Sign the petition: After 120 years, it’s time to end Lee-Jackson Day
By JR Hoeft | Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | Uncategorized
If you have followed Bearing Drift over the years, you will note that I have expressed my dismay and displeasure at the practice of Virginia honoring Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. This year, instead of voicing displeasure, I am asking you to sign a petition to end the observance.
The tradition to honor the two generals is more than a century old and began in 1889. Virginians began remembering Robert E. Lee nearly nineteen years following his death (and nineteen years following the end of federal military control). The holiday started while Fitzhugh Lee, Robert’s nephew and fellow confederate officer, was serving as governor.
In 1904, Jackson’s name was added by the General Assembly to the observance. He was so honored during a time when poll taxes and literacy tests (aka “Jim Crow” laws) were being enacted.
To think that the day is based on innocent reverence for two heroes is simply not acknowledging the facts of history. At best, it’s a naïve approach to history; at worst, it’s something more sinister.
Additionally, regardless of how you feel about the confederacy, slavery, or the two men in particular, an exclusive day for them makes very little sense:
- There are no days – national or at the state level – honoring any general (or admiral) who has worn the cloth of their country.
- There are no days in Virginia honoring any of the other numerous heroes who have called the commonwealth home.
However, this is academic. The crux of the argument always goes back to what Lee and Jackson chose to fight for: their home state of Virginia, which was at war because it wanted to defend its right to self-determination on the issue of slavery.
If Virginia is ever going to move beyond the days of racial prejudice and towards Jefferson’s more perfect union, where all men are truly created equal, then we must take action to alter this holiday.
Therefore, in an appeal to Governor Timothy M. Kaine and the General Assembly, please join in signing the following petition to end the observance of Lee-Jackson Day, and create a new holiday: Virginia Heritage Day. On this day, all of Virginia’s rich and storied history can be celebrated, honored, and added to for as long as the commonwealth exists. Sic Semper Tyrannis!
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Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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200 Responses to "Sign the petition: After 120 years, it’s time to end Lee-Jackson Day"
About time someone had the guts to do this, Jim.
I’ve signed up. It’s time to end Lee-Jackson Day.
Carpet baggers!
The South will rise again!
Look awaaaay, ah-way, ahh-wayyyyyyyyyy down South … in Dixie!
Yeah-ha!
(hops in the General Lee, plays Dixie on the horn, and heads off to find Daisy Duke)
I’ve never heard of Lee-Jackson day before this. What exactly do they do on L-J day?
wasn’t it Lee Jackson King day before Gilmore reinstated it? besides, do state employees get the day off? and is Lee Jackson day more absurd for VA than Columbus Day is for the US? and while we’re at it can we get rid of Labor Day as well?
Bravo Jim!
Of course now come the chorus of people claiming “Tradition” or “Heritage”… Although I do not know of any other nation where the losing side of a war gets to call the shots…. Hell, no one even honors Tom Brady from last year… He lost too!
Yeah, I said it! I said it from my comfy couch in Ohio! What are you going to do about it, Southerners?
And all these years I thought they were honoring Spike Lee and Michael Jackson.
Amit,
Lee-Jackson day was in place in the South before Martin Luther King Day ever existed. The federal government instituted, rightfully so, Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday. It just happened to fall on the same day as the observance of Lee-Jackson Day.
In an effort to appease both sides, African-Americans and Sons of Confederate Veterans, the General Assembly moved Lee-Jackson day to the Friday before the Monday celebrated as Martin Luther King Day.
Jim,
I do not agree with you that the holidat should be or needs to be abolished. However, if you are going to call for something at least get the facts right.
You can make the argument that the deep south–South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, etc…–seceded in response to the slavery issue after President Lincoln’s election in 1860 and 1861. However, the Commonwealth of Virginia did not secede until President Lincoln illegally asked Virginia to committ troops to the federal government in order to march against the states in the deep south.
Just some thoughts.
Lets get real, Lee and Jackson were great VIRGINIANS. It is a dishonor to all statesmen to sign this petition.
You obviously dont understand what it means to be a Virginian if you sign this
Aaron,
“You obviously dont understand what it means to be a Virginian if you sign this.”
With all due respect to you and your’s;
I know what it is to be an American.
As long as the state employees get the day off, I don’t think they’ll care what it’s called
Being an American and a Virginian is standing up for your freedoms and defending the Constitution. An understanding of the events and situations leading up to the Civil War presents very clear evidence that slavery had much less to do with the conflict that the “wonderful” public school system will shove down our throats.
When an overpowering federal government refuses to acknowledge your rights, you as an American have the right to remove yourself from the union which you voluntarily entered into. The Civil War in countless ways, represents the beginning of the end for the true American way of life and the mission creep tyranny which began with Abraham Lincoln.
I would give far more importance to the sacrifices of men such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, then I would to the politically correct holiday that is celebrated in honor of Mr. Michael King.
I was not previously aware of this day, but now that I am, i am 100% in favor of it and will make certain to tell everyone I know to support it and not sign this petition.
I can’t say that I agree with this petition either. Both Gen. Lee and Gen. Jackson risked their lives, honor, and property to defend this state. By your argument should we disregard Martin Luther King Jr. day too (and yes I know it is a federal not a state holiday)? After all, can you name another holiday that honors a private citizen? Or does the taint of slavery and Jim Crow laws make everything Virginian evil and corrupt? While we are at it, should Monument Avenue in Richmond be raised too? Are we ashamed of our history? Are we Virginians nothing but wicked, immoral people who must forsake our past and grovel for forgiveness for the rest of time? Perhaps I misunderstand your argument, but with all due respect, this petition seems like an issue a feel-good liberal might make.
not sure how abolishing Lee-Jackson day helps race relations in Virginia but why stop there?
Columbus Day – the original FOB (fresh off the boat) who was lost
Christmas – my family is Hindu but Diwali isn’t a federal holiday
Thanksgiving – are we going to celebrate screwing over the natives?
Labor Day – promote more unions so more industries need a bailout?
New Years Day – if anything we should get Oct 1 (federal fiscal year start) instead
as a business owner I have to give my employees these days off so I’m not too crazy about holidays.
I support the creation of Virginia Heritage Day as JR proposed.
The comments opposing this petition don’t seem to be aware that this is being proposed in the petition.
After Jan. 20th EVERY day will be a holiday, the seas will recede, Earth will begin to heal itself, and rainbows and unicorns will be everywhere.
If you want to abolish Lee-Jackson Day, you’re a politically correct revisionist. Calling it “Virginia Heritage Day” is like replacing Christmas holiday with “winter break” in schools.
I suppose you’ll say because I support Lee-Jackson Day, I’m a raaaaaaaaaacist.
Ask me if I care.
Daisy and Cooter say “howdee!” and wanna let y’all know theze think’in HELL No! What are y’all carpet Backers gonna want next? Renam’in the General Lee the “Virginy Harrowtige?
Y’all lost yur minds – ur wat?
Don’t make us send Boss Hog and Rosco down there to Ches-o-peake to kinck y’all’s butts.
Thar’s a reason where we’z from is called “Hazard”.
Reid, there’s more to life than television.
You’d think Virginia would want to honor a long history and tradition instead of restricting it to two leaders in a losing war.
No wonder Virginia still cheers the Washington Redskins.
I would suggest that Terry McAuliffe start speaking like Reid Greenmun, Boss Hog, and Rosco. Then we would be convinced that he really is one of us backward Virginians.
Why – thank ya kindly Britt.
I do apprec’ate that.
Brain, you’re a hoot! But you Phill-o-del-feea Yankees really gotta stop think’in y’all know whatz best for us folks down here from south of the Mason-Dixon line!
Yessir, jus another Yankee Carpet Bagger cheer’in for them Eagles and such. Think’in YOU know what’s best for us folks down here in Virginee.
Ya know wut ya”? – Ya gotsta hand it to that Yankee feller – he’s got a set on ‘em, alright!
Well, me and trhe General Lee gotta be off – thar’s some fish’in needs tend’in.
(Reid waits for someone to point out that he was born in Los Angles and grew up in New England and upstate New York – Harpursville NY).
See what you get for being decent, Jim?
As we venture deeper into the abyss of political correctness, lets simply while we are at it remove all those statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond as well. Lets have the Federal government turn over all battlefields from the National Park Service for developers to build more subdivisions on, lets actaully wipe the face of history from our textbooks and from our lanscape turned red by our bloody Civil War. Lets pull down all the grey markers along our roads of this great Commonwealth that allude to such events. Lets endeavor to allow those who seek to shape our future by rewriting the past win over our national identity in the name of multicuturalism.
One of the things about history and military history is you have to project yourself back to the time and place without interjecting with modern day philosophy if you are truly going to be able to evaluate the era. Its like saying all Virginans had slaves in the 1850′s and supported slavery because the government in April 1861 through Convention voted in support of seccession. Do you support 100% of everything Gov. Kaine and the Assembly votes for? I can tie my ancestry directly to Virginia Whigs in the mid 1800′s who were pro-Union. One was there when Robert E. Lee was introduced to the Assembly as Commander of Virginia’s forces and worked with Gov. Letcher.
This debate illustrates the changes that Virginia has undergone over the course of its history. While I would not profess to think that the entire country should have a Federal holiday for Robert E. Lee, a State holiday for the man is certainly deserved here in Virginia of all places. It baffles me with all we have to deal with and the issues that we must and need face in the coming years not only in our great State that we must find ways to further the things that divide us over those that bring us together.
We show more compassion and respect for modern day sports teams like the Redskins than we do our own heritage and past. Flawed or not, these men and women in Virginia history deserve at the very least a level of respect. If we do not determine to provide it than what it means to be a Virginian has be tarnished in some manner.
In the end its holiday, observe it or do not, its a chocie left up to the individual. I think we all can handle State offices and banks being closed; a small price to pay for the hundreds of thousands on both sides who died on Virginia soil—afterall more Virginia men died in a few hours at the breastworks of Petersburg than in all the years in Iraq combined. History demands perspective people not political correctness. IMHO.
Thomas Jackson was a Civil Rights leader before it was cool. You may inquire for details. There are some people in Roanoke at a certain church you might want to talk to before proceeding further.
Are You kidding Me? How can You call yourself a Virginian while attacking a Memorial to Two of the greatest Virginian’s that ever lived?
It has nothing to do with race relations, Lee and Jackson both freed their slaves eons before the War of Northern Aggression. It is time that the truth be exposed, Lets have a Confederate Heritage Month.
Now, I may not be the best history student, but I do recall hearing in school about George Washington leading an Army. I also believe his rank was General. So, right off the bat, you are wrong about not having a Holiday dedicated to a General, since we do celebrate George Washington’s Birthday.
You might also want to know that Thomas Jackson taught Sunday school and that his class included many blacks who lived in and around Lexington. That legacy is carried on to this day in churches started by blacks who passed on their faith learned by attending Jackson’s class to their children.
Why do we need a state mandated holiday at all? Most of us have vacation days… rather than make another meaningless holiday that few people celebrate, simply leave it to the people to decide what days are important to them.
To J.R. Hoeft …
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were two of the greatest men that Virginia ever produced. Your denigration of them is sickening, and so is your petition. What have you ever done that would equal 1% of the sacrifices they unselfishly made? You aren’t fit to shine Lee’s or Jackson’s boots.
With all this talk of slavery consider this;
The old slavery required masters to feed, cloth and house their slaves
The economic slavery we are in now requires us to feed, cloth, and house ourselves…
In regards to the holiday, why not comprise and call it Virginia Heritage Day and then in the text of the bill be sure it mentions Lee and Jackson as two of the greatest heroes and then list other notable things or people after that. If done in this way people can legitimately call the day a myriad of things while on paper it would be totally non-offensive.
Once again you have no understanding of history or of these two men. I would rank the two of them, by character and service to the US and finally service to defend their state from the US and Lee as the survivor of the war as the best example for his fellows during reconstruction, as among the top ten greatest Americans in our history.
These men should be honored and not just in Virginia.
I challenge you, READ ANY BIOGRAPHY OF LEE, preferably a good one written by a scholar when colleges still had them, but even the poorly researched ones written since 1965 by liberal northerners and you will find a description of a man of great character.
This all has nothing to do with slavery. It is political correctness by people who know little of history.
I would hope Dry Viking you were not addressing me, but even if you were I would say you are sadly mistaken. I respect Lee as a person and as an intellectual, but you cannot call him a great American for his actions in the Civil and Mexican American War.
In the Mexican American War we stole Texas and much of the current south western United States. Back in those days it was internationally recognized that the Nueces river, 90 miles north of the Rio Grand, was the border between Mexico and the US/Texas. When Polk ordered Taylor to the Rio Grande it was a deliberate act of war. The subsequent ambush of US troops by the Mexicans was a completely legitimate action and the US troops more than warranted it. Were a country to do the same to us we would do the same to them. In fact on Inauguration night 1845 Polk confessed to his SecNav that he wanted to annex California. The Mexican American War is one of the prime examples of American Imperialist bullshit.
When it came to the Civil War, well Lee was a genius, by far the better general, but towards the end he knew as well as anyone that he was going to lose and yet he still employed viscous defensive techniques that led to astronomical casualties. Granted honor may say fight to the end, but Lee wasted good American lives for a cause he only half believed in.
The argument is not one against Lee and Jackson, but upon a day that will be perpetually associated with the confederacy.
Like it or not (and evidently many of you do not), Lee and Jackson chose to fight for a cause that was dedicated to tearing the union apart – even if you consider it a defensive war.
Lee and Jackson were great soldiers and Virginia patriots. I have not said otherwise.
But the cause which they fought for is a traitorous disgrace, which, unfortunately, we will always be reminded of when we have a day exclusively for them.
Once again, I recommend a day that honors all of Virginia’s history.
Jim – KUDOS! I have signed your petition and wish you, and your idea the best of luck.
I will not let men who have no backbone except to acquicesce to the politically correct be the individuals to determine the fate if Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, should be honored with a State holiday. That determination has already been made! And whomever wants to change it should just shut up! Lee and Jackson are two of the finest men this country, much less Virginia has ever produced. They both have earned and deserve their holiday in Virginia because they were great men and great Virginians! Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson were the men I emulated when I was a young boy, and Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson are still my heroes today. Whomever decides to attempt to water down their character and accomplishments will never be invited into my house! My father would turn over in his grave if he had read your petition!
My wife is a 4th grade teacher and has been teaching Virginia history for the past six years. She has never heard of Lee-Jackson Day. With all the issues facing Hampton Roads, chief amongst them a newly elected Member of Congress who quite literally needs a map to find his way around his own district, is this a fight that needs to waged right now?
[...] to Lee-Jackson Day, Yes to Virginia Heritage Day Jim Hoeft over at Bearing Drift has an interesting proposal: If Virginia is ever going to move beyond the days of racial prejudice and towards Jefferson’s [...]
Good job, Jim.
For a commonwealth that prides itself on freedom and democracy – home of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Thomas Jefferson – there sure is a large group of you that would prefer democracy not take its course.
I wonder how Lee and Jackson would feel about that? Or, perhaps, I should just “shut up”?
Jim,
I appreciate this, and even if you are taking flack for it – it is still a good idea.
Most of the rest of you – I know some of you must be right, since you write at sites that have the word ‘liberty’ in them. I just wonder if liberty includes the ability to move to a new day, where the shackles of the past are thrown off and we can all celebrate a day that honors Virginia’s heritage. That means all of Virginia’s heritage, good and bad.
Let’s not get bogged down in some silly argument over this. We can all celebrate the heritage of Virginia in our own way. I would rather celebrate all of it, rather than celebrate a failed war that the south needs to move forward from; all of it’s citizens, not just those who were born here.
Once again, Jim; nice work. Don’t allow the naysayers and the admitted racists get to you.
I agree with those who support this fine idea.
Good job? For what? Years from now, someone with a web page may argue to get rid of Virginia Heritage Day because well, Virginia Heritage Day sounds too, well, inclusive, or does not celebrate enough of this history or that history. They might say why celebrate the past at all.
Just because one might be against the day does not mean it should be changed.
Hell, we would not even be a Nation had our Founding Fathers(I suppose that is not PC enough for some folks here, but, oh well) not stood up for what they believed in.
Yet, I suppose we should not honor our Founding Fathers because the Country was divided over the war, we had slavery, the English were going to grant freedom to slaves if they fought for the English, etc, etc, etc.
In this day of pc, we have schools named after George Washington being changed because people are offended or do not think kids should attend a school named after a slave holder.
Do we want to open the flood gates and change every holiday or celebration because everyone may not agree with it?
Remember, your favorite holiday, person, or celebration may be under attack the next time. Watch what you ask for.
The people in favor of ending the holiday never took he time to learn about these me. Stonewall Jackson held Sunday school in Lexington to teach blacks to read so they could read the bible. The average attendance was 60 blacks every Sunday. Teaching slaves to read was illegal but he did it anyway because it was right. He had 7 slaves which were mainly old and had no where to go and he kept them to his own financial loss. He was a great man!
Gee, thanks Mark.
Since Mark couldn’t take the time to make clear that there are other blogs on here with the word “Liberty” in them and couldn’t be bothered to point out that the poster from the other “Liberty” blog does not represent all the views over there either………..
Tidewater Liberty posters have not taken a transparent position here with the exception of Chad P. who didn’t have a link. I THINK Chad is the same Chad from TidewaterLiberty and his position was to do away with state holidays altogether since the trend has gone to having vacation days anyway.
Neither Reid nor I have stated a position. Reid is obviously having fun playing on sterotypes but, has posted nothing stating his position.
Speaking for myself, I’m still considering. My fear is that Virginia Heritage Day will later be seen as ‘racist heritage day’. Additionally, good intentions over time have been lost and forgotten.
In 1983 Ronald Reagan signed legislation mandating a Federal holiday honoring Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which brought more attention to the holidays in Va. There was then a push to align with the Federal holiday, so King’s day was moved from New Years day to a combined holiday with Lee & Jackson.
In the year 2000, the much maligned and lied about great Governor Jim Gilmore, proposed seperating the holidays and we now remember Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on a seperate day. A good idea if you ask me. Unfortunately, this seems to be never ending.
Until Steve spoke of King, I agreed with much of what he said. History education has indeed been revised and corrupted. His comments on states rights and the positive values of Lee and Jackson ring true. The Civil War was a necessary war and the outcome was precisely what this great nation needed. Both States Rights and the evils of slavery were dealt with. Unfortunately, it came with a great deal of death and suffering. Unfortunately, Lincoln was given more credit on the issue of slavery than he was due.
I will admit to being greatly disappointed to read Steve’s comments on King. I view Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a true hero of individual liberty.
It has become clear that the truth is reserved only for those with a love of history. The rest of the public’s view will be corrupted as they will not bother to research.
If we make this yet again, change, “Virginia Heritage” day as I stated before, may be later construed as a problem rather than the solution it was meant to be. Good intentions.
Given all this, I still must consider my position. I am tempted to give up hope on our general population and just throw in the towel. If I do think “giving up” is best, my position will be to agree with Chad. Just do away with State mandated holidays outright. Wouldn’t that be better than creating another problem that others will view with pain? This new holiday seems to only be a temporary fix that solves nothing. Leave history to those that will bother with it; some care more about Britney Spears and Michael Jackson.
At this point, I am still undecided but, my thoughts have been posted that no other needs to lump me in with someone elses view. I would also like to say this opinion is my own and does not necessarily reflect views held by any other person from Tidewater Liberty or any other blog with the word “Liberty” in it.
J.R. Hoeft on January 8th, 2009 at 11:42 pm: writes:
” For a commonwealth that prides itself on freedom and democracy – home of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Thomas Jefferson – there sure is a large group of you that would prefer democracy not take its course.”
Okay – then why not place the question on the ballot and let the citizens of Virginia decide?
Do the same for the rest of the holidays as well.
Let’s let the “democracy” decide if we want a “Martin Luther King” day or a “Columbus” day – or a “Christmas” day – or a any government holiday.
While we are at it, let the citizens decide if they want to pay state employees and local government employees for the Friday after Thanksgiving or the extra days around Chritmas.
My point is why the focus on just THIS holiday and why not apply the rally cry for “democracy” for all holidays?
It seems like selective “democracy” to me.
If Reid had his way, we’d need a referendum on which shoe to put on first in the morning.
Let’s have a referendum on whether or not to double Reid’s taxes!
Wonder what the vote would be.
I just read the petition, and I wonder if this is a joke. You sign off using the Commonwealth Motto, which is famous because of one person, J.W. Booth, who shot Lincoln. Why did J.W. Booth shoot Lincoln? Because he was upset with the out come of the war.
So, you sign off a petition that asks to change a Holiday named after two people who fought for the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Confederacy, using the very language that served as a rally cry for their cause.
Furthermore, you address it to the political body that voted for and sent the Son’s of Virgina to war.
What a crock of $#!+ . . . Ignorance knows no bounds when people wants to justify their own errant views and prejudices – even at the expense of history and the truth.
It may well be that the modern, NEA-endorsed myth accepted by most Americans is that Lee and Jackson fought to preserve slavery, but that says more about common ignorance generated by our education system than it does about actual, verifiable, historic facts.
How about teaching history so that our citizens would understand why people (including black Virginians, dirt-poor Virginians, and abolitionists) saw so much to admire in Lee and Jackson. How about teaching some of the actual, proven, documented acts of Lee and Jackson that would help us to make this a more humane world even today – actions that reflected more enlightenment than is demonstrated by many Americans today.
How about the fact that much of Lee’s progressive approach to racial issues (his well documented opposition to slavery, for one example) was learned from his teacher, mentor, and next-door neighbor, Quaker schoolmaster Benjamin Hollowell, a man whose own family ran the Alexandria cell of the underground railroad. Or how about Lee’s willingness to drink out of the common well in Market Square in Alexandria (his boyhood home), a well that was also utilized by Alexandrians of a different skin color. We needn’t forget that only a half century ago, and nearly a hundred years after Lee’s death, public water sources in Alexandria were idiotically segregated by skin color. (And, I might add, there are many Alexandrians alive today – including elected officials — who can remember following the conventions of the time as they “respectfully” drank out of the whites-only water fountains. We need not reach back over a century to find deplorable behavior.)
How about teaching that in an age when the common thought (both North and South) was that Americans of African ancestry didn’t need to be able to read, but despite that, Thomas J. Jackson was teaching black students to read in the basement of the Lexington Presbyterian Church — at the time when his daytime job was Superintendent (college president) of an all white VMI.
What about the incident when an elderly black man went up to the chancel for communion during a church service which Lee attended, and when the priest and congregation were frozen in shock, Lee strode up to the chancel and knelt beside the stranger — which led to a normal completion of the Communion service.
At his death, Lee was praised by the President of the United States, a man who had studied Lee intently, President Ulysses S. Grant. Lee’s admonitions to southerners did more to restore peace than the actions of any political figure of the time. Indeed, it is obvious that Lee was more widely revered than any politician of the time. If people today understood why that was so, our society and body politic would be better for it.
Rather than ignorantly and unjustly making Lee and Jackson villains of history, we would instead do well to study and to emulate the great men. Granted, human beings are not perfect, and we can find much to deplore in Lincoln’s approach to Constitutional rights, the sexual forays of great Americans like Jefferson, Kennedy, and King, the nonchalance of Roosevelt in the face of Germany’s “Jewish Question.” But we look for heroes whose lives and acts provide us something to emulate. Deconstruction of our hero stories could be an unending occupation, but it is also an unnecessary occupation — given that we all would do well to emulate the acts of greatness of those who have provided us an example to be admired.
It is not an act of enlightenment, but rather of ignorance, to denigrate the Lee Jackson holiday. Our federal government has already made “President’s Day” a meaningless holiday. If a person is looking for another holiday to deconstruct, then I would offer Columbus Day as a holiday that might provide more real, scholarly history to use in one’s propaganda offensive.
I would hope that those who believe in the truth would engage in sufficient study to correct their misperceptions and to admit that the truth will indeed set them free from their unfounded, ‘politically correct’ prejudices..
Wow, speaking of revisionist history… thank you “history scholar” for providing such a nice example.
Mark, are you a native born Virginian?
For what it is worth, I am not a native Virginian. But my wife and daughter are.
I feel that the question is relevent to your position on this issue.
Brian, I supposed you would do away with referenda because it gets in the way of your job selling candidates and can level the playing field as far as the power being kept by political parties instead of my the people?
My point was simply that Jim mentioned “democracy” – but only focused on this one holiday.
Brian, it shouldn’t be left to the individual as to which shoe to put on first. That is far too important a decision to be left to the common man.
It should be state law that the RIGHT shoe always be put on first! As a second mandated step, the person should then be required to be in front of a full length mirror when putting on the LEFT shoe. This is in order to make it appear that the RIGHT shoe is still being put on.
There is danger in this however. The Left foot APPEARS to be the RIGHT foot in the mirror. This may cause a false sense of security. In fact, the Left foot would only be a RIGHT foot In Appearance Only. Kinda like a RINO being a Republican in Name Only.
