Further to that point: The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy. (UPDATE: It should go without saying that this isn’t true of blacks.) That should lend a measure of modesty to this debate.Here's some extra cream for the jest: You may recall I've been reading The Confederate States of America 1861-1965 by University of Georgia professor E. Merton Coulter, who was very much a man of his time and place (that is, per Wikipedia, a white supremacist). His research generally seems sound, but there are places where you can really see where the professor's head is at, and his chapter on "Agriculture, Subsistence, and Negroes" is in this regard a corker.
We hear, for example, about how cheerful the slaves were during the war: "An Alabama editor in recording his observations of Christmas time wrote of the 'sleek fat Dinahs and plump jowled Sambos' who had paraded the streets of Selma, and he contrasted them with the 'hollow-eyed, care-worm faces' of the whites, adding 'we seldom see a merry white man except when he is drunk.'" That statement is in itself a ripe object for contemplation.
Coulter also tells us that some slaves took advantage of the war to join the other side -- "invasions were bound to upset the slaves and lead many of them to follow after the armies... many 'willing wenches' submitted to the Federal soldiers and thereby increased the mullato population of the South..." -- and some even joined the Union Army but "being poorly trained, most of them were not conspicuous either for bravery or skillful fighting." (Yes, I know, you saw Glory, but Coulter presumably heard this from some old rebel and he should know.)
But here's the part that may interest Lowry: toward the end of the war, the South in desperation floated the idea of black Confederate troops --
It was contended that slaves could be easily disciplined and would make good soldiers, that slave soldiers would ennoble still further the institution of slavery and lighten its rigors after the war that without more soldiers the war might be lost, and that as slaves had fought for American independence during the Revolution they should now help gain Southern independence...
But, naturally, opposition to making slaves into soldiers was deeply embedded in Southerners. It seemed bizarre and grotesque and wholly at variance with the very essence and character of Southern civilization. How could white people ever look a Negro in the face again, knowing that they owed their very existence to their own slaves? It would be the end of slavery and the beginning of social equality and miscegnation. Senator Wigfall said he "wanted to live in no country in which the man who blacked his boots and curried his horse was his equal." It would bring a blush to the cheeks of the old soldiers to have to tell their children and grandchildren that the Negroes had won independence for the Southerners. Once in his lifetime Howell Cobb was to find himself in agreement with Governor Brown on a public question, when both held that arming the slaves would be a negation of everything for which the South was fighting.So that was why they didn't hand rifles to their own slaves and tell them to go fight the people who wanted to free them -- not because they were scared, but because it was an insult to their heh'tage, suh! I guess if we can forgive Coulter for making a distinction between "Negroes" and "Southerners," we can forgive Lowry.
Senator Wigfall sounds like a character in an America-set Dickens novel.
ReplyDelete(UPDATE: It should go without saying that this isn’t true of blacks.)
ReplyDeleteAlways amused by "blacks". Not black people or black folks or even black Southerners but just "blacks".
The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteUmmmm....No!
The "few select areas" was actually half the country as it existed at the time. It's one thing to tinge history so that it appeals to your vanity. But this kind of wholesale "I don't care what all the recorded history and facts say" rewriting is just pathetic.
And his cousin, Crestfall.
ReplyDeleteShould applaud Lowry's restraint in not typing "n*****rs"? After all, since the president used the word, it's A-Okay for everyone to use it, right?
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteOr hid in the woods and lived off mast, like hogs, until the homeguard ran them down with bloodhounds and hanged them with the unionists or packed them up on trains for the front, where they were about as likely to shit themselves to death or die of malnutrition before they picked up whatever gun they were issued.
"Jellyneck" to his friends.
ReplyDelete'...they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.'
ReplyDeleteI know it's rhetorical to ask but, sources cited please?
They really are invested in the myth of the noble south. I wonder if it has anything to do with the seedy racist fratboy militarist underpinnings of the most noxious breeds of American capitalism.
ReplyDeleteI think "the blacks this, the blacks that, yada" as often seen in newspaper (& worse) comment sections, is the working equivalent of "n-gg-rs" for people who don't want to give it all away.
ReplyDeleteSee, history's always slightly different, but with the same rotating cast of characters. Wigfall was just one iteration of the Trump cycle.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's other modern signifier: "I'm not racist, but . . ."
ReplyDeleteRich and fiends only care about the blacks when it comes to keeping them from voting.
ReplyDelete~
-being poorly trained, most of them were not conspicuous either for bravery or skillful fighting.
ReplyDelete-It was contended that slaves could be easily disciplined and would make good soldiers
Ah southerners. Always picking a fight with somebody. The government, the catholics, the jews, the negroes, and not least, the last damn thing to come out of their mouths.
Today, Lowry is calling the Pope a fool for telling people to use less energy. Lowry reckons the Pope shouldn't be anti air conditioning because hundreds are dying of heat in Kandahar.
