their Federal counterpart; patriotism and the desire to disprove the misconceptions about their race. They fought no more to preserve slavery than to preserve Jim Crow during the Spanish-American War, or the doctrine of separate but equal in Korea.
Had the South prevailed Robt. E. Lee would have undoubtedly been elected president (the Confederate Constitution limited the President to one six year term) and just as undoubtedly have taken immediate steps to free the slaves. This single act, proposed as it would have been by President Lee would have been accepted by the South and would have advanced race-relations light years.
As it was Reconstruction was the single most corrupt period of our entire history, pitting newly enfranchised Blacks against disenfranchised and occupied southern Whites. When in 1877 the last of the troops and carpetbaggers left only Blacks remained to face the rage and hatred of a humiliated South. The ugliness of the 1960s can be traced unbroken from the 1860s.
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