Sooner or later, people would just forget the difference between their left and their right. There would be all kinds of traffic jams and accidents leading to a “Big Government ” demand for Light Rail.
Oops. Too late.
This would be acceptable only if you replace Lee-Jackson Day with 10th Amendment Day.
Those last two comments just made my day, thanks guys.
Mark — If you could correct my “revisions” to history, I would appreciate it. Your sentence is a brilliant passive-aggressive way to call someone a liar. You are to be commended on your brilliance in doing so. But until you can offer me the errors of my posting, don’t pretend that you are adding something to this debate. Keep your subjective, erroneous, or uninformed views to yourself. You can call anything you want to black or white, verfied or revisionist history, American or anti-American — or anything else. But your can not change what actually happened in history no matter what you may call it or wish it to be. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Or in the case of your use of the word “revisionist,” manure by any other name would smell as foul. You may wish that history were different, but wishing and calling names won’t make it so. Alongside ignorance, I would also place the crime of laziness. You have only to read one of the many well researched biographies of Lee or Jackson to gain a perspective on those men. But maybe the NEA history books or the typical American university history departments are more your speed. And before you post another message decrying my use of the terms ignorance and laziness, please list the biographies of Lee or Jackson that you have read. I would LOVE to read them to surmise how you arrived at your point of view.
I think we should replace Lee-Jackson Day with a day that celebrates Virginians who stayed loyal to the United States.
What about General George Thomas and Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee Day?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Phillips_Lee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Henry_Thomas
Now … now … gentlemen …
Who said that the Northern War of Aggression is over?
I think I remember people using “History Scholar”‘s arguments during the debate over Mengele-Goebbels Day.
This should be the 56th comment on this topic. Linked from other sites, multiple readings by everybody……..nice.
The subject matter just has to be doing wonders for the “Site Hits”.
Is there a “Sweeps Week” for Blogs?
Shhh, Britt. This is only about journalistic ethics. A blog would never pimp for hits.
To History Scholar,
Your views are politically incorrect. Therefore, you can share your well researched truth with us all you want, but none of it will count.
To J.R. Hoeft,
I subscribed to Bearing Drift because I thought it was an alternative to the political correctness of the Virginian-Pilot’s bLetters section. You have disproven that belief. You embody the most sickening version of political correctness that I have ever witnessed. In denigrating men whose shoes you are not fit to shine, you have ruined any credibility you once may have had. Your writings are an excellent substitute for ipecac.
People are getting too defensive and caught up in their own arguments to get the point.
Lee and Jackson were not bad men. But bad men used their legacies to defend their bad policies of segregation and Jim Crow. That Lee-Jackson Day was created was a disservice to their legacy and all those who fought for state rights.
How on earth is taking the day and making it one to honor ALL Virginians and their heritage, the history of the Commonwealth and her people possibly be a bad thing? How is acknowledging our flawed history trying to hide our past and cover it up?
When something is wrong is must be fixed. This is wrong, people, to the history of Virginia and all who have lived here. Let’s fix it.
“To the history of Virginia”- if we pledeg to remain true to our “history” and all its hills and valleys and all its rights and wrongs than lets by god do so, but do not subject future generations to your version of the truth of what you see wearing the lense of modern day geo-politics or even a world view. During the Civil War era, men had a simply “world view” , it was the field out back or the house they lived in in the State in which they lived. 80% of the Virginia population in 1860 had never ever even left their county of birth friends- all of what they new as a people was rooted in their communties and in effect their churches, which of course were the foundations of the abolitionist movement. Again the Governor at the outbreak of the Convention, a Whig was anti-slavery and in fact being from Lexington, Virginia (of VMI fame for Jackson and W&L for Lee) where the western part of Virginia had very few slaves relative to its eastern Virginia brethern. Remember, present day West Virgnia broke off from northwestern portion of Virginia and sympathesized with the Union.
History should be taught in our schools and not the “political corrected” version. Like my mentors always taught…history, true history lies in the wrods and works of the men who lived in the times and not those reflecting through a lense of rightouesness. Tred carefully friends.
How many of us today would put our State before Union if we knew it would result in War? I doubt many of us these days we be so bold and maybe that speaks volumes about these great men and the era in which they lived.
Alter of Freedom – well said.
I think secession is a great idea, Our Federal Government is going to collapse anyway because of it’s Spending/Borrowing/Selling our national debt to China.
And the Confederacy was not about slavery, It was about a desire for self-government after enduring a tyrannical government. The Declaration of Independence explicitly declares the right of secession.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Character doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. The inmates are running the asylum. History scholar and those of us who know the facts are greatly outnumbered by Mark and his hoard of morons!
Virginia is not the only state honoring Civil War generals.
In Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi, slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King shares a state holiday with Robert E. Lee, commanding officer of the Confederate Army.
Lee was a Virginian and a great military leader, so I am unsure why this attempt is being made remove him from state history. In the middle of Arlington National Cemetery sits the Custis-Lee Mansion where the general resided for thirty years.
“Arlington …where my affections and attachments are more strongly placed than any other place in the world.” ~R. E. Lee
PWConservative:
So tell me….should the federal government be violently overthrown?
Among the politically correct crowd posting on this topic, none better exemplifies what they stand for than Brian Kerwin’s comparison of Lee and Jackson with Göbbels and Mengele. I assume that these persons may actually believe some of the things that they’re posting. They would do well to read the official union accounts of atrocities commited during the war — OFFICIAL UNION ACCOUNTS, not something written by Judah P. Benjamin or Robert E. Lee. Then they would have a better idea of the kind of total war ideas that Sherman and Sheridan shared with the SS a century later. Additionally, they should read Lee’s and Jackson’s correspondence dealing with giving Jewish Confederate soldiers leave for the high holy days, a topic that was never even taken up by the Union generals. I agree entirely that racist groups have managed to capture the battle flag as their own emblem, and for that reason, I would never approve of anyone flying that flag, even though the history is quite different from what ignorant racists think. I agree also that racists have tried to misuse the memory of Lee and Jackson to bolster their sordid goals. But again, just like the leftist revisionists posting inane comments on this site, ignorance is the salient motivating factor for both extremes. And, once again, throwing names like the Nazi leaders around is a sad substitute for scholarly and enlightened debate. But if that’s all you have, then that’s all you can use.
It’s better than saying we should be more like Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi.
I’m leading the politically-correct crowd, huh. That’s a funny one!
Jim:
One small correction to your post. I know you value accuracy at all costs.
In the post, it is stated that, “There are no days – national or at the state level – honoring any general (or admiral) who has worn the cloth of their country. ”
That is factually incorrect, to wit:
At the Federal level, we celebrate Presidents day, which includes former President and Revolutionary General George Washington.
In Virginia we celebrate George Washington Day (known nationally as President’s Day) on February 16, 2009. This is an official holiday recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is celebrated with a day off. Link here and look on the February Calendar for the Commonwealth of Virginia and then to the Holiday legend on the bottom of the document to see that former General and President George Washington’s Birthday is in fact a state holiday: http://www.dhrm.virginia.gov/calendar2009.pdf
From Wikipedia: “The federal holiday Washington’s Birthday honors the accomplishments of the man who has been referred to, for over two centuries, as “The Father of his Country”. Celebrated for his leadership in the founding of the nation, he was the Electoral College’s unanimous choice to become the first President; he was seen as a unifying force for the new republic and set an example for future holders of the office.”
“The holiday is also a tribute to the general who created the first military badge of merit for the common soldier. Revived on Washington’s 200th birthday in 1932, the Purple Heart recognizes injuries received in battle. Like Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Washington’s Birthday weekend offers another opportunity to honor the country’s veterans. Community celebrations often display a lengthy heritage. Historic Alexandria, Virginia, hosts a month-long tribute, including the longest running George Washington Birthday parade, while the community of Eustis, Florida, continues its annual “George Fest” celebration begun in 1902. At the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and at Mount Vernon in Alexandria, Virginia, visitors are treated to birthday celebrations throughout the federal holiday weekend and through February 22.” link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidents%27_Day
WIKIPEDIA continues, “Washington’s Birthday is a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February. It is also commonly known as Presidents Day (or Presidents’ Day). As Washington’s Birthday or Presidents Day, it is also the official name of a concurrent state holiday celebrated on the same day in a number of states. Titled Washington’s Birthday, the federal holiday was originally implemented by the United States federal government in 1880 for government offices in the District of Columbia (20 Stat. 277) and expanded in 1885 to include all federal offices (23 Stat. 516). As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, February 22. On January 1, 1971 the federal holiday was shifted to the third Monday in February by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. A draft of the Uniform Holidays Bill of 1968 would have renamed the holiday to Presidents’ Day to honor both Washington and Lincoln, but this proposal failed in committee and the bill as voted on and signed into law on June 28, 1968 kept the name Washington’s Birthday.”
Jason Kenney “How on earth is taking the day and making it one to honor ALL Virginians and their heritage, the history of the Commonwealth and her people possibly be a bad thing?”
Becasue it would water the holiday down to NOTHING. It sounds like that “We Are The World” politically correct crap.
So, yall admit that Lee and Jackson were great men, but they don’t deserve a holiday. What a load of PC crap. PC is for wimps.
Hubert thinks Virginia Heritage is “nothing”
That says it all, my friends.
good grief! where is this passion when it comes to over spending and regulation? I can’t wait for the posting to rename Jefferson Davis Highway.
Brain, my good friend, Hubert did not state that he thinks Virginia Heritage is “nothing” – his point was one I agree with – that being that renaming the Holiday to some vague, unspecified name such as “Virginia Heritage Day” takes a Holiday that was specific and makes the Holiday so unspecific it has no real meaning anymore. It is a “feel good” politically correct “watering down” effort to attempt to hide the history of Virginia, not shed light on it.
What is “Virginia Heritage”? It is like the promises of “HOPE” and “CHANGE” that barack Obama conned his way into office with – it is a vague statement that means nothing – but that means something different to anyone that reads it.
So, what are we actually “celebrating” on “Virignia Heritage day”? Who knows.
But one Lee-Jackson Day everyone knows what the day is about. Well, everyone except you perhaps – because it isn’t about “Mengele-Goebbels” as you would have us believe.
However, just look at the discussion this holiday spawned here on BD. Clearly we have many people that have a need to study the Civil War and dig deeper into the matter to discover the truth about Lee and jackson. The PC revisionist “history” crowd aren’t helping the serch for the truth about Lee and jackson by removing their names and thus attempting to remove any record of the civil war from our daily lives, in my opinion they are seeking to white wash over the civil war and obscure the truth about the “heritiage” of Virginia.
The reflections here are pertinent in one respect; it demonstrates a disparity in our educational system to properly address certain eras within our history. When we let our modern lense interpret “what” history should have been we allow our presentation of history to be skewed.
Of course, because Virginia was the major battlefield of the CW people associate Virginia as being indicative of the Condefederacy and it was not in reality. Virginia was one of the last to vote to leave the Union in large part BECAUSE of its strong ties to the Union, in large part to men like Jackson and Lee. People tend to want to forget, ignore or maybe simply just were never taught in school as a child the early months of 1861 and what caused the divide between the States. We analyze modern day Electoral College everynight during the campaigns more effectively than we have as a nation we have edcuated our people as to the reasons for breaking with the Union. Exactly how many times did it take for the Convention to vote to leave the Union? We have this impression Virginia was in a mad dash to go to war. This was not the case. In fact, many of these men hoped that a break with the Union could and would be peaceful if you recall and had no wish to bring arms against their brethern. Remember, John Brown was hung (and Jackson was there as a professor at VMI with cadets) in 1859 some two years before armed conflict at Bull Run. What changed? Well friends, using your modern lense what changed between 2003 and 2005 with the Iraq War in perception and political posturing? It was no different in the South as those who sought to break from the Union battles those that sought to remain loyal–read the speeches and the testimonies before the State Conventions. Modern beliefs through these lenses discredits everyone involved, even those who sought to stay within the Union because it diminishes that in which they confronted.
But a major lesson that can be learned is–there was not hate among these men. They fought for causes they placed dear to their hearts, but never allowed that powerful passion of hate to fill their souls. many of these characters knew each other well on both sides and always spoke highly of one another even when facing one another with divisions on the field. Look at our present day politics and ask yourselves if their is truly ANY honor left in it. Friends inmany respects these men were wrong, but in many they were and may always remain greater men than we today–in large part because we have never sem to heed their lessons.
Brian,
Exactly why do you attempt to compare Lee and Jackson to Nazis.
You put it out there, I expect for you to back it up with a few facts that prove your statement.
Wayne,
I thought about Gen. Washington when I made the comment. It was my feeling that his birthday, which morphed into “Presidents’ Day”, was more to honor him as “father of the country” then as a general exclusively.
All-
You will be happy to know that my child is learning about the war in school and told me that “we” won at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Manassas.
Reid, funny how you say “Hubert did not state that he thinks Virginia Heritage is “nothing”” and then go on to call Virginia Heritage Day “vague,” “unspecified” and “it has no real meaning anymore”
You’d do better to refute my point by not giving examples of how I’m right.
citizenofmanassas, i did not compare them to nazis. Reading is a good skill to have while commenting on blogs, so I hope you’ll brush up on it.
I compared the arguments given, not the men involved.
But thanks for playing.
Jim:
Understood,and thanks for the clarification.
I wonder when we ponder this whole idea of Heritage Day, we will find ourselves right back here in a few years because people suddenly feel like such a holiday celebrates the “totality” of the Cause and not simply two men who were great Virginians. When we celebarte these men now, there is very little pomp and circumstance, but if you were to initiate a “heritage day” would you not be invoking very similar celebrations as Veterans or Memorial Day and the creation of public ceremonies. I say let sleeping dogs lie my friends or a Heritage Day could result in the creation of the very things that those that would support this petition are against.
Could you imagine a Reenactors Group wanting to march down in full dress with flags flying down Broad Street in Richmond on Heritage Day to the Museum of the Confederacy or Monument Avenue? Would the not have a right do so given the confines of “Heritage Day”? Slippery slope friends.
I’ve been quiet for 78 comments. Well, I’m going to stick my neck out there.
With NoVa having gone blue and recent Republican setbacks in Hampton Roads, statewide Republicans can’t win without “Real Virginia”. Abolishing Lee-Jackson Day (regardless of what you replace it with) is political suicide out there.
The petition shows such a lack of political acumen that it should make Reid Greenmun blush.
[...] We Ever Recover? By Mark Brooks Jim Hoeft of Bearing Drift has had an article up for a few days now, asking that those who agree with ending Lee Jackson Day [...]
I have noticed recently that those faux conservatives (those who are only fiscal conservatives), dislike Christianity. Not just religion, Christianity specifically.(I mean by Christianity is people who actually believe what the Bible teaches as opposed to the liberal theological left of recent years that is “progressive”). They oppose conservatives as Religious Right. . .they feel the need to purge Christianity (never Islam) and focus only on the $ issues. Other than $ issues they agree with democrats on most everything else. You see this from columnists like Kathleen Parker and from “conservative” blogs like Little Green Footballs. It is Christianity that they hate.
What does this have to do with Lee and Jackson? If you visit the Billy Graham museum of evangelism in Wheaton, Illinois you will find only two military men included: Lee and Jackson. These men were not just patriots, they were devout Christians. Is the real opposition to them that they defended their state from an armed invasion (or as some have blogged because they lost the war) or that they did that as committed Christians?
I am suspicious of the Ohio klan of BD, it seems to have $ only on the mind.
This is the annual Jim Hoeft gets a lot of hits for BD pushing his politically correct agenda….
Jim, how about that Christmas thing? How will Virginia ever get beyond our ‘Christian Identity’ as a nation until you change the name of Christmas, as a holiday recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia? It’s the same logic.
Does this benefit your US Naval Career, by pleasing the politically correct crowd? Why not focus on job performance, which would be enhanced by remaining silent on ‘politically charged’ issues that would have members of your crew who respect Gens. Lee and Jackson, question your motives, Leadership, and attitudes you may have of them?
Is this about being the best Naval Officer you can be to all of your Sailors, and Marines, or is this about career enhancement?
Slippery slope indeed: today it’s the Lee Jackson Holiday; next year it’s re-defining (diluting the diluted) “Virginia Heritage Day”; then it will be the “Winter Solstice Holiday” to replace C_____mas. Already, sign painters can’t keep up with the re-named bridges, schools, roads, and recreation centers because what is acceptable today will be questionable tomorrow and forbidden next year.
I don’t care how many centuries have passed since King Alfred died. If there was a reason that some of our forefathers named some streets after him in colonial Virginia, then learn something about him and stop carping that enough time has passed that we should rename the street. Likewise with some of Virginia’s counties: No one in the Massachusetts Bay Colony would ever have named anything after Charles Stuart (neither the 1st nor the 2nd). However, no matter how we might judge the two factions of the English Civil War today, the fact remains that the Virginia Colony was supporting the Royalist cause and was given the nickname that we use today by the exiled King Charles II. To give more balance, should we come up with a new nickname for Virginia? Should we re-name Charles City and James City counties? After all, it’s been nearly 400 years, so why can’t we put this in the past? Maybe we could re-name James City County after a modern, inspirational leader: Barack Hussein County.
Who will be the arbiter of all these changes? When would it ever end? I don’t care whether it’s been 800 years since Runnymeade, 300 years since the Stuarts were the kings who ruled over the Virginia colony, or 120 years since Lee and Jackson died. It takes a lot of chutzpah for people who don’t know anything about history to push the notion that we should erase them from our society.
Some people participating in this debate are sufficiently ill-educated to believe that labels and (not very clever) one-liners are a good substitute for education and scholarship.
Just because you think that you are not politically correct DOES NOT MEAN that you are NOT one of those citizens that Lenin referred to as “useful idiots” — the people who are smug enough to think one thing while ignoring reality — in our day and age, the people whose need to seem contemporary and progressive causes them to join the masses of the ignorant in their baseless appraisal of history.
Suggestion to all: If your clever (NOT) one-liners and evil labels would be good for a bumper sticker, then they don’t belong in this debate.
Some people sit around quietly and make others think that they might be stupid, but others engage verbiage without engaging the brain and REMOVE ALL DOUBT. No matter how many Ivy League degrees one might have — no matter how great one’s professional professional successes might be — that doesn’t give you any reason to think that every word you express should be respected. There really is a difference between opinion and verifiable facts. I will still want a doctor to remove my appendix rather than my next door neighbor, even though she is a very bright lady. Your opinion is only as valid as the scholarship on which it is based.
We all know the old adage that “Opinions are like @$$holes; everybody has one. Well, some of them need a colostomy. If you have something to write based on your opinion or even your informed assumptions, DON’T BOTHER. Stick to subjects on which you have some expertise, or do your research before you make a fool of yourself.
Brian,
Funny you should mention reading. You obviously need to do a bit more on history. Why even bring those two men into this disccusion, if you did not want to compare them?
Would we still Celebrate Lee and Jackson under a “Virginia Heritage Day” If so, then why not just keep their day?
Hey Spanky!
I have a career enhancement idea: How’s about we take your comments (and all the comments attributed to you) and forward them to Hammond & Foster? See what they think how your public image reflects on their insurance company? Take an ad out in the local paper asking some tough questions? Talk to a reporter in the Valley?
…or would you rather take your shots in the mold of Lee and Jackson — who gentlemen you profess to respect?
Cheers (dick)
Chris –
You’re not saying that Jesus endorsed slavery, are you???
It’s unfortunate that Chris Green chooses to attack our men in uniform instead of debate on the issues. Disgusting.
Chris gets a bit hotheaded… it’s his style.
It’s quite endearing once you get to have a beer (or four) with him.
Chris:
Is your cyberbullying designed to take the place of other male enhancement?
I am a Navy vet, you are a Marine vet. Is this how we treat our brothers and sisters?
NEW CAMPAIGN TO FOLLOW THE CREATION OF “Virginia Heritage Day.” For those of you who don’t admit that you are the ‘useful idiots’ of the politically correct crowd, I would recommend that your next campaign should be to get rid of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery — especially since it was designed by Jewish Confederate who was one of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market. After the war, he visited Lee in Lexington, and at Lee’s urging, he went to Italy where he became a renowned sculptor and was knighted by the King of Italy. For those of you who refuse to believe any history that might dispel your progressive myths, I would submit that the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery will ALWAYS be problematic to you — IT MUST BE TORN DOWN. (Note to our revisionist champions Mark and Brian Kirwin: I’ll meet you at the Confederate Memorial with sledge hammers in hand, and we’ll have that spot leveled to the dirt quicker than you can say “Romans at Carthage.” There’s more than one way to get history written in the way that you desire — you just have to get rid of the evidence and then deny that it ever existed. And if we don’t do it, someone will contend that Lee wasn’t an anti-semite; so we certainly can’t stand for the thought that there might ever have existed a southern white male who wasn’t an anti-semite. Next thing you know, people will be reading the long-ago famous sermon in support of the Confederacy as it was delivered at Richmond’s synagogue during the war. Hey, another project . . . this sermon can be found on the internet . . . should we attack the sites that will take you to that sermon, or should we just ban the internet entirely? If we don’t take care of this now, we risk the thought that the neo-Confederate riff-raff in the old Confederate capital city might even support a Jewish candidate for U.S. House of Representatives. If that happened we really would have a hard time holding on to the contention that these Redneck KuKluckers in Virginia are thorough racists.)
Question of the day.
Anonymous commenters who celebrate slavery vs. white hoods
Compare and contrast.
Henry Ryto, a vile individual whose family lived in Finland during the civil war, chimes in with his thoughts on Lee-Jackson Day – thanks for the drive by Henry – oh, I’m sorry – I meant “bus by” in your case.
As Lt Commander of the Virginia division Sons of Confederate Veterans, I would only say;
Maybe Virginia hasn’t seen any greater heroes or finer christian gentlemen since Lee and Jackson
ever thought of that?
Seems a lot of folks who signed this petition are products of our public education system who were taught lies
Monday the 19th the nation will observe MLK day…it is also Robert E.Lee’s birthday. I’ll be carrying the flag of the South in his honor
Sorry, Lt Commander Jennings, private school education here.
No finer Christian gentlemen since Lee and Jackson? Perhaps not in your circle of acquaintances carrying flags reminiscent of failed cliques who couldn’t win a war, but America is full of heroes and there are many gentlemen.
A great deal of wonderful ladies, too, but I know those who cherish the 19th century quite possibly yearn for the days with those womenfolk didn’t vote, right? It’s only Christian gentleman you support?
Virginia Heritage Day would celebrate the history of women, too.
See, we private-educated, clear-thinking Virginians think we should know history and understand history and even celebrate history, but not be forced by the romance of history to support things which have become truly unsupportable.
Too funny, a pretend “LCDR” of the blah, blah, blah, now this is just getting sad.
BK is exactly right, you (and others) are not offering a defense of history, but a defense of a romanticised version of history – one perpetrated by individuals every bit as guilty of telling half-truths and worse about our past as any teacher you would condemn.
PS – if you want to visit a site of real heroism – in the grandest tradition of the American citizen-soldier, take the time to travel to Bedford’s D-Day Memorial and remember the sacrifices that town made during June, 1944.
Brian- I usually like to read your views and takes on things but on this one I must questionwhat lies beneath the true intent of your heart in this matter. As a veteran myself, I think we should also remember that even in our present day military exactly how many of our armed forces are from the Southern states of this great nation. There is pride issue the ripples through the South, whether you can align yourself objectively to its roots our not and though it did not begin with Lee and Jackson they are often placed up as symbols of it. So it begs the question, do other regions of America love our nation less? No. Certainly not. But what is it in the fabric of the South that moves people to serve in disportinately numbers to other regions………………is it the “romance of history”? Whatever it is friend, wise up and respect its roots that have secured this nation since Reconstruction whether you agree with them or like them in the least, it should be respected.
Afterall, if we were to fight another Civil War in this modern era–exactly how many armed forces (currently enlisted) do you think you would have break from their heritage? Be thankful that what you despise so eloquently in your words in the nature of those who “cling to failed cliques and couldn’t win a war” or relish things that are “unsupportable” have attributed to the psyche of service that fills the ranks of those who protect you and are willing to do so in these times. Your rationalization of the issues befronting the South and its history point not only to your ignorance but a lack of depth on the subject matter as well. IMHO. Most of us do not wrap ourselves in the Stars and Bars friend, but have an admiration and respect for those from that era—again simply look at how Iraq rippled through the political landscape of our nation and ask yourself how was it that for almost five years it was going on relative to its times and warfare in our ancestors backyards folks all the while the politcial heartstrings were being played by people very similar to Brain apparently. Difficult times indeed. proud to be descended from those who wore both Blue and Gray frankly.
Glad to see the remaking and revitalization of the GOP is well underway. I don’t see how anyone could reasonably say that it’s just a bunch of ignorant and reactionary racists. The GOP will rise again!
The remaking of tge GOP is to rename a holiday?
Are you kidding?!?
No wonder the GOP is losing so many elections.
The sacrifes of Bedford County and D-Day are truly remarkable and unfortunately there are not many left of that generation and my own father now in his mid-eighties finally will talk of the trials of that War, but lets not forget that many if not all of the divisions in the Army of Northern Virginia came from single towns and counties. Were talking whole regiments from a single town. How many of those men sacrificed themselves at Antietam or Gettysburg—every bit as tragic and heroic as Bedford County friends.
The more this thread continues, the less proud I am in that I am finding that people as educated as I would expect would visit this site regularly seem to shown lack of knowledge on Virginia history or at least in this instance period history, but that is to be expected in this era of absolutism and political revision. BTW the dissenters here maybe should read what the opposition to this men on the field had to say about them in their own works after the War. It might just be worth a read.
A little history is in order here. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson taught blacks how to read and write in Lexington while a professor at VMI. It was against the law to do this but Jackson said it was his duty as a Christian to do it.
Lee was offered command of the entire Union army before the war but turned it down because he could not fight against his native state Virginia. Wingfield Scott told Lincoln to try and get Lee to take the command of the union army because, Lee was “the best officer the United States has”. Lee was well aware that the Union had greater numbers of men and material than the South but his duty called him to defend Virginia.
You guys need to start reading history and stop being politically correct. I see why the conservative movement is in such disarray with people like you calling themselves conservative. Simply absurd.
Stonewall Jackson was also an unrepentant racist who believed Africans were intellectually inferior and moreover, as a devout Christian, that the Bible endorsed keeping them as slaves. Are those ideas you want to celebrate with a holiday?
Brian,
Why is it unsupportable to celebrate Lee and Jackson on their own? Why don’t you answer my questions from my last post? Would Lee and Jackson not be a part of the “Virginia Heritage Day”?
You and others who support Virginia Heritage day are not very bright. You say Lee and Jackson are not worthy to celebrate on their own, but by having one day to celebrate all historical Virginians, Lee and Jackson will still be celebrated. Yet, at the core of your defense is that somehow celebrating Lee and Jackson is not right.
So, you are in fact providing us the very reason to not change Lee and Jackson Day because they will fall to the way side if that happens.
Is it unsupportable to celebrate Washington and Jefferson?
I sure hope you do not fly an American Flag.
Do you support the changing of the names of schools named after Washington and Jefferson?
I bet many of the men from Bedford were decedents of Confederate soldiers. How do you feel about that? Would you curse those men for having fathers that defended Virginia? Would you curse those men for celebrating Lee and Jackson?
Maybe George Allen could explain to you folks the consequences of flag and heritage bashing. He could have escaped the macacca thing,,,,,,,
Pissing off his conservative base and pandering to the NAACP was his last mistake. It seems the Republicans still dont get it. Webb waded through this just fine even with his speech on his website that he gave at the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery,Webb never bashed his heritage. Conservatives need a new party. Republicans blindly backed a weak McCain….threw him under the bus to be exact.
The party has lost it’s way
Ron Paul was the clear choice…too bad
In reading your quote “If Virginia is ever going to move beyond the days of racial prejudice and towards Jefferson’s more perfect Union, where all men are truly created equal, then we must take action to alter this holiday” I was bemused didn’t Jefferson won slaves? But more importantly I would assume you mean t do away with MLK Day as well? I mean there is not another holiday on federal or State level for a single individual and being he is black by your logic admit it is racial holiday and be removed.
There is one other aspect that being heritage and discrimination.
Virginia, as well as many other Southern states honors the births of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee as well as the birth of Martin Luther King every January. And Southerners who admire their Confederate heritage have welcomed the inclusion of King’s birthday without protest or displeasure.
Many of those who pushed for King’s birthday to be honored, however, have not been so gracious. Instead of accepting that many Southerners wish to pay homage to their ancestors these folks have instead insisted on eliminating the holidays honoring Lee and Jackson. As with all other symbols of the South’s heroes and history these holidays are under siege by those politically correct types who seem to hate anyone different than they are.
This continuing push to eradicate every vestige of Southern heritage and history leads me to one question for all the bigots in America who continue to either attack or bastardize Southern heritage and Southern monuments and symbols.
When will Southerners who are proud of their ancestors who donned the uniform of the Confederate Army catch a break from the relentless and senseless attacks against our heritage? What will it take for us just to be let alone to honor our history and our heroes in peace?
Really we Southerners are simple folks. We do not ask much at all. Let us have our flag; let us place them on the graves of those Southerners who fell in battle for their beloved Southland, the very same Southland we love as they did.
Leave our monuments alone; they are sacred to us. They may not mean much to you but to us they are very special. See these monuments and graves and flags are our only connection with those who laid down their very lives for the South. Again maybe they mean nothing to the politically correct crowd who claims to be in the interest of ensuring no one ever gets offended over anything. But to us they are immeasurably precious.
In very straightforward terms just allow us the same tolerance and inclusion every other group is afforded in America today. Is that really too much to ask? Do Southerners somehow deserve less sensitivity? Does allowing us to revere our ancestors really hurt anyone? Why in this age of walking on eggshells so as not to offend anyone are Southerners still the targets of such vicious attacks?
Sadly the truth is plain to see. Only certain groups are perceived as fit to protect in the eyes of the left-wing political correctors. And Southerners who tend to be quite Conservative do not fit that description.
Along with Christians, gun owners, and anyone who dares espouse Conservative ideals, Southerners are not only not a protected class they are favorite targets of the politically correct bigots.
And make no mistake here my friends, bigots is exactly what these people are. They are guilty of hating just as the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Panthers are. Their hate is based along ideological lines instead of skin color but it is a very real hate none the less.
The facts about the lives and character of men like Jackson and Lee do not matter to these haters. That Lee detested slavery does not concern them. Nor does the fact that Jackson considered it evil. Jefferson Davis actually adopted a Black child during the war yet he too is demonized as a racist.
All these people seem able to see is that these men fought for the South, and the South had slavery, so therefore the South was evil. Instead of studying the facts about the South and why we fought, we were invaded and fought back; they seem to prefer living in ignorance and hatefulness. In fact it seems they were born offended and are only happy when they are offended. A pretty sad way to exist it would seem.
In fact they not only trash these brave men but also dishonor the man they claim to admire so deeply. Martin Luther King spoke of judging men on the content of their character, too bad many who claim to admire him are ignoring his words.
Obviously, it does not matter to the likes of Brian Kirwin and Mark how much documentation, proof, verification, or scholarship is presented to them. They have their opinions, and as they have made VERY clear in every posting, anyone who disagrees with them is a racist. That has not been implicit in their postings; it has been absolutely EXPLICIT. They will not deal with documented history, they will simply throw out the label “revisionist” at any student of history who presents verifiable facts that might dispel their firmly held prejudices and myths. Keep at it Mr. Kirwin and Mr. Mark. Just keep calling those who disagree with you “racists” — and label any proven historic facts that might not shore up your firmly held beliefs as “revisionist history.” You, too, can feel smug and self-righteous about your narcissistic brilliance. But your labels and epithets have contributed nothing to any discussion of history and what we can learn from history. There is no reason for you to engage in any intellectual exchange above screaming “racists” at others who have clearly studied this subject more than you. But just keep screaming “racist” over and over — as your buddy Goebbels admonished, if you make a lie big enough and REPEAT IT OFTEN ENOUGH, it will be believed.
But still, you have nothing but wisecracks (not especially wise) and name calling to contribute to this discussion.
Now, everybody check your watches, and let’s see how long it will be before we see the next repetition of the charges of “racism,” “revisionism,” or comparisons to Nazis. By now, we know it’s coming.
“Whatever it is friend, wise up and respect its roots that have secured this nation since Reconstruction whether you agree with them or like them in the least, it should be respected.”
I can respect historical roots. Doesn’t mean I need to have a Slavery holiday.
“How many of those men sacrificed themselves at Antietam or Gettysburg”
Too many, considering the only thing they were fighting for was the right to own another person without the federal government telling them they can’t.
“Why don’t you answer my questions from my last post?”
Because your posts are rather boring. It takes me a few times to get through them without dozing off, only to be awoken by laughter.
Perhaps if you took off your hood of anonymity I’d give you more attention.
Mr. Jennings likes Ron Paul. Wow…I’m soooo surprised.
History Scholar, I didn’t call anyone a racist. Chicken for hiding under an anonymous hood, yes, but not racist.
“Let us have our flag”
You can have your flag, and since you’re so about history, wave a flag of Great Britain while you’re at it. British rule is our history, too.
What’s the difference between the British losing a war and the South losing a war?
Ah, the British eventually accepted it.
Brian,
Both Lee and Jackson clearly stated they were not fighting for slavery.
The Commonwealth of Virginia clearly stated they were not fighting for slavery.
I will tell you why you do not answer my question, because you can’t without looking like a bigger fool. You spew off at the mouth, not giving a thought to how easy it is to pick apart your answers.
You admit to doozing off, but you read my posts a few times. What does that mean? You make no sense.
Take off my hood? That is a good one. You are so original.
It is clear to me only bigots and those that are void of any historical sense are the only ones against celebrating Lee and Jackson.
Brain,
Who are you? Plenty of people know who I am, I’ve never heard your name before coming to this page. So, who lives in anonymity and who does not?
Can’t help it if you’re sheltered.
Oh, the famous “they weren’t fighting for slavery” bit.
As if without slavery, the Civil War would’ve happened anyway.
You guys remind me of the feminists who say the abortion issue isn’t about abortion, but the “right to choose”.
“States rights” is your “pro-choice” cloak. But we really know the only choice they were fighting for.
Not only is this holiday staying as is, but within the next few years there will also be a Confederate History Month in Virginia.
On a lighter note, I watched the remake “The Invasion” last night with Kidman and afterward came back to check out things hear and realized I has just figured out what is wrong with Brian and the rest of these folks…they have been infected (ha ha).
The problem with pounding your heads against a bribnk wall is eventually you bloody your head and thats what you have here in brian; a brick. You can’t mold it, shape it, conform it in any way with any means. Its fixed. The only way it can be modified is simply by breaking it into pieces and by then there nothing left of the brick. Thats sad, Not all the pieces of the brick deserve such condition, but on the issue I find it sad that someone as educated as Brian would think so littel of Virginia and its people coming before us.
I am proud to be a Virginian frankly. Proud of our history and proud of our progress on all fronts, but to negate that which is history is to negate any progress as well. There must be balance between the past and the present for they are linked. We can buy into the notion of these men as has Richmond (the CIty) in ignoring its past, putting in a place where people will not talk about it or reference it let along celebrate it. This is why Charleston, SC generates 10X the the level of tourist dollars to Civil War sites as Richmond does by the way.
But again Brian, you have yet to address why it is our current military is overwhelmingly from the South? What is it about our the Southern culture that promotes such service to our nation I wonder?
Maybe they’re bricks, too.
For me, the issue comes down to this: if we’re building an inclusive society, we can’t exclude White Southern culture because it’s not politically correct. Virginia was what it was, for better or worse.
If you don’t like Lee-Jackson Day, on that day hold some event to remember the suffering of slaves, the contributions of some Virginians to the Union war effort, etc.
Brian,
You really are showing just how ignorant of history you are. There was a little question of tariffs and unfair taxes that were biased against the South.
Abe wanted a larger Federal Government, he wanted restrictive trade which would unfairly damage the South.
There is no question slavery played a part in the war, but it was not the overwhelming issue, and was not the stated goal of the Union at the State of the War, the rally cry was “Save the Union” it was not free the slaves. In fact the war did not settle the slavery question at all, since it was still very much legal and alive, in Northern States. It was not until December of 1865 that slavery was outlawed by the 13th Amendment.
Funny, how Lincoln created a slave State(West Virginia) during the War, accepted support from the border States that continued to have slavery, did not restrict slavery in the North in the Emancipation Proclamation.
It seems to me if the war was only about slavery, Congress void of Congressman from the South would have outlaws slavery in April of 1861, Lincoln would not have created West Virginia as a slave State, and would not have ignored slavery in the North when he wrote the EP.
Don’t you love the irony: Accusing someone of “wearing a hood” is NOT the same as calling them a racist. The prevailing views of Abraham Lincoln and the overwhelming population of his contemporary Americans don’t make them racists, but if an historic figure of that time was a southern white male with the very same opinions, then he would definitely be a racist.. Reminds me of the World War II propaganda that was replete with startling cartoon figures of the Japanese (called “Japs” in those films) — but I bet these brilliant thinkers in this debate don’t consider the Pacific Theater of WWII a racist conflict. As the old adage goes, “It just depends on whose ox is being gored.” Subjective opinions that support one’s prejudices are much easier than introspective analysis and scholarly debate.
And at least Lincoln didn’t have to dirty his hand with the question of teaching slaves or free blacks to read: In the Illinois of Lincoln’s day, free blacks were not allowed to buy land or even settle in Illinois. I suppose that’s the reason that Jackson is a racist and Lincoln is not.
Remember, if they keep repeating “Lee fought for slavery” and “You support a celebration of racism and slavery” — those myths will become the “truth”.
And, as I noted in an earlier posting, it didn’t take our “non-anonymous” (as if that makes his take on history more genuine) Brian to throw out the comments on hood wearers and slavery celebrators. How insightful! How intellectual! How enlightening!
South Carolina didn’t secede from the Union because of Lincoln’s feelings on trade.
Talk about ignorant.
Where else could or would they lie but in the South and with Virginia. Hey, there an hour I, answered this same question please allow me to use that same answer. Afterwards if you have additional questions feel free to write me. One point before some says it the war was not over slavery. Lincoln told the South (Up to his visit to City Point) they could keep their slaves in they would rejoin the Union. Since the War was not about slavery, they refused his offer.
“I was a soldier in Virginia in the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, and I declare I never met a Southern soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery…. What he had chiefly at heart was the preservation of the supreme and sacred right of self- government…. It was a very small minority of the men who fought in the Southern armies who were financially interested in the institution of slavery.”
In the movie Gods and Generals, the character of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a famous Union officer, gives a brief, stirring speech to his brother, Tom, on slavery and the Confederate cause. In his short speech, Chamberlain presents a strong argument against the Confederate position. Says Chamberlain,
“Now, somewhere out there is the Confederate army. They claim they are fighting for their independence, for their freedom. Now, I cannot question their integrity. I believe they are wrong, but I do not question it. But I do question the system that defends its own freedom while it denies it to others, to an entire race of men. I will admit it, Tom, war is a scourge but so is slavery. It is the systematic coercion of one group of men over another”.
Many people find this argument simple, logical and powerful. After all, wasn’t it inconsistent for the Confederates to claim they were fighting for freedom and independence when at the same time they were keeping another group of people in bondage? Yes, it was. This is a valid argument, up to a point. But it’s also an incomplete argument, and in some ways it’s an unfair argument. One reason this argument is both incomplete and unfair is that it ignores major inconsistencies in the North’s position. For example, one could ask tough, critical questions about the North’s claim that it was fighting for freedom and for the preservation of the Union:
* How could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when it was forcing Southern slaves to fight in the Union army, even when those slaves made it clear they didn’t want to leave their plantations and didn’t want to fight for the North?
* How could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when four of the Northern states were slave states and when some Northern states wouldn’t even allow free blacks to settle within their boundaries?
* How could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when it was trying to crush an independence movement? To put it another way, how could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when it was trying to conquer eleven states?
that had left the Union in a peaceful, democratic manner that had made every effort to establish friendly relations with the North after they had seceded, and that simply wanted to be left alone?
* How could the North claim it was justified in fighting to preserve the Union when the original Union was a voluntary compact between the states, and when the founding fathers had prohibited the federal government from using force against any of the states? Even President James Buchanan, who was
president when the Deep South states seceded said the federal government had no authority to use force against the seceded states. How can one rightfully attempt to preserve a voluntary Union by waging war to force eleven of its members to remain against their will?
* Wasn’t the North’s use of force against the Southern states fundamentally contrary to the Declaration of Independence’s statement that governments derive their just powers “from the consent of the governed” and that people have the right to form a new government if they feel they must do so?
A key argument that is implied in the movie character’s criticism is that the South did not deserve to be independent because slavery existed within its borders. Critics argue that not only was the South’s position inconsistent, but that the Southern states had no moral right to be independent and that the North’s invasion was justified. No Moral Right to Independence? Did the South have no moral right to be independent because it permitted and upheld slavery? There’s no doubt that slavery was wrong and that it needed to be abolished. But, if the Southern states had no right to form their own government because slavery existed within their borders, then the American colonies had no right to form their own government either, since slavery existed in the colonies and since some of the colonies upheld and grew rich from the slave trade. British leaders noted this inconsistency during the American Revolution. They pointed out that some of the colonial leaders who were loudly demanding “freedom and independence” were slaveowners. If the existence of slavery within a nation’s borders means that nation has no right to exist, then America had no right to exist in the first place. In fact, the slaves would have been freed over thirty years sooner if the colonies had not won their independence, since England abolished slavery in 1833. Every nation and region has its share of social injustices, and the South was certainly no exception. But what about the North? For starters, the New England states made large fortunes from the slave trade and from industries associated with the trade. Some Northern states continued to profit from the slave trade until just before the war started. Conditions on the New England slave ships were horrible. The slaves were kept below deck in cramped quarters and forced to sit or lie in their own urine and defecation. Not surprisingly, disease was rampant. The slaves were chained together by twos, hands and feet, and had no room to move around. Tens of thousands of slaves died on those slave ships. The North was home to a cruel form of wage slavery where factory workers, especially those who were immigrants, worked in terrible conditions for wages that were barely sufficient for basic existence. These workers were usually cast aside as soon as they ceased to be productive. On the other hand, many slaves (some would say most slaves) were fed, clothed and housed for the duration of their lives; even after they grew old and could no longer work. Even some modern scholars agree that many Northern wage-slave factory workers were materially worse off than most Southern plantation slaves. Most Northern states had “Black Codes” that severely discriminated against free blacks. As mentioned, some Northern states wouldn’t even allow free blacks to move into their territory. Let’s briefly consider the conditions in one such Northern state, Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln”, a state that was commonly described as a “free state” because it had abolished slavery. As of 1845, free blacks could not settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1,000 bond. If a black did have a certificate of freedom, under Illinois law “he and his family were required to meet reporting and registration procedures reminiscent of a totalitarian state”, notes African-American scholar Lerone Bennett. Bennett continues describing the conditions under which free blacks lived in Illinois, The head of the family had to register all family members and provide detailed descriptions to the supervisor of the poor, who could expel the whole family at any moment. Blacks who met these requirements were under constant surveillance and could be disciplined or arrested by any White. They could not vote, sue or testify in court. . . . With [Abraham] Lincoln’s active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks poor. Most trades and occupations were closed to them, and laws and customs made it difficult for them to acquire real estate. . . . As for the pursuit of happiness . . . Blacks could not play percussion instruments, and any White could apprehend any slave or servant for “riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches.” It was a crime for any person to permit “any slave or slaves, servant or servants or color, to the number of three or more, to assemble in his, her or their house, out house, yard or shed for the purpose of dancing or reveling, either by night or by day. . . .” Incidentally, Abraham Lincoln not only supported the Illinois Black Code, but he voted to deny blacks the right to vote “and to tax Blacks to support White schools Black children couldn’t, in general, attend”. In 1848 Illinois adopted a new constitution that made it illegal for blacks to settle in the state. It, like the previous statute, also prohibited them from voting and from serving in the militia. In 1853, the state legislature made it a crime, punishable by fine, for a black to settle in the state. If the violator couldn’t pay the fine, he or she could be sold by the sheriff to pay court costs. The architect of this Negro Exclusion Law was John Logan. During the Civil War, Lincoln named Logan to be a major general in the federal army. In any discussion on the South and the Confederacy, critics invariably raise the issue of white supremacy. They are quick to point out that Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederate States, said that one of the foundational principles of the new government was that the white race was superior and that blacks were best suited for slavery. Said Stephens, Our new government . . . 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. When critics quote this statement, they almost never inform the reader that, sad to say, most Americans at that time believed that whites were superior and that blacks were inferior. One of those Americans was Lincoln himself, who said the following in 1858: . . . anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. In another speech that he gave that year, Lincoln said much the same thing: I will say, then, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which, I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man. Not only did most Americans believe that blacks were inferior, but they believed that America was founded to be ruled by whites and for whites. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a prominent Northern politician, the leader of the Northern faction of the Democratic Party, and a Democratic presidential candidate in 1860, voiced this view in the following words in 1858 during his fourth debate with Lincoln: I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be and ought not to be, under the constitution of the United States. . . . I say that this government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever and never should be administered by any except white men. What did Lincoln think about this? He agreed, saying, “in point of mere fact, I think so too”. Many Northerners believed that the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” did not apply to blacks, but only to whites. Senator Douglas expressed this position in his fifth debate with Lincoln, The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they declared the equality of all men. (Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate: Douglas’ Speech, in Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln believed that the “all men are created equal” phrase did not refer to inherent equality but only to legal equality in certain respects, and more than once he called the Declaration of Independence “the white-man’s charter of freedom”. It’s interesting to note that of the 3.4 million votes that were cast in the free states in the 1860 election, Senator Douglas received over 800,000 of them. In addition, during that election, Republican candidates described their party as “the true ‘White Man’s Party’ because they wanted to reserve the territories for free white labor”. Even after the war, racism was alive and well in the North. Herbert Gutman notes that Northern whites not only viewed blacks as inferior but also women and working-class men: Neither the Civil War nor the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated northern whites from ideological currents that assigned inferior status to nineteenth-century blacks, women, and working-class men. . . . Northern whites regularly compared the ex-slaves to the northern Irish and other “degraded . . . races or classes.” I could go on for several pages documenting the fact that, unfortunately, in those days most Americans, North and South, believed in white supremacy and in black inferiority. This is why it’s unfair when critics quote Stephens’ cornerstone speech but remain silent about the fact that most Northerners held very similar views, and that some Northerners held identical views. It’s also unfair when critics quote Stephens’ speech but say nothing about the Black Codes that existed in most Northern states. Furthermore, not all Southerners agreed with Stephens’ belief that blacks were best suited for slavery, but critics rarely mention this fact either. What Was Slavery Really Like? So just how bad was slavery in the South? Did any good come from slavery? Did slavery have any good aspects? Did all slaveowners mistreat their slaves? The subject of slavery in the antebellum (or pre-Civil War) South is a delicate, highly charged issue because history books have usually only told one side of the story. I’m not trying to justify or excuse slavery. All I’m saying is that if we’re going to talk about slavery, let’s be fair and honest about it. History books are full of tragic stories about the bad aspects of slavery, but they rarely mention the good aspects of the institution. Historians typically cite the worst cases of mistreatment and abuse but ignore or minimize the cases of kindness, mutual respect and genuine friendship. True, the good aspects of slavery don’t outweigh the fact that slavery was wrong, but they should be noted in the interest of fairness and accuracy. Most slaves were not mistreated. Slaves in the South were arguably materially better off than many factory workers in the North. In many cases, slaves and slaveholders formed lasting friendships. Some slaves remained fiercely loyal to their masters, even during the war and even though they had ample opportunity to leave. In part because of the efforts of numerous slaveowners, millions of slaves voluntarily accepted Christianity and found peace in their personal lives in spite of their circumstances. In some cases, Christian slaves converted their masters and afterward enjoyed a better relationship with them. In comparison to other systems of slavery in the world at the time, Southern slavery was humane. Bearing in mind that most American slaves lived in the South, let’s consider some of the observations of historian James McPherson, who certainly can’t be accused of being sympathetic toward the antebellum South: Slavery in the United States operated with less physical harshness than in most other parts of the Western Hemisphere. . . . The U.S. slave population increased by an average of 27 percent per decade after 1810, almost the same natural growth rate as for the white population. This rate of increase was unique in the history of bondage. No other slave population in the Western Hemisphere even maintained, much less increased, its population through natural reproduction. In Barbados, for example, the decennial natural decrease from 1712 to 1762 was 43 percent. At the time of emancipation, the black population of the United States was ten times the number of Africans who had been imported, but the black population of the West Indies was only half the number of Africans who had been imported. Of the ten million Africans brought across the Atlantic by the slave trade, the United States received fewer than 6 percent; yet at the time of emancipation it had more than 30 percent of the hemisphere’s black population. McPherson notes other interesting facts: Although Southern law did not recognize marriages between slaves, 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters. Not only did many if not most slaveowners permit their slaves to marry, but some masters allowed their slaves to earn money and in some cases to buy their freedom (Ordeal By Fire, p. 34). Economic historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman contend that not only could slaves earn money and rise to responsible positions in the slave system but that in some cases they received a greater share of the product of their labor than did many factory workers in the North; see also John Niven, The Coming of the Civil War. Some slaves who worked in Southern cities had private homes “that rivaled those of country slaveholders in space and rustic luxury”. On “many of the farms the slave cabins were not much inferior to the master’s cabin”, and on some plantations “they were nearly as comfortable as the overseer’s cottage”. Good relations often existed between slaves and slaveowners. As one example of this fact, let’s consider the relationship between Confederate soldier Henry Kyd Douglas and one of his family’s slaves named Enoch, who had left the family and had gone to live in Pennsylvania as a free man. When Enoch found out that Douglas had been wounded and captured and that he was being held in a Union prison camp, he wrote to Douglas and offered to send him money. Douglas was deeply moved by the offer: I was surprised about this time to receive a letter from Enoch, whom I have spoken of as my father’s colored coachman. He had gone off from home and was living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, working for his living, in freedom, but harder than he ever did in his life. He wrote to say that he heard I was wounded and in prison and was having a hard time, and he had laid aside several hundred dollars and would send it to me, or as much as I wanted, if I were suffering or needed it. His letter was in his own untutored language, but its words were verily apples of gold. I did not need his money, but I hope I wrote him a letter that left no doubt of my appreciation and my gratitude. Another case in point is that of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America himself. Davis cared deeply for his slaves, and they for him. When Davis had to leave his plantation suddenly in order to assume duties as the Confederate president, “He made a touching farewell speech to his quickly assembled slaves, who responded with expressions of devotion. . . .” Davis was deeply concerned about the fate of his slaves when federal forces torched and plundered the Davis estates in Mississippi. Davis even sent money, in fact $3,000, to pay for supplies for his slaves to ensure they received proper care. The year before Davis died, he received a letter from one of his former slaves, James H. Jones, who had since become a Republican and had had a successful career in the intervening fifteen years. Jones told Davis, “I have always been as warmly attached to you as when I was your body servant”. Jones went on to say that he always defended Davis from “any attack of malicious or envious people”. William J. Cooper gives us additional information about Davis’s relations with blacks: Without question he respected individual blacks and in turn received their respect. His dealings with his slave James Pemberton and with Ben Montgomery as both a slave and a freedman illustrate such a relationship. Inviting Davis to attend the Colored State Fair in Vicksburg in 1886, Montgomery’s son Isaiah said he knew Davis would have an interest “in any Enterprise tending to the welfare and development of the Colored people of Mississippi.” “We would be highly pleased to have you here,” Isaiah Montgomery asserted, “and he closed “with best wishes for your continued preservation.” At a time when many Americans, in all parts of the country, still opposed allowing blacks to testify in court, Davis favored allowing them to do so. He expressed this view in a letter to his wife in whom he also expressed concern about the welfare of their former slaves: I hope the negroes’ fidelity will be duly rewarded and regret that we are not in a position to aid and protect them. There is, I observe, a controversy which I regret as to allowing negroes to testify in court. From brother Joe [Joseph Davis], many years ago, I derived the opinion that they should be made competent witnesses, the jury judging of their credibility. Few people know that Davis and his wife informally adopted a mulatto (half-white-half-black) orphan during the war. For those who care to know, the child looked like a young African-American boy, except that his skin was slightly less dark than the skin of most other black children; his facial features and hair were clearly African-American. Mrs. Davis rescued the young boy from a cruel guardian and brought him with her to live at the Confederate White House in Richmond. His name was Jim Limber. Davis and his wife raised him as one of their own children. Jim Limber and the other Davis children played together as normal siblings. Even in family letters, Jim’s new family spoke lovingly of him, and he expressed his love for them. Sadly, after the war, the Davises had to give up custody of the child when a disreputable Union officer threatened to take him from them. Davis was a kind, decent Christian man who treated blacks with respect, and many blacks knew it. During a trip through the western part of the Confederacy, Davis got off his train at Griswoldville, Georgia, in order to meet with a group of slaves who had gathered in the hope of seeing him. These men worked at a local pistol factory and had come to the train station because they wanted to meet Davis. Informed of the gathering, Davis got off the train and circulated among the group, shaking each hand and speaking to each man individually. When Davis returned to Richmond, Virginia, after the war, he was not only cheered by whites but also by blacks. One observer noted that Davis was “greatly touched” by the sympathy shown to him by the blacks in the crowd. In fact, some blacks climbed up on his carriage, shook and kissed his hand, and called out “God bless Mars Davis”. Many other examples of good relations between slaves and slaveholders could be cited. For example, there were numerous instances during the war when slaves hid food from Union troops and then gave the food to their masters and their families (who in turn shared it with them). One such instance occurred when Union forces occupied Charles and Mary Jones’ plantation on the Georgia coast. When the Union troops took over the plantation, a slave named Sue hid potatoes from the troops in order to feed the Jones’ children. Ex-slaves of the Sea Islands in South Carolina showed great kindness to their former masters when the latter fell on hard times. The freedmen “did not enjoy seeing their old masters suffer.” They “offered help and even, when they could, gave them money”. An ex-slave in Georgia remained on his former master’s estate to work for wages “so that, in a variety of ways, he could take care of the distressed white family. . . .” In another case, Clarence Fripp, a former Sea Islands slave-owner whose plantation had been sold from him, went back to his old plantation and asked his ex-slaves for money because he was nearly destitute. The freedmen took up a collection for him and gave him a “significant amount of money”. Two years earlier, “a northerner among the Sea Islanders reported that ‘all’ the ex-slaves ‘speak with great affection of Fripp’”. “Many ex-slaves,” notes Leslie Howard Owens, “chose to live with their masters after emancipation, some out of affection”. Owens continues, The affection that masters and domestics [domestic slaves] showed one another took many forms. At the death of Jimmy, a “faithful servant”, one of her owners, whom she had suckled in his infancy, experienced her loss deeply. He lamented that she “always felt more like a mother than a servant to me and was a kind mother to all my children.” Masters’ feelings at these times seem to strip the slave’s personality of any resemblance to stereotypes. Jimmy’s master continued his tribute as follows: she “was a kind mother to all my children. I frequently left them entirely in her care and always found her faithful in nursing and taking care of them and they all loved her as a mother and she loved them. . . .” In other cases, masters compared their domestics to relatives and friends: [In speaking to his sister during a funeral, one master said] “True, sister, he was a servant, and you may be vexed or ashamed, that I should in any manner compare him with yourself . . . but although his skin was black his heart was always in the right place.” Some female slaves occupied an especially honored place in plantation homes. Owens observes that one of “the most privileged domestics were the black mammy of the large estate”. Owens provides further information on these women: She “is in fact the foster Mother of her Master’s children and is treated with all the respect due to the faithful discharge of the duties of her station. . . .” The mammy nursed them through their illnesses and watched them as they grew into adulthood. She also showered them with a loving affection, which they returned. Many whites mourned for her at her death. One almost never hears about the fact that at times free blacks sought refuge on slaveholders’ plantations to escape persecution during periods of rumored slave revolts. Says Owens, There were times, too, when slaves witnessed the hasty retreat of free blacks to the plantation’s safety in order to escape repression by whites during periods of rumored slave uprisings. Elizabeth Jefferson of Mississippi remarked that her “grand father let a negro free and gave him a trade. He was a competent brick mason. Often he came to the plantation for protection, sometimes remaining there for weeks.” And this was not all. “There was an old darkie [sic] freed by a relative of our family. He was prosperous and finally bought his wife and children. He and his family on several occasions came to Greenwood for protection.” This was not an atypical situation. Many owners strove to accommodate a slave couple’s desire to get married, and some sought to provide a form of recognition for the marriage. Cooper says “most slaveowners . . . recognized families among their slaves, despite the absence of any statutory provision or protection for the slave family”. Gutman observes The recollections of elderly ex-slaves and other historical evidence disclose a variety of ways in which slave marriages were publicly announced and legitimized. . . . Elderly ex-slaves also recollected owner-sponsored ceremonies. John Blassingame points out that thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches: Abolition doubts notwithstanding, thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches between 1800 and 1860. For example, out of a total of 1,228 marriages performed in Episcopal churches in South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia in 1860, at least 460, or 38.1 percent, were slave weddings. At many times between 1830 and 1860 more slaves were married in the Episcopal churches in some states than were whites. Between 1841 and 1860 Episcopal ministers performed 3,225 weddings in South Carolina; 1,705, or 52 percent, of these were slave marriages. A large number of owners tried to keep married slaves together. “A study of wills and advertisements,” says Francis Butler Simkins”, shows that many masters” stipulated that their slaves “were not to be sold away from their families or transported out of the state”. As mentioned, 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters. When circumstances led to the separation of a slave family, some owners and others tried to help the family in any way they could. Notes Gutman, The separation of slave family members by sale or for other reasons led some sensitive owners to encourage contact between them. . . . Overt expressions of slave familial feelings deeply affected some owners and other whites who came into contact with these slaves. Whites intervened sometimes to prevent the sale of slaves. After a hired Virginia slave was sold and separated from his family because he had not earned enough, whites who attended church with the man raised sufficient cash to buy him from a trader. Their slave grandmother persuaded a Kentucky clergyman to bid for two teen-aged sisters threatened with a distant sale, but a trader outbid him. The purchase of Mima and her children by an Alexandria slave-trading firm led the hard-pressed Virginian Richard H. Carter, who owned Mima’s husband, to try to buy them “because of the distress . . . on account of the separation”. . . . Kenneth Stampp: No slaveholder needed to respect the marital ties of his slaves; yet a Tennessean purchased several slaves at a public sale, not because he needed them, but because of “their intermarriage with my servants and their appeals to me to do so.” A Kentucky mistress tried to buy the wife of her slave before moving to Missouri. Another Kentuckian, when obliged to sell his slaves, gave each an opportunity to find a satisfactory purchaser and refused to sell any to persons residing outside the neighborhood. A number of slaves were freed by their owners in the owners’ wills. African-American scholars John Franklin and Alfred Moss note that for many years’ slaveholders, “stricken by conscience, impelled by affection, or yielding to the temptation to evade responsibility, manumitted [freed] their slaves in large numbers. . . .” Other slaves earned enough money to purchase their freedom. Some owners assisted with the purchase of freedom by accepting payments over a period of time or by agreeing to accept a generously low price. Stampp explains how some slaves managed to buy their freedom:
Occasionally, they earned the necessary funds by working nights and Sundays. More often, they hired their own time. Either way, they gradually accumulated enough money to pay their masters an amount equal to their value and thus obtained deeds of emancipation. Benevolent masters helped ambitious bondsmen by permitting them to make the payments in installments over a period of years or by accepting a sum lower than the market price. Allan Nevis noted that even in the 1850s “many” slaves continued to buy their freedom: Even in the eighteen-fifties, many slaves, particularly in towns and among the skilled or semi-skilled, continued to buy their liberty. Slaves in Southern cities had additional opportunities to advance themselves. This was no small number of people either. In 1860 there were some 400,000 slaves living in cities, “and many additional thousands were hired out by their owners”. J. G. Randall and David Donald, citing the research of Richard B. Morris, point out some of the opportunities that were available to these slaves: By the nature of their employments and the conditions of their service, as Richard B. Morris has pointed out, these urban and industrial slaves were a step removed from plantation service. . . . many of them were, despite numerous legal restrictions, “permitted to hold property, receive wages, make contracts and assume supervisory responsibilities”; in addition, they possessed “some measure of mobility and occasionally a limited choice as to masters and occupations.” “In industry slaves were customarily reimbursed for services performed beyond an accepted minimum,” Professor Morris continues. “. . . slaves hired to others occasionally received directly a portion of the hiring wages. . . . Masters were often reluctant to force slaves to work as hirelings in occupations they disliked or for masters whom they found uncongenial.” An increasing number of slaves were permitted to hire their own time–i.e., to work at whatever employment they pleased, paying their masters an annual rental. Such “nominal slaves” were able “to control their earnings, separate property or occupational choices.” One frequently runs across the claim that slaves had no legal protection. This is simply not true. I’m not saying slaves had all the legal protection they deserved, but the often-heard claim that they had no protection whatsoever is incorrect. Stampp discusses the legal status of slaves: “A slave,” said a Tennessee judge, “is not in the condition of a horse. . . . He has mental capacities and an immortal principle in his nature.” The laws did not “extinguish his high-born nature nor deprive him of many rights which are inherent in man.” All the southern codes recognized the slave as a person for purposes other than holding him accountable for crimes. Many state constitutions required the legislature “to pass such laws as may be necessary to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity; to provide for them necessary clothing and provisions; to abstain from all injuries to them, extending to life and limb.” The legislatures responded with laws extending some protection to the persons of slaves. Masters who refused to feed and clothe slaves properly might be fined; in several states the court might order them to be sold, the proceeds going to the dispossessed owners. Those who abandoned or neglected insane, aged or infirm slaves were also liable to fines. In Virginia the overseers of the poor were required to care for such slaves and to charge their masters. All Southern states had laws that imposed penalties for mistreating slaves. Whites who killed slaves could be convicted of first- or second-degree murder or of manslaughter, depending on the circumstances, and could be put to death for the crime. A few whites were actually executed for murdering slaves, and in a few other cases, Southern courts refused to convict slaves who had killed brutal overseers because they had acted in self-defense to resist a potentially deadly assault. Southern legislatures sought to provide other legal protections for slaves. Some legislatures passed laws that limited the number of hours a slave could be worked in a day. All legislatures enacted laws that set aside Sunday as a day of rest for slaves. Some states provided for trials by black juries for slaves accused of misdemeanor offenses. In most states, slaves who were accused of a capital crime were given jury trials in the regular courts. Certain states, like Texas, stipulated that slaves accused of any felony were to receive an impartial trial by jury. In contrast to many factory workers in the North, and even in contrast to many low-wage workers in third-world nations in our day, many slaves received relatively good medical care. Most slaves received at least some medical care. And some slaves received exceptional medical care. Says Stampp,
To treat their sick slaves, many masters employed trained physicians, often the same ones who treated the white families. A few large planters retained resident doctors on their estates; occasionally several small planters together contracted with a doctor for his full-time service. More commonly a slaveholder made a yearly contract with a physician who agreed to charge a fixed amount for each visit. “Bargained today with Dr. Trotti to practice at the plantation,” Hammond noted in his diary. “He agrees to charge only $2.50 a visit without reference to the number of sick prescribed for.” Another planter cautioned his overseer, “Strong medicines should be left to the Doctor; and since the Proprietor [the master] never grudges a Doctor’s bill, however large, he has a right to expect that the Overseer shall always send for a Doctor when a serious case occurs.” Slaveholders, both large and small, sometimes spent generous sums for skilled medical treatment for their “people.” To prove that there was “no class of working people in the world better cared for”, one southern physician declared that he had often received large fees for attending even senile and worthless slaves. This statement was much too optimistic, but it did give recognition to a class of humane masters whose expenditures for medical service went far beyond the simple dictates of self-interest. In mourning the death of an old slave woman, a North Carolinian noted that his physician had given the case “assiduous attention” for six months, “devoting to it more reflection and research than he had (as he informs me) to any case within ten years”. . . . A few masters’ patronized hospitals which were built and maintained especially for the care of sick slaves. During the 1850′s, three Savannah physicians ran a slave hospital for “lying-in” women as well as for medical and surgical cases; similar institutions existed in Charleston, Montgomery, Natchez, and New Orleans. But plantation proprietors usually established their own hospitals where the sick could be attended by physicians or slave nurses. “All sick persons are to stay in the hospital night and day, from the time they first complain to the time they are able to go to work again,” a South Carolinian instructed his overseer. “Hopeton”, James Hamilton Couper’s Georgia rice plantation, contained a model hospital where ailing slaves received the best medical attention the South could provide. The hospital was well ventilated and steam heated; it contained an examining room, medicine closet, kitchen, bathing room, and four wards, all of which were swept every day and scrubbed once a week. Wise and humane masters gave proper attention to slave women who were either expectant or nursing mothers. A Mississippian ordered his overseer to treat them with “great tenderness.” A South Carolinian required “lying-in women” to remain at the quarters for four weeks after parturition, because their health might be “entirely ruined by want of care in this particular.” Hammond gave the “suckers” lighter tasks near the quarters and insisted that they be cool and rested before morning.
Some masters were equally solicitous about the care of slave children. On the smaller establishments they appointed an old woman to watch the children while the mothers worked in the fields. On the plantations they built nurseries where the plantation nurse cooked for the children, mended their clothing, and looked after them during illness. In addition, slaves were by no means always confined to their farms and plantations. Many slaves were allowed to visit other estates or to go into nearby towns on a fairly regular basis. A few slaves lived in a state of virtual freedom. As mentioned, some slaves earned money by working on their time off. Slaves were usually free to attend church, and often times they were encouraged to do so. Blassingame observes that many slaves did not have to sneak off the plantation in order to leave for short periods for social visits and the like: Many slaves did not have to use . . . stratagems. Their masters did not try to restrict their recreational activities as long as they did not interfere with the plantation routine. According to Robert Anderson, “The slaves on a plantation could get together almost any time they felt like it, for little social affairs, so long as it did not interfere with the work on the plantation. During the slack times the people from one plantation could visit one another, by getting permission and sometimes they would slip away and make visits anyway.” Similarly, Elijah Marrs said his master “allowed us generally to do as we pleased after his own work was done, and we enjoyed the privilege granted to us.” The more religious planters not only excused their slaves from work on religious holidays but provided great feasts and recreation on these occasions. “During these periods, which lasted from four to six days,” says Blassingame”, planters prepared sumptuous feasts for their slaves”. He continues, Whole hogs, sheep, or beeves were cooked and the slaves ate peach cobbler and apple dumplings, and frequently got drunk. Often the festival seasons included dances and athletic contests. Europeans visited the South and left us their impressions of slavery. Civil War scholar John Tilley observed that their accounts suggest that most slaves were treated humanely: Among these were Buckingham and Sir Charles Lyell, both Englishmen of distinction. Interestedly appraising the status of house-servants of his Southern hosts, Buckingham wrote that their situation was quite comparable to that of servants in the middle rank of life in his own country. He goes on record that, as a rule, they were “well-fed, well-dressed. . . .” Lyell’s investigation led to a like conclusion: namely, that these house-slaves enjoyed advantages superior to those experienced by white servants in similar work in Europe. He found himself in agreement with the view expressed by William Thompson; after traveling in the South, Thompson, a Scotch weaver, had made public his finding that he had not seen in slave conditions one-fifth of the suffering which was the lot of employees in British factories. Observers of the high type of Chevalier, Fredrika Bremer, and Achille Murat, drew similar contrasts between the conditions prevailing among the “peasants” and “poor working people” of Europe and those obtaining in the slave sections of the United States. Bremer’s verdict was that the slaves were “much better provided for.”
Yet others came from abroad to be astonished by the variance between fiction and fact relative to slavery conditions. Lady Wortly found the Southern negroes generally happy and contented. Grund’s observations convinced him that they were better cared for than the free negro element he had seen in the North. Charles Mackay singled out the farm labor of Europe, the shop tailors and seamstresses of the great English cities, as living in physical surroundings inferior to those of the slaves. In his work, Life and Liberty in America, MacKay called attention to the “paternal and patriarchal kindness” of many among the masters. A digression may be indulged. True to his Northern preconceptions, historian [James] Rhodes manifests unmistakable annoyance because of the reports of the foreign visitors. He proceeds to use his scalpel and the result of his dissection of the phenomenon is the pronouncement that, with the exception of the Scotch weaver who likely mingled only with the less favored class, the opinions of the travelers were possibly colored by their enjoyment of “the generous hospitality of the Southern gentlemen.” Such an evaluation of the effectiveness of social contact with slave-owners in beclouding the judgment of astute foreign investigators presents, perhaps, the climax of tributes to Southern courtesy and charm. Tilley continued by arguing that the findings of Northern student Frederick Law Olmsted and of a Northern governess agree with those of the European visitors: A few years prior to the War between the States, a Northern student, Frederick Law Olmsted, made tours of various sections of the South in order personally to view the situation of negro bondman. In 1856, in a volume entitled Journey in the Seaboard States, he shared with the public the benefit of his findings. Some of these, it may be worthwhile briefly to summarize.
Generally, according to Olmsted, the slaves had food in plenty; in fact, it was his opinion that in this respect they were better provisioned for than “the proletarian class of any other part of the world.” While in South Carolina, he noted that the house-servants were intelligent, competent, and comfortably dressed. Regarding the consideration given their “health and comfort,” he believed it superior to that usually bestowed upon free domestics. His judgment was that the labor required of the negroes would not be considered excessively hard by free labor in the North. It interested him to find that, in their employment in the fields, the rule was to assign to each a specific task; this performed, his work for the day was done. He had personally observed a number of significant scenes, such as slaves leaving the field by one or two o’clock, the remainder of the day to be theirs to use as they willed. On one plantation he had seen, between three and four o’clock, “a dozen women and several men” returning to their quarters, their day’s work completed. The slaves on “Mr. X’s plantation” were treated with uniform kindness. . . . Rhodes tells of a New England-born governess, employed on a Tennessee plantation, who expressed astonishment that there had failed to show up the “revolting horrors” of which she had heard. Her wonder had grown upon learning that physical punishment was there unknown; willingly, she testified to the sharp contrast between actual conditions and what her preconceived theories had prepared her to expect. All this being said, slavery was still wrong. It had its good and humane side, but it was still wrong. My only point in noting some of the good aspects of the institution is to provide a little balance to the one-sided picture that is usually painted of it. There were many forms of injustice in the world in the nineteenth century. Southern slavery was one of them, but it was not the worst of them. Moreover, it’s important to keep in mind that most Southerners did not own slaves. Scholars generally agree that no more than 25 percent of Southern citizens were slaveholders. Notes Stampp,
Nearly three-fourths of all free Southerners had no connection with slavery through either family ties or direct ownership. The “typical” Southerner was not only a small farmer but also a nonslaveholder. Of those Southerners who did own slaves, three-fourths owned less than ten. Half owned less than five, and often worked side by side with them in the fields. As for the “planter class,” less than fifteen percent of slaveholders belonged to it. “The planter aristocracy,” says Stampp, “was limited to some ten thousand families. . . .”. Slavery and the North’s Use of Force Given these and other facts, I don’t believe the existence of slavery in the South justified the North’s use of force to deny the South its independence. I don’t believe that Southern slavery justified the brutal form of “total war” that Northern armies waged against the South. This brand of warfare included the needless destruction of thousands of private homes and public buildings, the large-scale theft of private belongings, the burning of priceless Southern libraries, the killing of thousands of farm animals (even in remote areas), and the shelling of defenseless towns. Some idea of the brutality that was inflicted on the South is indicated by the fact that about 50,000 Southern civilians died in the war. Nor do I believe that Southern slavery justified Lincoln’s policy of blocking medicines from reaching the South. This cruel policy caused the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers and of thousands of Southern civilians. This policy also caused the deaths of thousands of Union soldiers who were being held in Confederate prisoner of war camps. When the South tried to buy medical supplies from the North to care for Union prisoners, Lincoln wouldn’t even reply to the offer. Noted Tilley, The time came when, shut off from the world by blockade [the federal blockade], the South experienced the greatest difficulty in obtaining medicine which had been made contraband by order of the federal government. By 1864 conditions were so desperate that the South actually offered to purchase from the North such needed supplies, agreeing to pay for them in gold, cotton, or tobacco. The offer made plain that Union surgeons might bring the medicines down and use them solely to minister to Union prisoners. To this offer, there was no reply. I’m glad slavery was abolished, but it could and should have been abolished peacefully. Yes, this would have taken longer, probably a lot longer. But it also would have saved the lives of over 600,000 soldiers who died in the war, as well as the lives of tens of thousands of Southern civilians who died as a result of the brutal type of warfare that Northern armies waged in the South. It also would have spared tens of thousands of soldiers from suffering the loss of arms and legs for the rest of their lives. Other nations found ways to abolish slavery peacefully. I don’t believe that waging the most destructive war in our nation’s history was the only way slavery could have been ended. We will never know what would have happened to Southern slavery if the North had allowed the South to go in peace. The Confederacy was never given the chance to outgrow slavery. There were plenty of people in the South who did not like slavery and/or who wanted to see the slaves freed, including Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Confederate Congressman Duncan Kenner, and James Spence, the Confederate financial agent in Europe, who criticized slavery in his book The American Union. There were also Confederate leaders who supported emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army, such as Confederate generals Patrick Cleburne, Joseph E. Johnston, Daniel Govan, John H. Kelly, and Marc Lowrey, Governor William Smith of Virginia, Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, and the Confederate president himself, Jefferson Davis. As mentioned, some 75 percent of Southerners did not own slaves. I believe the Confederacy would have eventually abolished slavery. There is evidence that suggests slavery was beginning to die out on its own. For example, the percentage of Southern whites who belonged to slaveholding families dropped by 5 percent from 1850-1860. Nevins noted that “slavery was dying all around the edges of its domain”. We must be careful not to judge a country or a people through our 21st-century lens. Past nations and their citizens should be judged primarily in the context of their own times and not in the context of our times. One hundred years from now, who is to say that future civilizations won’t look back and denounce modern America as an unjust, oppressive nation because we have legalized the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn children every year by abortion, because we still have not extended basic health care to all of our citizens, and because we continue to pollute the environment with toxic waste and fossil fuel emissions? Over the last thirty years alone, more innocent human beings have been killed by abortion than were ever killed by slavery (even including the thousands who died on the slave ships). Or, consider how many low-income people in our country have died prematurely because they had substandard health care or no health care at all. This tragic injustice is no secret. Numerous stories about it have appeared on TV, in newspapers, and in books for decades. Yet, it continues. Will future civilizations look back and judge America harshly because of this? Will we be condemned as a cruel, elitist society? How would we feel if Islamic nations teamed up to invade America because we permit and uphold abortion? How would we feel if Russia and China teamed up to invade America because we don’t have universal health care and because we’re the world’s biggest polluter? What if England, France, and Russia had teamed up to invade the Northern states in the early 1800s because New England permitted and reaped huge profits from the African slave trade and because so many Northern states strongly discriminated against blacks?
More on the Confederacy This is not to say the Confederacy was perfect. But, in comparison to other nations in that era (and even to many nations in our day), the Confederacy was one of the most democratic countries in the world. The Confederacy came into existence in a peaceful, democratic manner, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Southern citizens. In fact, the percentage of Southern citizens who supported the formation of the Confederate States of America was considerably larger than the percentage of colonial citizens who supported the American Revolution. Throughout its existence, the Confederacy enjoyed a vibrant free press. The Confederate government closely resembled the federal government, with three separate branches of power, i.e., executive, legislative, judicial. Confederate laws went through the legislative process. The Confederate constitution was very similar to the U.S. Constitution, and it contained improvements that even some Northern writers praised. The Confederacy held free and fair elections. Citizens of the Confederacy enjoyed every right that we now enjoy, if not more. The Confederacy made every effort to establish peaceful relations with the North. The Confederate government even offered to pay compensation for all federal facilities in the South and to pay the Southern states’ fair share of the national debt. The Confederacy also announced that Northern ships could continue to use the Mississippi River. The record is clear that the South sought to avoid war. In fact, most Southerners believed secession would be peaceful. It’s interesting to note that the correspondence of the first Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Walker, “clearly indicates he did not expect war”. The Confederate states believed, with good reason, that since they had joined the Union voluntarily and peacefully, they had every right to voluntarily and peacefully leave the Union. But war came when the North launched an invasion of the Confederate states. That’s why the vast majority of battles were fought in the South. The South fought because it was invaded. The South had no desire to overthrow the federal government–it merely wanted to leave that government and to form its own. The Confederacy did not start the war, and, contrary to what most history books claim or imply, the war didn’t really begin when Confederate forces “attacked” Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Lincoln later all but admitted he provoked the incident so that he could blame the South for firing the first shot. Soon after South Carolina seceded, federal forces, acting without orders to do so, occupied Fort Sumter, in violation of the agreement that South Carolina had (or certainly thought it had) with President James Buchanan not to change the status quo. Southern leaders argued that South Carolina had the legal right to reclaim Fort Sumter, citing the fact that the state had ceded the fort to the federal government on certain conditions and that these conditions had not been fulfilled.. South Carolina, and then the Confederacy, tried for months to have Fort Sumter evacuated. Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, promised Confederate representatives the fort would be evacuated, but this promise was not kept. When Confederate leaders learned that, contrary to Seward’s promise, Lincoln had sent a convoy of warships and other vessels to resupply the fort, they decided to demand the fort’s surrender. The commander of the federal garrison on the fort refused, even though he did not agree with Lincoln’s decision to send a resupply convoy. The Confederates then gave the federal commander advance notice the fort would be attacked. Not a single Union soldier was killed in the attack. As a matter of fact, at one point, when the Confederates feared a fire on the fort was going to burn out of control, they offered to help put out the fire. When the federal troops surrendered, the Confederates allowed them to surrender with full military honors and then permitted them to return to the North in peace. This was the “attack,” the alleged act of “rebellion” or “insurrection,” that Lincoln used as his pretext for launching an invasion of the seceded states. On the other hand, even after the Fort Sumter incident, Jefferson Davis continued to publicly express his desire for peaceful relations with the North. In fact, just two weeks after the Fort Sumter incident, Davis said the following in a message to the Confederate congress: We protest solemnly, in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone–that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. Was the War Fought Over Slavery? Many historians seek to justify the North’s invasion of the South by claiming that the war was fought over slavery, and that the North was fighting to free the slaves while the South was fighting to keep them in bondage. A number of critics claim the South only fought in order to ensure the continuation of slavery. A detailed refutation of these assertions would require a separate paper. However, for now, I offer the following points in response to them:
* The war was fought over secession, not over slavery. If the South had not declared its independence, Lincoln would not have launched an invasion, and there would have been no war. The only slave states that were charged with insurrection and then invaded were those that belonged to the Confederacy. Would the North have accepted secession if the Confederacy had announced it was abolishing slavery as the first official act of its existence? Would the North have allowed a peaceful separation if the Confederacy had started an emancipation program right after the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)? Would any serious student of the Civil War answer either of these questions in the affirmative? I don’t think anyone who has studied the subject believes the North would have allowed the South to go in peace no matter when the Confederacy would have started to abolish slavery.
* In July 1861, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a nearly unanimous vote, that affirmed that the North was not waging the war to overthrow slavery but to preserve the Union. McPherson notes, . . . in 1861 the North was fighting for the restoration of a slaveholding Union. In his July 4 message to Congress, Lincoln reiterated the inaugural pledge that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.”
* When Lincoln assumed office, he was entirely willing to allow slavery to continue. Lincoln even supported a constitutional amendment that would have given additional legal protection to slavery. When Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation about two years later, he did so only because he was under intense pressure from abolitionist Republicans in Congress, who were threatening to cut off funds from the army if Lincoln didn’t issue some kind of emancipation order. One only has to read the Emancipation Proclamation itself to see that it was a war measure that only applied to slaves who were in Confederate territory–it did not apply to any slaves who were in Union-controlled territory, not even to slaves who were in the four Union slave states. In addition, Bennett shows that Lincoln himself tried to undermine the proclamation soon after he issued it, and that he issued it unwillingly. For that matter, Lincoln only began to consider issuing the proclamation after the Union war effort continued to falter.
* To be sure, some members of the Republican Party did believe the war should be waged for the purpose of abolishing slavery. Those who belonged to this faction of the party were commonly known as “Radical Republicans.” It would be worthwhile to take a closer look at these men. They wielded tremendous power in their party. They were not only abolitionists, but, like most other Republicans of their day, they tended to support high taxes (in the form of high tariff rates), subsidies and land grants to certain big businesses, and the expansion of the federal government’s size and power. Southern leaders consistently opposed these policies. Most Radical Republicans made no secret of their intense hatred of the South. Southern leaders suspected that some of the Radicals didn’t really care about the slaves but were using slavery as an excuse to crush and subjugate the South. The harsh, illegal Reconstruction program that the Radical Republicans in Congress imposed on the South after the war led many people, in all sections of the country, to believe this suspicion was justified. Even President Andrew Johnson said in an official message that the Reconstruction regime that the Radicals wanted to impose on the South was illegal, vengeful, and despotic. Johnson tried to prevent the Radicals from imposing such harsh terms by vetoing their Reconstruction bill, but they had enough votes to override his veto. When Johnson persisted in opposing the Radicals, they indicted him and then tried to remove him from office on the basis of charges that can only be described as shameful, not to mention invalid. Almost immediately after Lincoln was assassinated, Radical Republicans in the Congress and in the War Department, along with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, falsely accused Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders of complicity in Lincoln’s death. A War Department military tribunal and the House Judiciary Committee formally endorsed this claim. They based this accusation on information they knew was bogus. Some Radicals continued to repeat the accusation even after it became clear that it was false. Cooper notes that most people came to reject the claim that Davis was involved in Lincoln’s death: In the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination . . . the War Department, with Secretary Stanton’s enthusiastic endorsement, claimed that Davis was intimately involved in the conspiracy that resulted in Lincoln’s murder as well as other failed intrigues. . . . In subsequent investigations this supposedly crystal-clear certainty turned murky. A few officials clung to the theory of Davis’s responsibility, but most observers found the evidence flimsy, even fraudulent. The story of the Radical Republicans’ attempt to convict Jefferson Davis of involvement in Lincoln’s death is one of the most shameful episodes in American history, and it says a lot about how utterly lawless and corrupt some of these men were. I’m unaware of a single textbook that says anything about the Radicals’ unethical conduct in the affair. Therefore, I’d like to devote a few paragraphs to examining some aspects of their attempt to frame Davis for Lincoln’s death. One of the best treatments of the subject is Seymour Frank’s booklet The Conspiracy Against Jefferson Davis. The booklet originally appeared as an article in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review under the title “The Conspiracy to Implicate the Confederate Leaders in Lincoln’s Assassination.” In his foreword to Frank’s booklet, historian James West Thompson discusses some aspects of the attempt to blame Davis for Lincoln’s murder:
A surprise witness at the Lincoln conspirators’ trial was a man who identified himself as Henry Von Steinacker, who claimed to have attended a meeting of Confederate officers who were planning Lincoln’s murder. Shortly after his testimony, defense counsel learned that Von Steinacker had been a member of the Union Army and had been arrested while attempting to desert. Sentenced to death, he had escaped while awaiting execution. Joining the Confederate forces of General Edward Johnson, he had been assigned to headquarters as a draftsman, but he was arrested by the Confederates and accused of theft and of abuse of prisoners. Again he escaped. Defense Attorney Clampitt was denounced by General Lew Wallace . . . for stating these facts.
Biran whether that was a reason or not, should you not take the time to research the record before you make such assertions. Read what the SC Convention presented to John Letcher in Richmond after he secured the Governorship after Henry Wise. I guess thousands of pages of documents concerning trade are irrelevent and all the speeches before the Convention about “rights” were all some grand conspiracy between all those involved to hid the fact it was all about the slaves. How about this; read Ironmaker of the Confederacy about the Tredegar Iron works whioch chronicles its business through the 1850′s up into seccession and tell us none of it had anything to do with trade and commerce and all about slavery. Gentleman, forgive Brians its hard to flush a system filled with the Kool-aid of the post 1950 educational system. Forgive him. He knows not what he does nor says. Please Douglas S. Freeman, Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton take no offense; this is simply the modern day intellect in action.
Where else could or would they lie but in the South and with Virginia. Hey, there an hour I, answered this same question please allow me to use that same answer. Afterwards if you have additional questions feel free to write me. One point before some says it the war was not over slavery. Lincoln told the South (Up to his visit to City Point) they could keep their slaves in they would rejoin the Union. Since the War was not about slavery, they refused his offer.
“I was a soldier in Virginia in the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, and I declare I never met a Southern soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery…. What he had chiefly at heart was the preservation of the supreme and sacred right of self- government…. It was a very small minority of the men who fought in the Southern armies who were financially interested in the institution of slavery.”
In the movie Gods and Generals, the character of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a famous Union officer, gives a brief, stirring speech to his brother, Tom, on slavery and the Confederate cause. In his short speech, Chamberlain presents a strong argument against the Confederate position. Says Chamberlain,
“Now, somewhere out there is the Confederate army. They claim they are fighting for their independence, for their freedom. Now, I cannot question their integrity. I believe they are wrong, but I do not question it. But I do question the system that defends its own freedom while it denies it to others, to an entire race of men. I will admit it, Tom, war is a scourge but so is slavery. It is the systematic coercion of one group of men over another”.
Many people find this argument simple, logical and powerful. After all, wasn’t it inconsistent for the Confederates to claim they were fighting for freedom and independence when at the same time they were keeping another group of people in bondage? Yes, it was. This is a valid argument, up to a point. But it’s also an incomplete argument, and in some ways it’s an unfair argument. One reason this argument is both incomplete and unfair is that it ignores major inconsistencies in the North’s position. For example, one could ask tough, critical questions about the North’s claim that it was fighting for freedom and for the preservation of the Union:
* How could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when it was forcing Southern slaves to fight in the Union army, even when those slaves made it clear they didn’t want to leave their plantations and didn’t want to fight for the North?
* How could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when four of the Northern states were slave states and when some Northern states wouldn’t even allow free blacks to settle within their boundaries?
* How could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when it was trying to crush an independence movement? To put it another way, how could the North claim it was fighting for freedom when it was trying to conquer eleven states?
that had left the Union in a peaceful, democratic manner that had made every effort to establish friendly relations with the North after they had seceded, and that simply wanted to be left alone?
* How could the North claim it was justified in fighting to preserve the Union when the original Union was a voluntary compact between the states, and when the founding fathers had prohibited the federal government from using force against any of the states? Even President James Buchanan, who was
president when the Deep South states seceded said the federal government had no authority to use force against the seceded states. How can one rightfully attempt to preserve a voluntary Union by waging war to force eleven of its members to remain against their will?
* Wasn’t the North’s use of force against the Southern states fundamentally contrary to the Declaration of Independence’s statement that governments derive their just powers “from the consent of the governed” and that people have the right to form a new government if they feel they must do so?
A key argument that is implied in the movie character’s criticism is that the South did not deserve to be independent because slavery existed within its borders. Critics argue that not only was the South’s position inconsistent, but that the Southern states had no moral right to be independent and that the North’s invasion was justified. No Moral Right to Independence? Did the South have no moral right to be independent because it permitted and upheld slavery? There’s no doubt that slavery was wrong and that it needed to be abolished. But, if the Southern states had no right to form their own government because slavery existed within their borders, then the American colonies had no right to form their own government either, since slavery existed in the colonies and since some of the colonies upheld and grew rich from the slave trade. British leaders noted this inconsistency during the American Revolution. They pointed out that some of the colonial leaders who were loudly demanding “freedom and independence” were slaveowners. If the existence of slavery within a nation’s borders means that nation has no right to exist, then America had no right to exist in the first place. In fact, the slaves would have been freed over thirty years sooner if the colonies had not won their independence, since England abolished slavery in 1833. Every nation and region has its share of social injustices, and the South was certainly no exception. But what about the North? For starters, the New England states made large fortunes from the slave trade and from industries associated with the trade. Some Northern states continued to profit from the slave trade until just before the war started. Conditions on the New England slave ships were horrible. The slaves were kept below deck in cramped quarters and forced to sit or lie in their own urine and defecation. Not surprisingly, disease was rampant. The slaves were chained together by twos, hands and feet, and had no room to move around. Tens of thousands of slaves died on those slave ships. The North was home to a cruel form of wage slavery where factory workers, especially those who were immigrants, worked in terrible conditions for wages that were barely sufficient for basic existence. These workers were usually cast aside as soon as they ceased to be productive. On the other hand, many slaves (some would say most slaves) were fed, clothed and housed for the duration of their lives; even after they grew old and could no longer work. Even some modern scholars agree that many Northern wage-slave factory workers were materially worse off than most Southern plantation slaves. Most Northern states had “Black Codes” that severely discriminated against free blacks. As mentioned, some Northern states wouldn’t even allow free blacks to move into their territory. Let’s briefly consider the conditions in one such Northern state, Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln”, a state that was commonly described as a “free state” because it had abolished slavery. As of 1845, free blacks could not settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1,000 bond. If a black did have a certificate of freedom, under Illinois law “he and his family were required to meet reporting and registration procedures reminiscent of a totalitarian state”, notes African-American scholar Lerone Bennett. Bennett continues describing the conditions under which free blacks lived in Illinois, The head of the family had to register all family members and provide detailed descriptions to the supervisor of the poor, who could expel the whole family at any moment. Blacks who met these requirements were under constant surveillance and could be disciplined or arrested by any White. They could not vote, sue or testify in court. . . . With [Abraham] Lincoln’s active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks poor. Most trades and occupations were closed to them, and laws and customs made it difficult for them to acquire real estate. . . . As for the pursuit of happiness . . . Blacks could not play percussion instruments, and any White could apprehend any slave or servant for “riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches.” It was a crime for any person to permit “any slave or slaves, servant or servants or color, to the number of three or more, to assemble in his, her or their house, out house, yard or shed for the purpose of dancing or reveling, either by night or by day. . . .” Incidentally, Abraham Lincoln not only supported the Illinois Black Code, but he voted to deny blacks the right to vote “and to tax Blacks to support White schools Black children couldn’t, in general, attend”. In 1848 Illinois adopted a new constitution that made it illegal for blacks to settle in the state. It, like the previous statute, also prohibited them from voting and from serving in the militia. In 1853, the state legislature made it a crime, punishable by fine, for a black to settle in the state. If the violator couldn’t pay the fine, he or she could be sold by the sheriff to pay court costs. The architect of this Negro Exclusion Law was John Logan. During the Civil War, Lincoln named Logan to be a major general in the federal army. In any discussion on the South and the Confederacy, critics invariably raise the issue of white supremacy. They are quick to point out that Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederate States, said that one of the foundational principles of the new government was that the white race was superior and that blacks were best suited for slavery. Said Stephens, Our new government . . . 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. When critics quote this statement, they almost never inform the reader that, sad to say, most Americans at that time believed that whites were superior and that blacks were inferior. One of those Americans was Lincoln himself, who said the following in 1858: . . . anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. In another speech that he gave that year, Lincoln said much the same thing: I will say, then, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which, I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man. Not only did most Americans believe that blacks were inferior, but they believed that America was founded to be ruled by whites and for whites. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a prominent Northern politician, the leader of the Northern faction of the Democratic Party, and a Democratic presidential candidate in 1860, voiced this view in the following words in 1858 during his fourth debate with Lincoln: I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be and ought not to be, under the constitution of the United States. . . . I say that this government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever and never should be administered by any except white men. What did Lincoln think about this? He agreed, saying, “in point of mere fact, I think so too”. Many Northerners believed that the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” did not apply to blacks, but only to whites. Senator Douglas expressed this position in his fifth debate with Lincoln, The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they declared the equality of all men. (Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate: Douglas’ Speech, in Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln believed that the “all men are created equal” phrase did not refer to inherent equality but only to legal equality in certain respects, and more than once he called the Declaration of Independence “the white-man’s charter of freedom”. It’s interesting to note that of the 3.4 million votes that were cast in the free states in the 1860 election, Senator Douglas received over 800,000 of them. In addition, during that election, Republican candidates described their party as “the true ‘White Man’s Party’ because they wanted to reserve the territories for free white labor”. Even after the war, racism was alive and well in the North. Herbert Gutman notes that Northern whites not only viewed blacks as inferior but also women and working-class men: Neither the Civil War nor the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated northern whites from ideological currents that assigned inferior status to nineteenth-century blacks, women, and working-class men. . . . Northern whites regularly compared the ex-slaves to the northern Irish and other “degraded . . . races or classes.” I could go on for several pages documenting the fact that, unfortunately, in those days most Americans, North and South, believed in white supremacy and in black inferiority. This is why it’s unfair when critics quote Stephens’ cornerstone speech but remain silent about the fact that most Northerners held very similar views, and that some Northerners held identical views. It’s also unfair when critics quote Stephens’ speech but say nothing about the Black Codes that existed in most Northern states. Furthermore, not all Southerners agreed with Stephens’ belief that blacks were best suited for slavery, but critics rarely mention this fact either. What Was Slavery Really Like? So just how bad was slavery in the South? Did any good come from slavery? Did slavery have any good aspects? Did all slaveowners mistreat their slaves? The subject of slavery in the antebellum (or pre-Civil War) South is a delicate, highly charged issue because history books have usually only told one side of the story. I’m not trying to justify or excuse slavery. All I’m saying is that if we’re going to talk about slavery, let’s be fair and honest about it. History books are full of tragic stories about the bad aspects of slavery, but they rarely mention the good aspects of the institution. Historians typically cite the worst cases of mistreatment and abuse but ignore or minimize the cases of kindness, mutual respect and genuine friendship. True, the good aspects of slavery don’t outweigh the fact that slavery was wrong, but they should be noted in the interest of fairness and accuracy. Most slaves were not mistreated. Slaves in the South were arguably materially better off than many factory workers in the North. In many cases, slaves and slaveholders formed lasting friendships. Some slaves remained fiercely loyal to their masters, even during the war and even though they had ample opportunity to leave. In part because of the efforts of numerous slaveowners, millions of slaves voluntarily accepted Christianity and found peace in their personal lives in spite of their circumstances. In some cases, Christian slaves converted their masters and afterward enjoyed a better relationship with them. In comparison to other systems of slavery in the world at the time, Southern slavery was humane. Bearing in mind that most American slaves lived in the South, let’s consider some of the observations of historian James McPherson, who certainly can’t be accused of being sympathetic toward the antebellum South: Slavery in the United States operated with less physical harshness than in most other parts of the Western Hemisphere. . . . The U.S. slave population increased by an average of 27 percent per decade after 1810, almost the same natural growth rate as for the white population. This rate of increase was unique in the history of bondage. No other slave population in the Western Hemisphere even maintained, much less increased, its population through natural reproduction. In Barbados, for example, the decennial natural decrease from 1712 to 1762 was 43 percent. At the time of emancipation, the black population of the United States was ten times the number of Africans who had been imported, but the black population of the West Indies was only half the number of Africans who had been imported. Of the ten million Africans brought across the Atlantic by the slave trade, the United States received fewer than 6 percent; yet at the time of emancipation it had more than 30 percent of the hemisphere’s black population. McPherson notes other interesting facts: Although Southern law did not recognize marriages between slaves, 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters. Not only did many if not most slaveowners permit their slaves to marry, but some masters allowed their slaves to earn money and in some cases to buy their freedom (Ordeal By Fire, p. 34). Economic historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman contend that not only could slaves earn money and rise to responsible positions in the slave system but that in some cases they received a greater share of the product of their labor than did many factory workers in the North; see also John Niven, The Coming of the Civil War. Some slaves who worked in Southern cities had private homes “that rivaled those of country slaveholders in space and rustic luxury”. On “many of the farms the slave cabins were not much inferior to the master’s cabin”, and on some plantations “they were nearly as comfortable as the overseer’s cottage”. Good relations often existed between slaves and slaveowners. As one example of this fact, let’s consider the relationship between Confederate soldier Henry Kyd Douglas and one of his family’s slaves named Enoch, who had left the family and had gone to live in Pennsylvania as a free man. When Enoch found out that Douglas had been wounded and captured and that he was being held in a Union prison camp, he wrote to Douglas and offered to send him money. Douglas was deeply moved by the offer: I was surprised about this time to receive a letter from Enoch, whom I have spoken of as my father’s colored coachman. He had gone off from home and was living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, working for his living, in freedom, but harder than he ever did in his life. He wrote to say that he heard I was wounded and in prison and was having a hard time, and he had laid aside several hundred dollars and would send it to me, or as much as I wanted, if I were suffering or needed it. His letter was in his own untutored language, but its words were verily apples of gold. I did not need his money, but I hope I wrote him a letter that left no doubt of my appreciation and my gratitude. Another case in point is that of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America himself. Davis cared deeply for his slaves, and they for him. When Davis had to leave his plantation suddenly in order to assume duties as the Confederate president, “He made a touching farewell speech to his quickly assembled slaves, who responded with expressions of devotion. . . .” Davis was deeply concerned about the fate of his slaves when federal forces torched and plundered the Davis estates in Mississippi. Davis even sent money, in fact $3,000, to pay for supplies for his slaves to ensure they received proper care. The year before Davis died, he received a letter from one of his former slaves, James H. Jones, who had since become a Republican and had had a successful career in the intervening fifteen years. Jones told Davis, “I have always been as warmly attached to you as when I was your body servant”. Jones went on to say that he always defended Davis from “any attack of malicious or envious people”. William J. Cooper gives us additional information about Davis’s relations with blacks: Without question he respected individual blacks and in turn received their respect. His dealings with his slave James Pemberton and with Ben Montgomery as both a slave and a freedman illustrate such a relationship. Inviting Davis to attend the Colored State Fair in Vicksburg in 1886, Montgomery’s son Isaiah said he knew Davis would have an interest “in any Enterprise tending to the welfare and development of the Colored people of Mississippi.” “We would be highly pleased to have you here,” Isaiah Montgomery asserted, “and he closed “with best wishes for your continued preservation.” At a time when many Americans, in all parts of the country, still opposed allowing blacks to testify in court, Davis favored allowing them to do so. He expressed this view in a letter to his wife in whom he also expressed concern about the welfare of their former slaves: I hope the negroes’ fidelity will be duly rewarded and regret that we are not in a position to aid and protect them. There is, I observe, a controversy which I regret as to allowing negroes to testify in court. From brother Joe [Joseph Davis], many years ago, I derived the opinion that they should be made competent witnesses, the jury judging of their credibility. Few people know that Davis and his wife informally adopted a mulatto (half-white-half-black) orphan during the war. For those who care to know, the child looked like a young African-American boy, except that his skin was slightly less dark than the skin of most other black children; his facial features and hair were clearly African-American. Mrs. Davis rescued the young boy from a cruel guardian and brought him with her to live at the Confederate White House in Richmond. His name was Jim Limber. Davis and his wife raised him as one of their own children. Jim Limber and the other Davis children played together as normal siblings. Even in family letters, Jim’s new family spoke lovingly of him, and he expressed his love for them. Sadly, after the war, the Davises had to give up custody of the child when a disreputable Union officer threatened to take him from them. Davis was a kind, decent Christian man who treated blacks with respect, and many blacks knew it. During a trip through the western part of the Confederacy, Davis got off his train at Griswoldville, Georgia, in order to meet with a group of slaves who had gathered in the hope of seeing him. These men worked at a local pistol factory and had come to the train station because they wanted to meet Davis. Informed of the gathering, Davis got off the train and circulated among the group, shaking each hand and speaking to each man individually. When Davis returned to Richmond, Virginia, after the war, he was not only cheered by whites but also by blacks. One observer noted that Davis was “greatly touched” by the sympathy shown to him by the blacks in the crowd. In fact, some blacks climbed up on his carriage, shook and kissed his hand, and called out “God bless Mars Davis”. Many other examples of good relations between slaves and slaveholders could be cited. For example, there were numerous instances during the war when slaves hid food from Union troops and then gave the food to their masters and their families (who in turn shared it with them). One such instance occurred when Union forces occupied Charles and Mary Jones’ plantation on the Georgia coast. When the Union troops took over the plantation, a slave named Sue hid potatoes from the troops in order to feed the Jones’ children. Ex-slaves of the Sea Islands in South Carolina showed great kindness to their former masters when the latter fell on hard times. The freedmen “did not enjoy seeing their old masters suffer.” They “offered help and even, when they could, gave them money”. An ex-slave in Georgia remained on his former master’s estate to work for wages “so that, in a variety of ways, he could take care of the distressed white family. . . .” In another case, Clarence Fripp, a former Sea Islands slave-owner whose plantation had been sold from him, went back to his old plantation and asked his ex-slaves for money because he was nearly destitute. The freedmen took up a collection for him and gave him a “significant amount of money”. Two years earlier, “a northerner among the Sea Islanders reported that ‘all’ the ex-slaves ‘speak with great affection of Fripp’”. “Many ex-slaves,” notes Leslie Howard Owens, “chose to live with their masters after emancipation, some out of affection”. Owens continues, The affection that masters and domestics [domestic slaves] showed one another took many forms. At the death of Jimmy, a “faithful servant”, one of her owners, whom she had suckled in his infancy, experienced her loss deeply. He lamented that she “always felt more like a mother than a servant to me and was a kind mother to all my children.” Masters’ feelings at these times seem to strip the slave’s personality of any resemblance to stereotypes. Jimmy’s master continued his tribute as follows: she “was a kind mother to all my children. I frequently left them entirely in her care and always found her faithful in nursing and taking care of them and they all loved her as a mother and she loved them. . . .” In other cases, masters compared their domestics to relatives and friends: [In speaking to his sister during a funeral, one master said] “True, sister, he was a servant, and you may be vexed or ashamed, that I should in any manner compare him with yourself . . . but although his skin was black his heart was always in the right place.” Some female slaves occupied an especially honored place in plantation homes. Owens observes that one of “the most privileged domestics were the black mammy of the large estate”. Owens provides further information on these women: She “is in fact the foster Mother of her Master’s children and is treated with all the respect due to the faithful discharge of the duties of her station. . . .” The mammy nursed them through their illnesses and watched them as they grew into adulthood. She also showered them with a loving affection, which they returned. Many whites mourned for her at her death. One almost never hears about the fact that at times free blacks sought refuge on slaveholders’ plantations to escape persecution during periods of rumored slave revolts. Says Owens, There were times, too, when slaves witnessed the hasty retreat of free blacks to the plantation’s safety in order to escape repression by whites during periods of rumored slave uprisings. Elizabeth Jefferson of Mississippi remarked that her “grand father let a negro free and gave him a trade. He was a competent brick mason. Often he came to the plantation for protection, sometimes remaining there for weeks.” And this was not all. “There was an old darkie [sic] freed by a relative of our family. He was prosperous and finally bought his wife and children. He and his family on several occasions came to Greenwood for protection.” This was not an atypical situation. Many owners strove to accommodate a slave couple’s desire to get married, and some sought to provide a form of recognition for the marriage. Cooper says “most slaveowners . . . recognized families among their slaves, despite the absence of any statutory provision or protection for the slave family”. Gutman observes The recollections of elderly ex-slaves and other historical evidence disclose a variety of ways in which slave marriages were publicly announced and legitimized. . . . Elderly ex-slaves also recollected owner-sponsored ceremonies. John Blassingame points out that thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches: Abolition doubts notwithstanding, thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches between 1800 and 1860. For example, out of a total of 1,228 marriages performed in Episcopal churches in South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia in 1860, at least 460, or 38.1 percent, were slave weddings. At many times between 1830 and 1860 more slaves were married in the Episcopal churches in some states than were whites. Between 1841 and 1860 Episcopal ministers performed 3,225 weddings in South Carolina; 1,705, or 52 percent, of these were slave marriages. A large number of owners tried to keep married slaves together. “A study of wills and advertisements,” says Francis Butler Simkins”, shows that many masters” stipulated that their slaves “were not to be sold away from their families or transported out of the state”. As mentioned, 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters. When circumstances led to the separation of a slave family, some owners and others tried to help the family in any way they could. Notes Gutman, The separation of slave family members by sale or for other reasons led some sensitive owners to encourage contact between them. . . . Overt expressions of slave familial feelings deeply affected some owners and other whites who came into contact with these slaves. Whites intervened sometimes to prevent the sale of slaves. After a hired Virginia slave was sold and separated from his family because he had not earned enough, whites who attended church with the man raised sufficient cash to buy him from a trader. Their slave grandmother persuaded a Kentucky clergyman to bid for two teen-aged sisters threatened with a distant sale, but a trader outbid him. The purchase of Mima and her children by an Alexandria slave-trading firm led the hard-pressed Virginian Richard H. Carter, who owned Mima’s husband, to try to buy them “because of the distress . . . on account of the separation”. . . . Kenneth Stampp: No slaveholder needed to respect the marital ties of his slaves; yet a Tennessean purchased several slaves at a public sale, not because he needed them, but because of “their intermarriage with my servants and their appeals to me to do so.” A Kentucky mistress tried to buy the wife of her slave before moving to Missouri. Another Kentuckian, when obliged to sell his slaves, gave each an opportunity to find a satisfactory purchaser and refused to sell any to persons residing outside the neighborhood. A number of slaves were freed by their owners in the owners’ wills. African-American scholars John Franklin and Alfred Moss note that for many years’ slaveholders, “stricken by conscience, impelled by affection, or yielding to the temptation to evade responsibility, manumitted [freed] their slaves in large numbers. . . .” Other slaves earned enough money to purchase their freedom. Some owners assisted with the purchase of freedom by accepting payments over a period of time or by agreeing to accept a generously low price. Stampp explains how some slaves managed to buy their freedom:
Occasionally, they earned the necessary funds by working nights and Sundays. More often, they hired their own time. Either way, they gradually accumulated enough money to pay their masters an amount equal to their value and thus obtained deeds of emancipation. Benevolent masters helped ambitious bondsmen by permitting them to make the payments in installments over a period of years or by accepting a sum lower than the market price. Allan Nevis noted that even in the 1850s “many” slaves continued to buy their freedom: Even in the eighteen-fifties, many slaves, particularly in towns and among the skilled or semi-skilled, continued to buy their liberty. Slaves in Southern cities had additional opportunities to advance themselves. This was no small number of people either. In 1860 there were some 400,000 slaves living in cities, “and many additional thousands were hired out by their owners”. J. G. Randall and David Donald, citing the research of Richard B. Morris, point out some of the opportunities that were available to these slaves: By the nature of their employments and the conditions of their service, as Richard B. Morris has pointed out, these urban and industrial slaves were a step removed from plantation service. . . . many of them were, despite numerous legal restrictions, “permitted to hold property, receive wages, make contracts and assume supervisory responsibilities”; in addition, they possessed “some measure of mobility and occasionally a limited choice as to masters and occupations.” “In industry slaves were customarily reimbursed for services performed beyond an accepted minimum,” Professor Morris continues. “. . . slaves hired to others occasionally received directly a portion of the hiring wages. . . . Masters were often reluctant to force slaves to work as hirelings in occupations they disliked or for masters whom they found uncongenial.” An increasing number of slaves were permitted to hire their own time–i.e., to work at whatever employment they pleased, paying their masters an annual rental. Such “nominal slaves” were able “to control their earnings, separate property or occupational choices.” One frequently runs across the claim that slaves had no legal protection. This is simply not true. I’m not saying slaves had all the legal protection they deserved, but the often-heard claim that they had no protection whatsoever is incorrect. Stampp discusses the legal status of slaves: “A slave,” said a Tennessee judge, “is not in the condition of a horse. . . . He has mental capacities and an immortal principle in his nature.” The laws did not “extinguish his high-born nature nor deprive him of many rights which are inherent in man.” All the southern codes recognized the slave as a person for purposes other than holding him accountable for crimes. Many state constitutions required the legislature “to pass such laws as may be necessary to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity; to provide for them necessary clothing and provisions; to abstain from all injuries to them, extending to life and limb.” The legislatures responded with laws extending some protection to the persons of slaves. Masters who refused to feed and clothe slaves properly might be fined; in several states the court might order them to be sold, the proceeds going to the dispossessed owners. Those who abandoned or neglected insane, aged or infirm slaves were also liable to fines. In Virginia the overseers of the poor were required to care for such slaves and to charge their masters. All Southern states had laws that imposed penalties for mistreating slaves. Whites who killed slaves could be convicted of first- or second-degree murder or of manslaughter, depending on the circumstances, and could be put to death for the crime. A few whites were actually executed for murdering slaves, and in a few other cases, Southern courts refused to convict slaves who had killed brutal overseers because they had acted in self-defense to resist a potentially deadly assault. Southern legislatures sought to provide other legal protections for slaves. Some legislatures passed laws that limited the number of hours a slave could be worked in a day. All legislatures enacted laws that set aside Sunday as a day of rest for slaves. Some states provided for trials by black juries for slaves accused of misdemeanor offenses. In most states, slaves who were accused of a capital crime were given jury trials in the regular courts. Certain states, like Texas, stipulated that slaves accused of any felony were to receive an impartial trial by jury. In contrast to many factory workers in the North, and even in contrast to many low-wage workers in third-world nations in our day, many slaves received relatively good medical care. Most slaves received at least some medical care. And some slaves received exceptional medical care. Says Stampp,
To treat their sick slaves, many masters employed trained physicians, often the same ones who treated the white families. A few large planters retained resident doctors on their estates; occasionally several small planters together contracted with a doctor for his full-time service. More commonly a slaveholder made a yearly contract with a physician who agreed to charge a fixed amount for each visit. “Bargained today with Dr. Trotti to practice at the plantation,” Hammond noted in his diary. “He agrees to charge only $2.50 a visit without reference to the number of sick prescribed for.” Another planter cautioned his overseer, “Strong medicines should be left to the Doctor; and since the Proprietor [the master] never grudges a Doctor’s bill, however large, he has a right to expect that the Overseer shall always send for a Doctor when a serious case occurs.” Slaveholders, both large and small, sometimes spent generous sums for skilled medical treatment for their “people.” To prove that there was “no class of working people in the world better cared for”, one southern physician declared that he had often received large fees for attending even senile and worthless slaves. This statement was much too optimistic, but it did give recognition to a class of humane masters whose expenditures for medical service went far beyond the simple dictates of self-interest. In mourning the death of an old slave woman, a North Carolinian noted that his physician had given the case “assiduous attention” for six months, “devoting to it more reflection and research than he had (as he informs me) to any case within ten years”. . . . A few masters’ patronized hospitals which were built and maintained especially for the care of sick slaves. During the 1850′s, three Savannah physicians ran a slave hospital for “lying-in” women as well as for medical and surgical cases; similar institutions existed in Charleston, Montgomery, Natchez, and New Orleans. But plantation proprietors usually established their own hospitals where the sick could be attended by physicians or slave nurses. “All sick persons are to stay in the hospital night and day, from the time they first complain to the time they are able to go to work again,” a South Carolinian instructed his overseer. “Hopeton”, James Hamilton Couper’s Georgia rice plantation, contained a model hospital where ailing slaves received the best medical attention the South could provide. The hospital was well ventilated and steam heated; it contained an examining room, medicine closet, kitchen, bathing room, and four wards, all of which were swept every day and scrubbed once a week. Wise and humane masters gave proper attention to slave women who were either expectant or nursing mothers. A Mississippian ordered his overseer to treat them with “great tenderness.” A South Carolinian required “lying-in women” to remain at the quarters for four weeks after parturition, because their health might be “entirely ruined by want of care in this particular.” Hammond gave the “suckers” lighter tasks near the quarters and insisted that they be cool and rested before morning.
Some masters were equally solicitous about the care of slave children. On the smaller establishments they appointed an old woman to watch the children while the mothers worked in the fields. On the plantations they built nurseries where the plantation nurse cooked for the children, mended their clothing, and looked after them during illness. In addition, slaves were by no means always confined to their farms and plantations. Many slaves were allowed to visit other estates or to go into nearby towns on a fairly regular basis. A few slaves lived in a state of virtual freedom. As mentioned, some slaves earned money by working on their time off. Slaves were usually free to attend church, and often times they were encouraged to do so. Blassingame observes that many slaves did not have to sneak off the plantation in order to leave for short periods for social visits and the like: Many slaves did not have to use . . . stratagems. Their masters did not try to restrict their recreational activities as long as they did not interfere with the plantation routine. According to Robert Anderson, “The slaves on a plantation could get together almost any time they felt like it, for little social affairs, so long as it did not interfere with the work on the plantation. During the slack times the people from one plantation could visit one another, by getting permission and sometimes they would slip away and make visits anyway.” Similarly, Elijah Marrs said his master “allowed us generally to do as we pleased after his own work was done, and we enjoyed the privilege granted to us.” The more religious planters not only excused their slaves from work on religious holidays but provided great feasts and recreation on these occasions. “During these periods, which lasted from four to six days,” says Blassingame”, planters prepared sumptuous feasts for their slaves”. He continues, Whole hogs, sheep, or beeves were cooked and the slaves ate peach cobbler and apple dumplings, and frequently got drunk. Often the festival seasons included dances and athletic contests. Europeans visited the South and left us their impressions of slavery. Civil War scholar John Tilley observed that their accounts suggest that most slaves were treated humanely: Among these were Buckingham and Sir Charles Lyell, both Englishmen of distinction. Interestedly appraising the status of house-servants of his Southern hosts, Buckingham wrote that their situation was quite comparable to that of servants in the middle rank of life in his own country. He goes on record that, as a rule, they were “well-fed, well-dressed. . . .” Lyell’s investigation led to a like conclusion: namely, that these house-slaves enjoyed advantages superior to those experienced by white servants in similar work in Europe. He found himself in agreement with the view expressed by William Thompson; after traveling in the South, Thompson, a Scotch weaver, had made public his finding that he had not seen in slave conditions one-fifth of the suffering which was the lot of employees in British factories. Observers of the high type of Chevalier, Fredrika Bremer, and Achille Murat, drew similar contrasts between the conditions prevailing among the “peasants” and “poor working people” of Europe and those obtaining in the slave sections of the United States. Bremer’s verdict was that the slaves were “much better provided for.”
Yet others came from abroad to be astonished by the variance between fiction and fact relative to slavery conditions. Lady Wortly found the Southern negroes generally happy and contented. Grund’s observations convinced him that they were better cared for than the free negro element he had seen in the North. Charles Mackay singled out the farm labor of Europe, the shop tailors and seamstresses of the great English cities, as living in physical surroundings inferior to those of the slaves. In his work, Life and Liberty in America, MacKay called attention to the “paternal and patriarchal kindness” of many among the masters. A digression may be indulged. True to his Northern preconceptions, historian [James] Rhodes manifests unmistakable annoyance because of the reports of the foreign visitors. He proceeds to use his scalpel and the result of his dissection of the phenomenon is the pronouncement that, with the exception of the Scotch weaver who likely mingled only with the less favored class, the opinions of the travelers were possibly colored by their enjoyment of “the generous hospitality of the Southern gentlemen.” Such an evaluation of the effectiveness of social contact with slave-owners in beclouding the judgment of astute foreign investigators presents, perhaps, the climax of tributes to Southern courtesy and charm. Tilley continued by arguing that the findings of Northern student Frederick Law Olmsted and of a Northern governess agree with those of the European visitors: A few years prior to the War between the States, a Northern student, Frederick Law Olmsted, made tours of various sections of the South in order personally to view the situation of negro bondman. In 1856, in a volume entitled Journey in the Seaboard States, he shared with the public the benefit of his findings. Some of these, it may be worthwhile briefly to summarize.
Generally, according to Olmsted, the slaves had food in plenty; in fact, it was his opinion that in this respect they were better provisioned for than “the proletarian class of any other part of the world.” While in South Carolina, he noted that the house-servants were intelligent, competent, and comfortably dressed. Regarding the consideration given their “health and comfort,” he believed it superior to that usually bestowed upon free domestics. His judgment was that the labor required of the negroes would not be considered excessively hard by free labor in the North. It interested him to find that, in their employment in the fields, the rule was to assign to each a specific task; this performed, his work for the day was done. He had personally observed a number of significant scenes, such as slaves leaving the field by one or two o’clock, the remainder of the day to be theirs to use as they willed. On one plantation he had seen, between three and four o’clock, “a dozen women and several men” returning to their quarters, their day’s work completed. The slaves on “Mr. X’s plantation” were treated with uniform kindness. . . . Rhodes tells of a New England-born governess, employed on a Tennessee plantation, who expressed astonishment that there had failed to show up the “revolting horrors” of which she had heard. Her wonder had grown upon learning that physical punishment was there unknown; willingly, she testified to the sharp contrast between actual conditions and what her preconceived theories had prepared her to expect. All this being said, slavery was still wrong. It had its good and humane side, but it was still wrong. My only point in noting some of the good aspects of the institution is to provide a little balance to the one-sided picture that is usually painted of it. There were many forms of injustice in the world in the nineteenth century. Southern slavery was one of them, but it was not the worst of them. Moreover, it’s important to keep in mind that most Southerners did not own slaves. Scholars generally agree that no more than 25 percent of Southern citizens were slaveholders. Notes Stampp,
Nearly three-fourths of all free Southerners had no connection with slavery through either family ties or direct ownership. The “typical” Southerner was not only a small farmer but also a nonslaveholder. Of those Southerners who did own slaves, three-fourths owned less than ten. Half owned less than five, and often worked side by side with them in the fields. As for the “planter class,” less than fifteen percent of slaveholders belonged to it. “The planter aristocracy,” says Stampp, “was limited to some ten thousand families. . . .”. Slavery and the North’s Use of Force Given these and other facts, I don’t believe the existence of slavery in the South justified the North’s use of force to deny the South its independence. I don’t believe that Southern slavery justified the brutal form of “total war” that Northern armies waged against the South. This brand of warfare included the needless destruction of thousands of private homes and public buildings, the large-scale theft of private belongings, the burning of priceless Southern libraries, the killing of thousands of farm animals (even in remote areas), and the shelling of defenseless towns. Some idea of the brutality that was inflicted on the South is indicated by the fact that about 50,000 Southern civilians died in the war. Nor do I believe that Southern slavery justified Lincoln’s policy of blocking medicines from reaching the South. This cruel policy caused the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers and of thousands of Southern civilians. This policy also caused the deaths of thousands of Union soldiers who were being held in Confederate prisoner of war camps. When the South tried to buy medical supplies from the North to care for Union prisoners, Lincoln wouldn’t even reply to the offer. Noted Tilley, The time came when, shut off from the world by blockade [the federal blockade], the South experienced the greatest difficulty in obtaining medicine which had been made contraband by order of the federal government. By 1864 conditions were so desperate that the South actually offered to purchase from the North such needed supplies, agreeing to pay for them in gold, cotton, or tobacco. The offer made plain that Union surgeons might bring the medicines down and use them solely to minister to Union prisoners. To this offer, there was no reply. I’m glad slavery was abolished, but it could and should have been abolished peacefully. Yes, this would have taken longer, probably a lot longer. But it also would have saved the lives of over 600,000 soldiers who died in the war, as well as the lives of tens of thousands of Southern civilians who died as a result of the brutal type of warfare that Northern armies waged in the South. It also would have spared tens of thousands of soldiers from suffering the loss of arms and legs for the rest of their lives. Other nations found ways to abolish slavery peacefully. I don’t believe that waging the most destructive war in our nation’s history was the only way slavery could have been ended. We will never know what would have happened to Southern slavery if the North had allowed the South to go in peace. The Confederacy was never given the chance to outgrow slavery. There were plenty of people in the South who did not like slavery and/or who wanted to see the slaves freed, including Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Confederate Congressman Duncan Kenner, and James Spence, the Confederate financial agent in Europe, who criticized slavery in his book The American Union. There were also Confederate leaders who supported emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army, such as Confederate generals Patrick Cleburne, Joseph E. Johnston, Daniel Govan, John H. Kelly, and Marc Lowrey, Governor William Smith of Virginia, Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, and the Confederate president himself, Jefferson Davis. As mentioned, some 75 percent of Southerners did not own slaves. I believe the Confederacy would have eventually abolished slavery. There is evidence that suggests slavery was beginning to die out on its own. For example, the percentage of Southern whites who belonged to slaveholding families dropped by 5 percent from 1850-1860. Nevins noted that “slavery was dying all around the edges of its domain”. We must be careful not to judge a country or a people through our 21st-century lens. Past nations and their citizens should be judged primarily in the context of their own times and not in the context of our times. One hundred years from now, who is to say that future civilizations won’t look back and denounce modern America as an unjust, oppressive nation because we have legalized the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn children every year by abortion, because we still have not extended basic health care to all of our citizens, and because we continue to pollute the environment with toxic waste and fossil fuel emissions? Over the last thirty years alone, more innocent human beings have been killed by abortion than were ever killed by slavery (even including the thousands who died on the slave ships). Or, consider how many low-income people in our country have died prematurely because they had substandard health care or no health care at all. This tragic injustice is no secret. Numerous stories about it have appeared on TV, in newspapers, and in books for decades. Yet, it continues. Will future civilizations look back and judge America harshly because of this? Will we be condemned as a cruel, elitist society? How would we feel if Islamic nations teamed up to invade America because we permit and uphold abortion? How would we feel if Russia and China teamed up to invade America because we don’t have universal health care and because we’re the world’s biggest polluter? What if England, France, and Russia had teamed up to invade the Northern states in the early 1800s because New England permitted and reaped huge profits from the African slave trade and because so many Northern states strongly discriminated against blacks?
More on the Confederacy This is not to say the Confederacy was perfect. But, in comparison to other nations in that era (and even to many nations in our day), the Confederacy was one of the most democratic countries in the world. The Confederacy came into existence in a peaceful, democratic manner, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Southern citizens. In fact, the percentage of Southern citizens who supported the formation of the Confederate States of America was considerably larger than the percentage of colonial citizens who supported the American Revolution. Throughout its existence, the Confederacy enjoyed a vibrant free press. The Confederate government closely resembled the federal government, with three separate branches of power, i.e., executive, legislative, judicial. Confederate laws went through the legislative process. The Confederate constitution was very similar to the U.S. Constitution, and it contained improvements that even some Northern writers praised. The Confederacy held free and fair elections. Citizens of the Confederacy enjoyed every right that we now enjoy, if not more. The Confederacy made every effort to establish peaceful relations with the North. The Confederate government even offered to pay compensation for all federal facilities in the South and to pay the Southern states’ fair share of the national debt. The Confederacy also announced that Northern ships could continue to use the Mississippi River. The record is clear that the South sought to avoid war. In fact, most Southerners believed secession would be peaceful. It’s interesting to note that the correspondence of the first Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Walker, “clearly indicates he did not expect war”. The Confederate states believed, with good reason, that since they had joined the Union voluntarily and peacefully, they had every right to voluntarily and peacefully leave the Union. But war came when the North launched an invasion of the Confederate states. That’s why the vast majority of battles were fought in the South. The South fought because it was invaded. The South had no desire to overthrow the federal government–it merely wanted to leave that government and to form its own. The Confederacy did not start the war, and, contrary to what most history books claim or imply, the war didn’t really begin when Confederate forces “attacked” Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Lincoln later all but admitted he provoked the incident so that he could blame the South for firing the first shot. Soon after South Carolina seceded, federal forces, acting without orders to do so, occupied Fort Sumter, in violation of the agreement that South Carolina had (or certainly thought it had) with President James Buchanan not to change the status quo. Southern leaders argued that South Carolina had the legal right to reclaim Fort Sumter, citing the fact that the state had ceded the fort to the federal government on certain conditions and that these conditions had not been fulfilled.. South Carolina, and then the Confederacy, tried for months to have Fort Sumter evacuated. Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, promised Confederate representatives the fort would be evacuated, but this promise was not kept. When Confederate leaders learned that, contrary to Seward’s promise, Lincoln had sent a convoy of warships and other vessels to resupply the fort, they decided to demand the fort’s surrender. The commander of the federal garrison on the fort refused, even though he did not agree with Lincoln’s decision to send a resupply convoy. The Confederates then gave the federal commander advance notice the fort would be attacked. Not a single Union soldier was killed in the attack. As a matter of fact, at one point, when the Confederates feared a fire on the fort was going to burn out of control, they offered to help put out the fire. When the federal troops surrendered, the Confederates allowed them to surrender with full military honors and then permitted them to return to the North in peace. This was the “attack,” the alleged act of “rebellion” or “insurrection,” that Lincoln used as his pretext for launching an invasion of the seceded states. On the other hand, even after the Fort Sumter incident, Jefferson Davis continued to publicly express his desire for peaceful relations with the North. In fact, just two weeks after the Fort Sumter incident, Davis said the following in a message to the Confederate congress: We protest solemnly, in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone–that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. Was the War Fought Over Slavery? Many historians seek to justify the North’s invasion of the South by claiming that the war was fought over slavery, and that the North was fighting to free the slaves while the South was fighting to keep them in bondage. A number of critics claim the South only fought in order to ensure the continuation of slavery. A detailed refutation of these assertions would require a separate paper. However, for now, I offer the following points in response to them:
* The war was fought over secession, not over slavery. If the South had not declared its independence, Lincoln would not have launched an invasion, and there would have been no war. The only slave states that were charged with insurrection and then invaded were those that belonged to the Confederacy. Would the North have accepted secession if the Confederacy had announced it was abolishing slavery as the first official act of its existence? Would the North have allowed a peaceful separation if the Confederacy had started an emancipation program right after the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)? Would any serious student of the Civil War answer either of these questions in the affirmative? I don’t think anyone who has studied the subject believes the North would have allowed the South to go in peace no matter when the Confederacy would have started to abolish slavery.
* In July 1861, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a nearly unanimous vote, that affirmed that the North was not waging the war to overthrow slavery but to preserve the Union. McPherson notes, . . . in 1861 the North was fighting for the restoration of a slaveholding Union. In his July 4 message to Congress, Lincoln reiterated the inaugural pledge that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.”
* When Lincoln assumed office, he was entirely willing to allow slavery to continue. Lincoln even supported a constitutional amendment that would have given additional legal protection to slavery. When Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation about two years later, he did so only because he was under intense pressure from abolitionist Republicans in Congress, who were threatening to cut off funds from the army if Lincoln didn’t issue some kind of emancipation order. One only has to read the Emancipation Proclamation itself to see that it was a war measure that only applied to slaves who were in Confederate territory–it did not apply to any slaves who were in Union-controlled territory, not even to slaves who were in the four Union slave states. In addition, Bennett shows that Lincoln himself tried to undermine the proclamation soon after he issued it, and that he issued it unwillingly. For that matter, Lincoln only began to consider issuing the proclamation after the Union war effort continued to falter.
* To be sure, some members of the Republican Party did believe the war should be waged for the purpose of abolishing slavery. Those who belonged to this faction of the party were commonly known as “Radical Republicans.” It would be worthwhile to take a closer look at these men. They wielded tremendous power in their party. They were not only abolitionists, but, like most other Republicans of their day, they tended to support high taxes (in the form of high tariff rates), subsidies and land grants to certain big businesses, and the expansion of the federal government’s size and power. Southern leaders consistently opposed these policies. Most Radical Republicans made no secret of their intense hatred of the South. Southern leaders suspected that some of the Radicals didn’t really care about the slaves but were using slavery as an excuse to crush and subjugate the South. The harsh, illegal Reconstruction program that the Radical Republicans in Congress imposed on the South after the war led many people, in all sections of the country, to believe this suspicion was justified. Even President Andrew Johnson said in an official message that the Reconstruction regime that the Radicals wanted to impose on the South was illegal, vengeful, and despotic. Johnson tried to prevent the Radicals from imposing such harsh terms by vetoing their Reconstruction bill, but they had enough votes to override his veto. When Johnson persisted in opposing the Radicals, they indicted him and then tried to remove him from office on the basis of charges that can only be described as shameful, not to mention invalid. Almost immediately after Lincoln was assassinated, Radical Republicans in the Congress and in the War Department, along with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, falsely accused Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders of complicity in Lincoln’s death. A War Department military tribunal and the House Judiciary Committee formally endorsed this claim. They based this accusation on information they knew was bogus. Some Radicals continued to repeat the accusation even after it became clear that it was false. Cooper notes that most people came to reject the claim that Davis was involved in Lincoln’s death: In the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination . . . the War Department, with Secretary Stanton’s enthusiastic endorsement, claimed that Davis was intimately involved in the conspiracy that resulted in Lincoln’s murder as well as other failed intrigues. . . . In subsequent investigations this supposedly crystal-clear certainty turned murky. A few officials clung to the theory of Davis’s responsibility, but most observers found the evidence flimsy, even fraudulent. The story of the Radical Republicans’ attempt to convict Jefferson Davis of involvement in Lincoln’s death is one of the most shameful episodes in American history, and it says a lot about how utterly lawless and corrupt some of these men were. I’m unaware of a single textbook that says anything about the Radicals’ unethical conduct in the affair. Therefore, I’d like to devote a few paragraphs to examining some aspects of their attempt to frame Davis for Lincoln’s death. One of the best treatments of the subject is Seymour Frank’s booklet The Conspiracy Against Jefferson Davis. The booklet originally appeared as an article in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review under the title “The Conspiracy to Implicate the Confederate Leaders in Lincoln’s Assassination.” In his foreword to Frank’s booklet, historian James West Thompson discusses some aspects of the attempt to blame Davis for Lincoln’s murder:
A surprise witness at the Lincoln conspirators’ trial was a man who identified himself as Henry Von Steinacker, who claimed to have attended a meeting of Confederate officers who were planning Lincoln’s murder. Shortly after his testimony, defense counsel learned that Von Steinacker had been a member of the Union Army and had been arrested while attempting to desert. Sentenced to death, he had escaped while awaiting execution. Joining the Confederate forces of General Edward Johnson, he had been assigned to headquarters as a draftsman, but he was arrested by the Confederates and accused of theft and of abuse of prisoners. Again he escaped. Defense Attorney Clampitt was denounced by General Lew Wallace . . . for stating these facts.
Something you liked about the pre-1950s educational system? Segregation?
Of course, the address of Robert Barnwell Rhett on reasons for southern secession mentions the word “SLAVE” no less than 30 times.
Rhett- thats like saying that Jesse jackson, Sharpton and Farrahkan represent the feeling and ideology of all African-Americans but I guess your your view they do and frankly thats a shame. But I guess political correctness works both ways now doesn’t. I see you apparently are suffering from the same tact as the other side on issues, seeking to clump and group people instead of seeing them or taking their divine spark as an individual. Sadly, I had always assumed you were better than that. I guess I was wrong given how you have managed to take a brush in your hand and paint such wide strokes here.
Brian,
Lee and Jackson were not from South Carolina. Had Lincoln not called for Virginia to supply 75,000 troops, VA would not have seceded, as the State had already voted earlier to not leave the Union. In fact, Virginia attempted to broker a peace settlement before the war even started.
As a Nation, we celebrate Lincoln. Yet, Lincoln at one point supported a program that would have allowed slaves to be returned to Africa, he did not thing the black man was equal to the white man, and had Dixie played at the White House during a celebration once the war was over. Using your criteria, you should also reject Lincoln as someone to celebrate.
Also, an interesting note regarding the dedication of the Lincoln Monument in the early 1920′s black Americans were segergated from White Americans during the dedication ceremony. That was by order of the Federal Government.
Of course you still will not answer if you celebrate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Or, if you fly the American Flag.
Citizen of Manassas- those in Brians generation have not a clue what you are referring to- you see you will not find those little details in any textbook. They prefer to live in the present and through their own lense. Even if Lincoln or Lee/Jackson were alive today and answer the question Brian would still not believe them. My grandfather was there for the thirty and fourty reunion of Appomattox and it had nothing to do with celebrating any cause; it was about honoring the dead and the sacrifice. Being born of Northerners but being the only child born south of the Potomac have a greater appreciation for my State I guess than most in my family. There a level of honor that comes with being a Virginian I find, especially if you go out West and meet people and talk about Virginia. It comes from our past, traditions and our progress. Brian would just as soon close down Hollywood Cemetary I guess and make it an industrial park.
MB & Brian
It pains me to think that there are fools like you out there that may influence lesser educated people or bully someone with your complete fabrication of history and the truth. Secondly, how dare you insult Carla on how her parents raised her? Carla is entitled to her opinion just like you. Since you have thrown down the glove let me say that I have also read your comments on this subject over at “Bearing Drift” where you continue to insult educated people who unlike you have actually studied the Civil War. Your comments about the military
“why it is our current military is overwhelmingly filled with the ranks of Southerns who see place a level of service very high in its moral code; I wonder just where the roots of that come from friends?? “
This has changed my mind about you, you sir; are dangerous. Before you go insulting my family let me tell you who I am, I won’ t hide behind an anoymonus name like you accused History Scholar of doing over at Bearing Drift although he’s 10 times more informed than you ever will be on history. My name is Ward Moore by Great, Great, Great Grand Farther was a Scottish Captain who fought in the American Revolution My Great, Great Grandfather was Albert Sidney Johnston, my Great, Great Uncle was Joseph E Johnston, yes Confederate General’s, my Uncle lost a leg on Omaha Beach and my father’s unit the “102 Timber Wolves” were one of the first unit to cross the Rein in WWll. Myself I’m a Vietnam Era Vet and a retired Virginia Army National Guard First Sergeant with over 30 yrs of service and I would love to debate the Civil War and what our Military is made of with you face to face. I have served with some of the finest men in America from all races and religions. I always respected their beliefs and values and they respected mine. In all my years of service I never heard one of them complain about being stationed on a base named after a Confederate General which there are several, nor did I ever hear them complain about Lee-Jackson Day. These fine American deserve to be remembered as the facts of history record their actions and not be swept under the rug by COWARDS like you.
This has become banal and boring. On one side are people who love to study history and debate sources, documents, meanings, rational interpretations . . . and on the other side are a couple of “brave” folks who will call others (either implicitly or very explicitly) racists, segregationists, hood wearers, or slave-mongers — people who will offer no historic data, no refutation of actual dates, events, documents — just-knee jerk name calling against anyone who disagrees with their subjective, uninformed prejudices.
Over and over again, it’s the same thing, never substantive, never scholarly, always politically correct even if historically inaccurate. Now we know their broken record will play over and over and over again. We know they have the ultimate self-confidence (based on self admirationg rather than knowledge), no shame, and clearly believe that they have nothing to learn. And I’ll go out on a limb and guess that they probably see themselves as needing to learn nothing about any other subject and never needing to read the great works on history and economics that could help us in our quest toward individual liberty and Constitutionally limited government. Those who are willing to condemn a person like Lee without EVER studying the man or reading a biography are the kind of people who likewise are not inclined to think they might need Locke or Jefferson, Hayek or Hazlitt, Friedman or Thatcher.
Knowing that we will hear the broken record on slaves, hoods, Nazis, or segregationists until hell freezes over, I would submit that those of us who like to read, study, and learn — we should go back to our books and catch up on Hayek, Friedman, and Locke — and we should leave those who are smug, self-absorbed, and uninterested in scholarly debate and study to do what they do best: admire their brilliant minds in the nearest mirror.
“This has become banal and boring.”
You’re just noticing?
Brian,
You just got spanked and the best thing you can do is call the attempt to change a Holiday named after two of the greatest Americans ever to live boring. It may come as a shock, but I agree with you on that point. This is a boring attempt that is void of any facts and seems driven more by ignorance than anything else.
Mr. Moore,
Thank you for your service to our Nation. Lets hope there will never be a Holiday to celebrate your dedication to the Nation. No doubt Brian would lead the charge to have it changed due to your support of Lee and Jackson.
Alter of Freedom,
It is called laziness. People like brian are too lazy to study and accept at face value the watered down version of history taught today.
[...] Jason Kenney makes this excellent point in a comment over at Bearing Drift: Lee and Jackson were not bad men. But bad men used their legacies to defend their bad policies of [...]
Lazy? I’m patient as heck.
As Father Time marches on, more and more people agree with me and lack the nonsensical romanticism of owning black people.
[...] conservative blogger proposes dumping Lee-Jackson day. ▶ Comment /* 0) { jQuery(‘#comments’).show(”, change_location()); [...]
Another column (and a poll) suggesting that a flag or symbol or statue or holiday be removed – and another gaggle of responses from the usual crowd of suspects who enthusiastically wave their little hands and vote in the affirmative….. Oy!? When will it end?
We have:
** The super-patriots, who point fingers and scream “TRAITORS”, not ever realizing that the country they claim to love so much was actually born in that cauldron of blood that most people refer to as “The Civil War”. There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples between 1789 and 1860 which clearly demonstrate that secession was indeed considered by many (if not most) Americans to be a viable option for any state, though not necessarily a desirable one. The secession option was taken off the table in 1865, essentially, when the one of the men you revile tendered his sword to a future U.S. President. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing depends pretty much on your own personal opinion/philosophy. What is a certainty however is that the country you purport to love so much was born out of that war. There is no treason involved here, only the bloody resolution of a question that had plagued the new Republic for over 70 years. The men on the pro-secession side are considered to be American veterans by the government they fought against and nearly 500 of them are buried in the Confederate section of Arlington National Cemetery. So stop pounding your chests trying to convince us that you are loyal, proud Americans. It only demonstrates your ignorance and you’re likely to give yourself some nasty bruises in the process.
**The Humanists and Social Progressives – “Oh! I simply can’t understand how people could think it was right to own a black man! Oh heavens! Oh heavens! Blah blah blah…” Take a pill and grow up already! Slavery’s been around for 4000 years and it has only recently become fashionable to moan about it having existed at all. In another (more enlightened) day and age, people of the present did not see fit to point accusatory fingers at past peoples and apply the standards of the present to a past age. Someone apparently has been putting “stupid pills” in the water supply however because this type of thing seems to have become very fashionable today. Face it, if you were really all that upset about slavery, you wouldn’t be pi**ing and moaning about it having existed 150 years ago, you’d be doing something about it where it exists today, (in Africa, as it happens), and we all know that you’re not doing that. And as far as people not believing that the “Negro” was the equal of the white man, once again I say, “Get over it!” That’s the way that 99.99% of white America felt at the time and that’s all there is to it. And when I say “America”, I mean ALL of America, north as well as south and ESPECIALLY the “nawth”…
“I have had the question put to me often: “Is not a negro as good as a white man to stop a bullet?” Yes, and a sand-bag is better; but can a negro do our skirmishing and picket duty? Can they improvise roads, bridges, sorties, flank movements, &c., like the white man? I say no. Soldiers must and do many things without orders from their own sense, as in sentinels. Negroes are not equal to this. I have gone steadily, firmly, and confidently along, and I could not have done it with black troops, but with my old troops I have never felt a waver of doubt, and that very confidence begets success……” General William T. Sherman, 1864
“We do not like the negroes. We do not disguise our dislike. As my friend from Indiana said yesterday: ‘The whole people of the Northwestern states are opposed to having many negroes among them and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all of the Northwestern states.’ “ Senator John Sherman, Ohio, 1862
**The Yankee Transplants from “Noo Yawk”, Noo Joisey” and elsewhere, most of whom have no interest in the culture of the people who built Virginia and whose ancestors have been here since colonial times, but who came instead for the warm weather, low cost of living and cheap real estate. You sold that big house up “nawth”, bought a bigger and more luxurious house in Virginia for a fraction of the cost and banked the remaining equity. Now, with plenty of money in the bank, and plenty of time on your hands, you can engage in your favorite sport – MEDDLING! Funny thing – historically, the Yankee has always seen fit to try and impose his values on Southerners and there are countless examples which would prove me correct. But, has anyone ever seen the reverse? When for example, was the last time you heard of a busload of Southerners getting off the bus in Union Square to protest the statue of General Sherman which sits there? The answer is “NEVER”! This, if nothing else, should give one pause for reflection.
**The Southern born apologists (or scalawags if you prefer), dying to show everyone what wonderful, open-minded people they are – I don’t know whether you guys are victims of the educational system or just brain dead. Most Americans have 80 years of existence behind them. You, on the other hand, have 350 years of history behind you – yet, you choose to throw it away. What can I say? If your ancestors came back to life, they’d either shoot you or “buck and gag” you. Personally, I’d pay money to see that, but sadly, it ain’t likely to happen.
**The “you lost we won get over it crowd”, who, in shooting off their big mouths, unwittingly demonstrate the shallowness of their life’s philosophy, which is, “winning is everything”…. Ok, let’s have a show of hands….how many of you would want a friend who only wants to be on the winning side? How many of you would want that kind of guy sharing a fox hole with you? Anyone? Anyone? ‘Nuff said.
Now, to the subject of “Virginia Heritage Day”. By itself, I don’t consider such a day to be a problem. A Southern born professor who I greatly admire, and a Sons of Confederate Veterans member by the way, is fond of telling his fellow Southerners to lay claim not only to the 1861-65 period, but to all of the South’s history. I could not agree with him more! Virginia indeed has a long and glorious history and yes, there is more to her history than simply the War Between the States and therefore, much to celebrate. But the idea for such a day comes from the desire to kill off a part of Virginia’s history that many of her founding families still hold dear. It is an idea born not of celebration, but an idea born out of enmity and spite and a lack of regard for others.
Here’s the bottom line for – You don’t like “Lee-Jackson Day”? Then don’t celebrate it. A lot of native born Virginians do like it and do celebrate it and they have rights just like you do. In a day and age in which the chanting of “Diversity” has become an almost obligatory mantra your ignorance is most transparent, since the primary definition of the word means “variety”, which includes, among other things, a variety of “opinions”. And (thankfully), there is no law anywhere which says that the people of a state, or a country for that matter, must hold the same opinions or hold the same things dear. To put it bluntly, that holiday is no skin off your nose. So give it a rest already.
“With the exception of a few honest zealots, the canting hypocritical Yankee cares as little for our slaves as he does for our draught animals.” Captain Raphael Semmes, C.S.A. Alabama
Brian,
I would hope you do not support owning any person. Though, I guess at one point you did, otherwise you would not go out of your way to say you do not support owning people. I just assumed everyone did not support owning people. Though, you have proved me wrong. Maybe you should think about leaving the GOP, we do not like people like you in the Party.
What does that have to do with Lee-Jackson Day?
Citizen, until this point I just thought you were a poor communicator.
It wasn’t until now I realized that you’re simply stupid.
Sorry for my misconceptions.
Brian,
Boy, you do have an inflated opinion of yourself. I’m sorry, but I’m not the one that is ignorant of history.
And, your only defense now is to engage in name calling. Yup, that is a sure sign that one is having their backside handed to them in a debate. I think you really do need to join the Dems, since they are the party that engages in lies, and name calling.
Now I understand a bit more about why Brian is ignorant of history and has a dislike for two great Americans like Lee and Jackson. He is from Philly. That says it all. Another Northeast liberal who moved South. Well, I suppose 95 also runs North. If you did not like the history of the State, why did you move here?
Too funny, BK is now getting accused of being a liberal; just because the guy doesn’t support celebrating a holiday for two individuals – as honorable as they might have been (in the context of their own time…), as great a generals as they were, who fought for the right to keep men, women, children, and the elderly enslaved.
If not for the supporters of the Confederacy and historical revisionists (try as you might with tales of Jackson’s “reading to slaves” – which is not supported by the historical record – you can’t turn Stonewall, the pro-slavery racist, into an abolitionist) we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
Mark,
There is no proof that Jackson taught blacks to read? Do you want to bet your life? I will tell you what, I will provide proof and then you can end your life? If you are so confident about there not being proof, I’m sure you will take this bet.
Jackson was not a pro slavery racist. He held the view that slavery was wrong.
Yet, here again those ignorant of history show just how much they lack in brain power. You are using(somewhat) your brain of today to look at people from 150 years ago. There is not a person who lived back then that if we used modern thinking that would not be a racist. Even Abe the “great emancipator” would be considered a racist because he did not think blacks were equal to whites. He also liked the song Dixie.
Brian is a liberal. You see, he is the very type of person who is turning Virginia from a conservative State into a liberal one. He has transplanted along with many of his fellow NE liberals to Virginia. Because they came from States that had high taxes, high crime, bad schools with unlimited budgets, high real estate taxes, little to no personal liberties(gun rights), non right to work States, does not understand Virginia history, they vote for liberals who in turn raise our taxes, bloat school and social programs budgets, are trying to gut right to work rules and end the DP.
So, be smarky all you want, but in the end, it is people like you and brian who are the worst enemies the GOP in Virginia has.
Even timmy kaine supports the death of “old Virginia”. What do you think “old Virginia” means? It means Conservative Virginia.
In Jackson’s mind, slaves were children of God placed in subordinate situations for reasons only the Creator could explain. Helping them was a missionary effort for Jackson. Their souls had to be saved. Although Jackson could not alter the social status of slaves, he could and did display Christian decency to those whose lot it was to be in bondage . . . he was emphatically the black man’s friend.” ~ Dr. James I. Robertson
Dr. Robertson is a history professor at Virginia Tech and is regarded as an expert on the war and on Thomas Jackson.
Stonewall Jackson, Friend to the Black Man
by R.G. Williams, Jr.
Mention the legendary Confederate General Stonewall Jackson to most people and the image that immediately comes to mind is one of a fearless, hard-fighting Southerner who was known for his eccentrics and who some would argue fought for slavery. But Thomas Jonathan Jackson was a much more complicated man than what most Americans realize.
A careful study of his life would lead one to believe that General Jackson might even be described as a civil rights leader. Yes, you read right, a civil rights leader. In the nineteenth century, prior to the War Between the States, Virginia law prohibited whites to teach blacks to read or write. Though Stonewall Jackson was a loyal Virginian and was known as an upstanding and law-abiding citizen in Lexington, he routinely broke this law every Sunday. Some historians believe he was even threatened with prosecution for ignoring Virginia law, and he was most definitely ridiculed for thinking he could help the poor, ignorant “Negroes.”
Though the law was not strictly enforced, Jackson quietly practiced civil disobedience by having an organized Sunday school class every Sunday afternoon, teaching them to read and teaching them the way of salvation. There are still churches active today that were founded by those blacks reached with the Gospel through Jackson’s efforts. Jackson taught the Sunday school class for blacks while he served as a deacon in Lexington’s Presbyterian Church. It was in the autumn of 1855 that Jackson, with the permission of his pastor, Dr. William S. White, began the class in a building near the main sanctuary. Every Sabbath afternoon shortly before 3:00 p.m., the church bell would toll, letting everyone know it was time to worship the Creator of all men. Jackson quickly gained the admiration and respect of blacks in the surrounding area, as his zeal was apparent, and he took this solemn responsibility seriously. Attendance often numbered over 100, and Dr. White later wrote that Jackson “threw himself into this work with all of his characteristic energy and wisdom.”
But Jackson not only demanded much of himself in reaching both the slaves and free blacks, he demanded much of his students. His classes began promptly at 3:00, and once he started, the classroom door was locked and latecomers were not allowed entrance. Bibles and books were awarded to those who were faithful and showed satisfactory progress. He also expected his students to give to the Lord’s work:
“On one occasion Gen. Thomas J. Jackson was appointed one of the collectors of the Bible Society. When he returned his list it was discovered that, at the end, copied by the clerk of session, was a considerable number of names written in pencil, to each of which a very small amount was attached. Moreover, the session, recognizing very few of the names, asked who these were. Jackson’s characteristic reply was, ‘They are the militia; as the Bible Society is not a Presbyterian but a Christian cause, I deemed it best to go beyond the limits of our own church.’ They were the names chiefly of free Negroes.”
This relationship between Jackson and the blacks of his community was not all that uncommon in the South, particularly pertaining to whites who were devout Christians.
“In Jackson’s mind, slaves were children of God placed in subordinate situations for reasons only the Creator could explain. Helping them was a missionary effort for Jackson. Their souls had to be saved. Although Jackson could not alter the social status of slaves, he could and did display Christian decency to those whose lot it was to be in bondage . . . he was emphatically the black man’s friend.” ~ Dr. James I. Robertson
It was obvious that Jackson’s concern for his black brethren was real and something that occupied his mind even at the height of the war:
“Soon after one of the great battles, a large crowd gathered one day at the post office in Lexington, anxiously awaiting the opening of the mail, that they might get the particulars concerning the great battle which they had heard had been fought. The venerable pastor of the Presbyterian Church (Rev. Dr. W.S. White, from whom I received the incident) was of the company, and soon had handed him a letter which he recognized as directed in Jackson’s well known handwriting. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘we will have the news! Here is a letter from General Jackson himself.’ The crowd eagerly gathered around, but heard to their very great disappointment a letter which made not the most remote allusion to the battle or the war, but which enclosed a check for fifty dollars with which to buy books for his colored Sunday school, and was filled with inquiries after the interests of the school and the church. He had no time for inclination to write of the great victory and the imperishable laurels he was winning; but he found time to remember his noble work among God’s poor, and to contribute further to the good of the Negro children whose true friend and benefactor he had always been. And he was accustomed to say that one of the very greatest privations to him which the war brought, was that he was taken away from his loved work in the colored Sunday school.” ~ William Jones
It was further obvious that the blacks of Lexington knew that Jackson’s love and concern for their spiritual well-being was real and they returned his affection:
“Jackson thus acquired a wonderful influence over the colored people of that whole region, and to this day his memory is warmly cherished by them. When Hunter’s army was marching into Lexington, the Confederate flag which floated over Jackson’s grave was hauled down and concealed by some of the citizens. A lady who stole into the cemetery one morning while the Federal army was occupying the town, bearing fresh flowers with which to decorate the hero’s grave, was surprised to find a miniature Confederate flag planted on the grave with a verse of a familiar hymn pinned to it. Upon inquiry she found that a colored boy, who had belonged to Jackson’s Sunday school, had procured the flag, gotten some one to copy a stanza of a favorite hymn which Jackson had taught him, and had gone in the night to plant the flag on the grave of his loved teacher.” ~ William Jones
General Stonewall Jackson was, without question, one of the greatest generals America ever produced. He was fearless in battle and his legendary “Valley Campaign” fought in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia is still studied by militarists to this day. But more than that, he was a devout Christian and a lover of all good men ~ regardless of their color. Southerners and lovers of truth should do everything possible to educate future generations about the truth of our history, especially when it comes to the heroes of our faith and of our beloved Southland. Only in truth can we worship the Creator of ALL men.
Sources:
Stonewall Jackson, The Man, The Soldier, The Legend by James I. Robertson
Christ in the Camp by J. William Jones
Hey, Man-Asses.
I moved to Virginia as a teenager after going to conservative private school my whole life. I then moved here to attend a private religiously-connected college. The only way I’m a liberal is if you’re a Nazi.
I still chuckle at the folks like you who yearn for the days when you owned your blacks, owned your women, and were the only ones allowed to vote. I scratch my head at how insecure people like you must be to be so intolerant that unless someone meets your Ivory 99 and 44/100% pure test, they get attacked and called names.
I don’t want to honor people who fought for the right to own other people.
Since you do, you can do so on Virginia Heritage Day. That way I can honor Virginia history while not being forced to salute slavery.
Mark, I’m a liberal now. Did ya ever think ya’d hear it?
FYI – Stonewall Jackson’s affiliation with the black community in his area of Virginia IS “supported by the historical record.” Any comprehensive biography on the man (i.e. Prof. James Robertson’s book), will at least make mention of Jackson and his wife running a (prewar) bible school for both slaves and free blacks.
This is but one example, taken from the “Confederate Veteran” magazine in 1906. It documents a ceremony held in Roanoke at a black church which was started by students from Jackson’s school.
“STONEWALL JACKSON HONORED BY NEGROES.
News from Roanoke, Va., July 29 is reported as follows:
408 Confederate Veteran September 1906.
A handsome memorial window of Gen. Stonewall Jackson was unveiled in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church (negro) to day. The window was erected by the pastor, Rev. L. L. Downing, the money for its purchase coming wholly from the negroes. The exercises were largely attended by both races, the Confederate Camps of Roanoke and Salem and the Chapters of the Daughters of the Confederacy of the same place being well represented. The chief addresses were by leading white citizens of Roanoke. Downing’s father and mother were members of a Sunday school class of negro slaves taught by Jackson at Lexington before the war, and to day’s exercises marked the realization of an ambition Downing has had since boyhood to pay fitting tribute to the Confederate commander. The picture presented on the window is that of an army camping on the banks of a stream, the inscription underneath being Jackson’s last words: ‘Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.’ ”
The documentation is out there. You just have to open your eyes and look. I suppose the truth is a pain in the a** to anyone who feels compelled to imagine that the General and his peers had horns growing out of their heads, but in the last analysis, that’s your problem, not ours, so you’ll just have to deal with it. I suggest putting a bag over your head and breathing deeply.
http://richmondthenandnow.com/Newspaper-Articles/Stonewall.html
http://www.stainedglassjournal.com/stonewall.html
Brian,
Come up with new material, there bud, that is an old joke.
But it does show how small your liberal brain really is that you have to engage in name calling.
You are still a northeast liberal, end of story. Exactly why did you stay in Virginia after you were 18? You and your fellow liberals from the NE move here to Virginia and set about to change it into the liberal cess pool you left.
You are nothing more than a RINO. Rudy Giuliano may have had an R next to his name while he was Mayor of NYC, but he clearly would not have been considered an R anywhere South of the Mason Dixon line.
Do you support George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? I know you are avoiding answering the question, because you are stuck in the corner because you were unable to fully think through your side of the debate. But, I do expect you to man up. Answer the question, otherwise you are more of a liberal than I thought.
If you are not a liberal, why are you taking up the cause of liberals? Plan and simple, you would need to elect liberals who support high taxes, illegal aliens, less gun rights, to have your wish to change the name of the Holiday. So, again tell me why you are not a liberal.
Furthermore, if as you claim to be a member of the GOP, what is more important to the Commonwealth right now? Smearing the good names of two of the greatest Americans ever, or getting back to the basics of what put made Virginia a Conservative State before you and your fellow NE liberals moved here.
I don’t care what schools you attended, you still are ignorant of history and a liberal.
You accused me of name calling while you call me names throughout your comment?
Viagra must make people senile.
Calling someone a liberal or a Rino is not name calling.. Unless of course you think calling someone a Conservative is name calling too.
You seem to have more knowledge of viagra then I do. Sounds like you have a personal issue. Maybe that is why you are unable to man up and answer the questions.
Calling someone a name isn’t name calling.
This is fun! Are you the smartest guy on your street?
Well, I may not be the smartest guy on the street, but I’m smarting then you.
I’m shocked, just shocked to learn you think calling someone a conservative is a bad thing.
Lets get back to the point here. Do you Celebrate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. By not answering, you clearly are showing just what type of person you are.
You support turning Virginia into a liberal cess pool, because you will not get your way until the General Assembly is full of liberals who will ruin the State. I’ll give you points for honesty, most liberals will not admit to their goal of destroying the Country State by State.
Brian,
If you answer the question with a no, you are a liar or not a Patriotic American. If you answer yes, you are a hypocrite.
Do you still think you’re not name-calling?
Do us all a favor. Refill your meds.
Brian,
You still can’t answer the question. Ha ha ha.
You bet I am calling you out now. Anybody can hide behind their key board and lie and stir up crap as you have done. Yet, when faced with facts and a simple question, you can’t muster up and admit you are wrong.
Lee and Jackson had honor, and that is why they have a Holiday. You sir, have none.
oh, I’m wounded. I will say one thing, though. You do give me a great understanding of what people were like in the days of owning other people. White men who enslaved blacks and treated women as non-voting inferiors who did what they were told, or else they got beaten.
Thank you for the window to your ideal world.
The idiot that is calling for ending Lee-Jackson Day has now shown that the republican’ts are now as bad as the dumbocraps when it comes to White Heritage. Both parties pander to negroes and wetbacks to get votes. Not only do I totally disagree with this petition, I plan to celebrate Lee-Jackson Day tomorrow in a big way. I also plan to start a petition to abolish Martin Lucifer Coon Day as Coon was a womanizing, plagarizing communist negro pedophile not worthy of taking out my trash much less having a federal holiday in his honor.
Hey, moron, do you want to abolish George Washington Day and Columbus Day as well? They were White, so I guess you have no use for them either. Well, I have no use for you. Why don’t you move to da hood with da homies since you hate White people so much?
White Southern Solidarity!!!
I didn’t know Imus commented on this blog!
Brian,
Keep trying there. I have never said anything to the like of wanting to own people, and no matter how many times you say so, you are wrong.
You are in fact doing more harm then good for your “cause”. You are exactly the very reason why people are sick and tired of political correctness. You think honoring Lee and Jackson is the same as wanting to own people, and that simply is not the case. You are simply saying what you want, and to suggest anyone here wants to own people is not only wrong, but stupid. You simply started a debate you were not fully ready for. Again, just man up and take your licking and move on.
Happy Lee-Jackson Day.
CERTIFICATE of RECOGNITION
By virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution in the Governor of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, there is hereby officially recognized:
LEE-JACKSON DAY
WHEREAS, Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson are native
Virginians, having served our great nation and Commonwealth as
educators, leaders, and
military strategists; and
WHEREAS, Lee served in the United States Army for more than three
decades until he left
his position to serve as Commander in Chief of Virginia’s military
forces and as
Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia; and
WHEREAS, Jackson taught philosophy and military tactics as a professor
at the Virginia
Military Institute in Lexington for nearly a decade before serving
briefly in the United
States Army and later joining the Confederate Army to fight for his
native Virginia; and
WHEREAS, Lee dedicated his life after the Civil War to reforming higher
education in the
South by serving as President of Washington College, now Washington &
Lee University,
in Lexington, Virginia, where he helped to greatly increase the school’s
funding and expand
the curriculum to create an atmosphere most conducive to learning for
young men of both
Southern and Northern heritage; and
WHEREAS, Jackson’s leadership and bravery enabled him to rally his
troops to several
improbable victories against opposition forces much larger than his own,
and Jackson’s
inspired “Stonewall Brigade” fought alongside General Lee’s troops
toward another victory
even after their leader was fatally wounded on the second day of the
Battle of
Chancellorsville; and
WHEREAS, it is fitting to recognize Generals Lee and Jackson as two of
our nation’s most
notable military strategists, as beloved leaders among their troops, as
pioneers in the field of
higher education and as faithful and dedicated Virginians; and
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Timothy M. Kaine, do hereby recognize January 16,
2009 as
LEE-JACKSON DAY in the COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA and call this observance to
the attention of all our citizens.
/s/ Timothy M. Kaine
_____________________________
Governor
/s/ Katherine K. Hanley
_____________________________
Secretary of the Commonwealth
This day should always be observed by any true Southron, black or white, that knows his history. News flash! If you don’t like Dixie and her varying cultures and heroes, LEAVE! May God bless Generals Lee & Jacskon and all of Dixie’s dead veterans, past, present & future. Dixie Forever! Deo Vindice
“You simply started a debate you were not fully ready for. Again, just man up and take your licking and move on”
Man-ass wants to lick me?
Brian,
You are still around??? You are irrelevant. Even timmy kaine has more smarts then you.
Anyone who agrees with ending the celebration of Lee-Jackson day is obviously not a true Virginia Native. These 2 men symbolize evrything about the Old Dominion. They represent all of the struggles, tragedies, and history of Virginia and our great country. I am really sick of hearing from all of you liberal whinny political correct people that come to Virginia bringing your hate and contempt for all of our traditions and heritage. If you don’t like our heritage and traditions go back north and take the rest of the carpet baggers and foreigners with you. I am a 10th generation Virginian and I am proud to be that and am prepared to fight for what is mine. So either embrace our heritage and traditions or get the hell out.
If you people took the time to actually learn the truth about the history this ridiculous agenda aimed at dishonoring the names of our heros would go away. In the real world truth with integrity is the exact opposite of politcally correct.
HCP III – a real Virginian
J.R. Hoeft says: I wonder how Lee and Jackson would feel about that? Or, perhaps, I should just “shut up”?
Perhaps you should just STFU JR–and take your little petition and pee on it.
I’ll sum it up for with the words of a famous confederate general into terms regarding your petition…
“you could boil all of hell down to a pint and I would drink it before I would agree to sign your petition”
apparently you dont know your history. george washington himself fought as did many of our founding fathers. i do recall all of us getting washingtons day off. martin l. king didnt even serve our country and he has a day and a month. why dont you and all your politically correct idiots just take everything away that makes us american. wipe out out history. teach the new young people of america that its okay take erase what happened. i think you ought to call virginia heritage days, virginia haterage days. get real. stop promoting this crap and live with a thought that all proud men died so you can sit on your duff and have a right to challenge and speak freely….well so do i…..i bet you want to take God out of our schools and government too. dont you???? why not move out of the country and start your own….with no history…youd probably bitch about that too…oh and by the way, when you get rid of God in govt. schools etc. dont be two faced, make sure you work on Easter and Christmas.
I’m sure you can find plenty of native americans who feel the same way about you.
I been wondering what happened to Virginia? As a native of Louisiana and a Floridian for 25 years now I have been quite amazed at what has been going on there. You true Southernors better beat em back, they are dangerous culture genocide warriors, who are relentlessly attacking the all of us in the South. (“The South Under Siege 1830-2000″ by Connor). Obama’s election has emboldened those intent on waging this Jihad.
Americans have refused to confront the true history of Lincoln’s War, the take over of their neighbors in the South for political power and money. The party behind this is the Republicans then and now! Watch your back.
I am an Independent, I got out of the hate filled mean lying Democrat party some 15 years ago. I hope the Republicans crash and Sarah Palin heads up a new party with Ron Paul’s support. Then we just might see more of the government we were promised in 1787.
Is Brian so dumb that he doesn’t know the Indians fought and died for the CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA! He hasn’t heard of General STAN WATIE!
Any true southerner/Virginian would want to recognize ALL of the great heritage Virginia has to offer and not whitewash our history by allowing two good men to be used as a shield for racial discord.
I am a Native American, though, I’m not sure if I have any American Indian blood.
Brian is really showing poorly here. Of course the majority of American Indians fought for the South. The last Confederate General to surrender was an Indian. Good grief.
I guess they thought at least they got treated better than slaves.
Good grief, Brian really is showing just how little he knows. Indians owned blacks, blacks owned Indians, and blacks owned blacks. Yet brian would have us all believe that only blacks were slaves and were only owned by whites.
You either had poor history teachers, or slept during history class. Either way, you really should just go away before making an even bigger fool of yourself.
Man-ass is obviously knows more about slavery than I do.
Makes sense, though. I know a lot about hockey because I like it.
I saw in the newspaper a couple of years ago, that only 43 percent of those living in Virginia were native born. I don’t know how to get that under control, but THAT is a large part of our problem. Please tell this fact to our fellow natives, and maybe they will be fired up by that. Maybe someone better than me can track that statistic down for proof. I’m for keeping LJ Day, by the way.
[...] a comment » Bearing Drift has post (see here) suggesting the end of Lee-Jackson Day. Well, that is what the title says. Actually, what is [...]
Brian,
No, I know history because I do not want to look like a fool discussing it like you do.
Man-ass, don’t sell yourself short. You look like a fool without discussing anything at all.
Here is another bad Virginian who likes to celebrate Lee-Jackson Day.
Richmond- Attorney General Bob McDonnell issued the following statement today in recognition of the Lee-Jackson state holiday in Virginia .
“Today, the Commonwealth of Virginia pauses to remember two great Virginians, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.
Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson were men of honor, duty, faith and humility. Today, they are remembered foremost for their leadership on the battlefield. They served our nation, and when duty called, our Commonwealth, with courage and valor.
However, the legacies of Lee and Jackson extend beyond the battlefield. They are found in Lexington , where Lee taught his students after the War to be Americans again, and to pursue lives of honor and obligation, and where Jackson taught future heroes at Virginia Military Institute. Both men set personal examples that continue to be remembered to this day.
As Virginians we share a long, and sometimes difficult, history. In that history, Virginia has produced many great men and women. The lives of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson remain worthy of study and commemoration.”
Wow, here is another Virginian who must be sent to a reeducation camp.
I wonder if Brian would tell the AG, Lt. Gov, and Gov. they support slavery by honoring Lee-Jackson Day.
RICHMOND – Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling today issued the following statement in recognition of Lee-Jackson Day in Virginia .
“More so than any other state, Virginia ’s history is America ’s history. Today, we pause to recognize the lives of two Virginians who helped write the story of both our Commonwealth and our nation. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson lived during a turbulent time in Virginia . They were defining figures of a generation for both their roles in history and their exceptional personal character. They were leaders of men. They were renowned generals and supreme tacticians. They were the epitome of honor, duty and service. They were men of steadfast principle and tireless faith. I hope all Virginians will join me today in honoring the lives and memory of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”
Sorry, but you attempts at name calling is as weak as your knowledge of history.
you attempts?
Tough typing with one hand? You seem excited.
Generals Robert E Lee and Thomas J ‘Stonewall’ Jackson were two of the finest military officers and gentlemen that ever came out of West Point Military Academy. While many others are long forgotten, these men are not only remembered, but their military prowess and methodologies are still studied today. Virginians should be taking great pride that these two devoutly Christian Generals are remembered!
Lee’s background would lead us back to a time before the founding of the USA. We would also get to learn how the USA stole the family property in Arlington, VA from Lee’s wife, and turned it into a graveyard, which is known today as Arlington National Cemetery.
Jackson’s background would take us through the unconstitutional establishment of the State of West Virginia, and another of Lincoln’s many unconstitutional actions while president.
Newspaper writers who have no knowledge of real Virginia history (not the politically-correct version taught in today’s public schools) should not be allowed to venture ignorant opinions to the public, as we have read from Brian Kirwin.
Ah, E.D. wants to outlaw the First Amendment, and probably the 13th as well.
Brian,
You are completely clueless on history, yet you want to point out a typo? OK, be my guest but it still does not cover for your complete lack of history. I guess you are just pissed over the iggles blowing another game yesterday.
The Eagles losing a game is like citizen of manassas applauding the days of slavery. It’s so common, I rarely notice either.
Brian,
So, now you are speaking for me? Again, exactly where have I said I applaud the days of slavery? Do you think the Gov. Lt Gov, and AG applaud the days of slavery? You fancy yourself some hotshot GOP dude(even though, you are just another keyboard warrior) I’d love to see you tell our next Gov that he applauds slavery.
Do you celebrate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?
Of course I’m not speaking for you. I prefer sentences. I like words that rise above a grunt.
Although I am flattered about how much time you focus on me. I could send you an autographed picture of me for you to hold with one hand.
I can see recalling the Civil War and respecting its history. I don’t think we should deny history, and removing this holiday might contribute to denial.
The history and the Battlefields, IMHO, should be preserved and treated with reverence. The Battlefields are, after all, graveyards that provide homes for wildlife and the memories of the slain from north and south. We can’t afford to forget.
The reason Lee and Jackson are honored together, I believe, is that we should celebrate our country’s ability to reconcile its differences and unite even after a Civil War. We should celebrate the end of violence and killing our countrymen. That said, maybe we should add “Grant” to the name of the holiday to round it out.
I do NOT like the penchant some have for continuing the Civil War. The war itself is OVER. We are one again. We should never use a holiday to celebrate division.
What we should have learned is that divided, we fall. But apparently, we have not learned that and continue breaking this country apart, each group blaming the other for the disintegration of our unity whether it be over slavery or partisan politics.
May we never forget what happens when we treat one another as less than equals and as human beings.
http://www.luxuriouschoices.net/poemsfromthebattlefield.html
Do you celebrate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?
I will, on Virginia Heritage Day.
What is good about the holiday is this: it has generated conversation about history and slavery. Perhaps it has served more of a purpose than initially intended then, yes?
Brian,
A bit of selectivity going on I see. You do not equate them with slavery, even though both owned slaves, and in the case of Thomas Jefferson had the power to influence the Constitution on the matter. It is on record the British, if they had won the war, were going to give freedom to American slaves that fought for them. A fact that implies the war did have something to do with slavery. I’m not aware of George Washington making any statements about freeing slaves who fought under him. Does that mean Washington was fighting to keep slavery? Or, the Colonies?
Yet, for some reason you can’t make the same exception for Lee and Jackson.
Lee and Jackson were fighting for Virginia. Lee simply could not turn his back on the land of his family, and clearly was torn on the issue Virginia leaving the Union. In fact, I would submit had Virginia not left the Union, Lee would have taken the offer from Lincoln to be Commander of the Union Army. Jackson also had made similar statements about not being to fight against Virginia.
Of course, I’m not saying we should not celebrate Washington or Jefferson. They lived in an era far different from the one that we live in, and it is way too simple and easy to make judgments on people who lived in the past using our modern minds.
Liking Washington, Jefferson, Lee, or Jackson is also not in anyway a support of slavery or a desire to return to those days.
I also like to think we can celebrate all of Virginia history and in fact we should. However, changing a holiday named after Robert E Lee and Thomas J. Jackson is not the way to go about it.
Citizen, why do I think you were going to give that answer to your own inane question no matter what my response was.
Because what you said had NOTHING to do with what I said. You go on and on and on about how I treat Washington and Jefferson different from Jackson and Lee.
It’s a lie, but since your world depends on thinking that slavery and the Civil War just were mere coincidences passing in the night, lies and you don’t seem to be mortal enemies.
I don’t make exceptions for anyone. Virginia Heritage includes everyone, faults and all. Jackson-Lee Day celebrates only two men who fought a war that would never have been fought if everyone agreed about slavery.
Two men fought on the side that was fighting to preserve the right to own other people. While I don’t want to erase history, I don’t want to throw a party about the worst parts of it and ignore the rest.
Brian,
Once again you are wrong. Of course you are a hypocrite. You simply pick and choose whom you like and whom you do not like not based on facts, but based on your biases as a yankee. Anyone can play that silly game, yet, you like to think that somehow you are a better person or somehow can come to a different outcome. Well, you are wrong.
The fact Grant’s family had slaves before, during and after the war, seems to push aside how if everyone had agreed about slavery, there would not have been a war. It seems Grant’s reasons for fighting the war was not to end slavery. But, in your world because he was on the Union side he was fighting to end slavery, nothing less, nothing more.
The Union didn’t secede from the Union. So, their reasons for fighting the people who did aren’t really relevant, except for the white sheets of today who miss those days.
The reasons why the South seceded is quite easily read in their speeches advocating secession, and they rarely had a paragraph that didn’t protect slavery.
Yet, you are fine with celebrating men who created a Nation that had legal slavery and fought a war to make it stay legal. Yup, you are very selective.
This is not about who left the Union. You said if everyone agreed on slavery, well, it is clear that was not the case North or South.
How am I selective? You’re the one who wants to ignore every great Virginian except for your two slave warriors.
Wow, two weeks and a whopping 78 signatures, including several “Anonymouses” and one “Star Womanspirit.” I bet the governor and the general assembly will be stunned at the outpouring of sentiment here.
By the way, what’s this about “Jefferson’s more perfect union?” Are you perhaps confusing the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the US Constitution? While Jefferson wasn’t always 100% consistent on the issue, it is clear he leaned heavily towards the view that a state has a right to secede from the union and was pretty much an anti-Federalist in his views. His worst fears about this “more perfect union” were confirmed with the passage of the Alien and Sedition acts. Today he is considered to be one of the Fathers of a Southern political philosophy that includes as a bedrock item the right of secession. Lee and Jackson were ideological heirs, even though they weren’t supportive of the Southern secession at first.
Give me Jefferson, Lee and Jackson any day. You can keep Lincoln, FDR, and all the other American strongmen who have destroyed constitutional government in America.
Lee-Jackson forever:
http://coloradoconfederatarian.squarespace.com/journal/2009/1/19/lee-jackson.html
Brian,
Either you are unable to read or missed my post(though you did respond to it) saying we should and need to celebrate all of Virginia history. Of course that is not the question at hand.
The hell it isn’t. The entire post is about a petition to establish a Virginia Heritage Day.
Brian,
We do celebrate Virginia history and heritage. This is just another silly pc stunt.
If it is done, let it be done completely: Rename Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Civil Rights Day. Native Virginian and really proud of it.
May the good Lord instill in me the same integrity, devotion, and love for God that these two men did. These are probably the 1st two men I will seek out when I enter heaven.
We need men like Lee and Jackson today in this country. God bless them and their day.
Funny how all you people do is talk of slavery. You do not seem to remember that it was the same General Jackson who would pay out of his own pocket and at a time when it was a crime for black children to read so they could read their bible. Its funny how you forget how it was old unhonest abe who came up with a plan to move all blacks ot of the country but the idea failed one because the blacks did not want to go but also congress thought it would be to costly. One last thing the war was manly a war about tariffs and that Lincon and his fools of a cabinet wanted the south to pay about 80% of the nations tax. HUh kindda sounds like “no taxation without representation” the same reson we fought for our freedom against England. YOu people cry about slavery but you dont seem to recall lincon was no friend of the black man, the emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in the states in who fighting against the union and not the border states like marlyland, delaware ect.
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