ReplyDeleteThat the message of the Pope is that the rich benefit from fossil fuels and the poor suffer from global warming - like dying in heatwaves! escapes, of course, the gang.
Man, what a sniveling whine all of that is.
ReplyDelete"I don’t like the Confederate battle flag and like Jonah, would take it down from prominent official places as a sheer matter of courtesy, if nothing else."
See, black people? Rich Lowry's being courteous. Holding doors and taking down flags and feigning to treat you like human beings and everything.
"The Confederate army fought for an odious cause, yet it wasn’t an army of extermination like the Nazis, to which it is now being compared."
Orange slices for everyone!
"Confederate soldiers were Americans, and slavery was an American sin."
You're absolutely right! Maybe you should knock some sense into your fellow wingnut turderatti who think that any discussion of racism and subjugation in American history is Orwellian(TM). Oopsie! It's almost like you pine for the Confederacy so much, Rich, that you've crossed your wires and yelled out your tell on a megaphone.
Comments as always blare the tell even louder:
ReplyDelete"If we were faced with the same threat as the Southern landowners were, we would have fought also. If tomorrow, there was an Executive Order to confiscate all automobiles/trucks/tractors, we would fight back. Remember, that is how slaves were viewed, as farm equipment. Not only that but, the Abolitionists wanted the slaves freed, basically confiscating legally owned property without just compensation (I know, reprehensible thoughts). Give the same type of threat to us today and see what happens."
Oh, I know, reprehensible thoughts, my bad. But no really, though, they were legitimate property, libs.
Let's be honest: "We seldom see a merry white man except when he is drunk" would be a great album title.
ReplyDeleteThe Confederate army fought for an odious cause, yet it wasn’t an army of extermination like the Nazis, to which it is now being compared.
ReplyDeleteSee: Forts Pillow, Donelson.
See: The Crater siege of Petersburg.
Revisionist shite-arse.
And his comrade, Justice Dewlap.
ReplyDeleteShorter Bitch Dowry: "The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederates Nazis at the moment on Twitter were born in the early 1900‘s in Germany outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Reich. So what's the big deal? Shit just happens, ya know? Can't you just chill?"
ReplyDeleteYou will be FUCKING SHOCKED to learn that Lowry might not be entirely correct in his assumptions! More that that, of course, Prof. Lowenen -- who can't be more relevant these days -- has long written about how the South re-wrote its own history regarding the war, long after Appomattox. At the time there were many Southern unionists and even a small abolitionist community. It was only when the Daughters/Sons of the Confederacy started the lie-fest of the Lost Cause when people forgot. I'd bet big money that the majority of Kentuckians today think they fought for the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, the Confederacy wasn't remotely like the Nazis and therefore Oliver Willis is the real racist, address my point Dumbocraps.
ReplyDeleteAn army of extermination? Well, the Southerners invested a lot of money in their slaves, so they didn't want them wiped off the planet, but then Nazis didn't want to kill everyone either. I'll try and compromise -- Nazis and Confederates weren't exactly the same, but they were both world-historically evil. How's that?
ReplyDeleteThank you, trex. That's exactly what I read, too.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why they always see themselves as a southern landowner, when they'd more likely have been waking up at dawn to spend a day staring at a mule's ass, or trying to shake a squirrel or possum out of a tree.
ReplyDeleteOr tenant farmers.
ReplyDeleteThere is no in hell that a Confederate would have fought alongside black soldiers without a hell of a lot of friendly fire deaths.
ReplyDeleteReally, who among us wouldn't have committed treason in defense of slavery?
ReplyDeleteAnd most of the black soldiers trapped in the hole during the Battle of the Crater were killed by their own side.
ReplyDeleteFree State of Jones! about the anti-Confederate South.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to have no idea how much land was held under plantations. They could be as big as a modern county. A confederate infantryman was never fighting for his own land. He was fighting for the land of several hundred drunk Calvinists.
ReplyDeleteif anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteActually, the Confederate Army instituted the first draft, because they couldn't get enough men to volunteer:
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2012/11/civil-war-conscription-laws/
Fascinating stuff. If you were rich enough, you could hire a substitute to serve for you. And if you were a rich slave-owner you could get out of it, too:
in October 1862, when the Confederate Congress, after an extensive lobbying campaign, adopted the so called “Twenty Negro Law,” which granted an exemption to an owner, or one overseer on each plantation with twenty or more able-bodied slaves
Worshipers of Mammon aren't bound by provability; rather they said whatever the (perceived) customer wanted to here. We're just seeing Rich doing it in mid-perceptual switchover.
ReplyDelete"A thousand years on the Mount of Purgatory. Count your blessings."
ReplyDelete"Rich man's war, poor man's fight"
ReplyDeleteSenator Howell Cobb of Georgia:
ReplyDelete"You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong."
As if sober Calvinists weren't bad enough.
ReplyDeleteOr epitaph.
ReplyDeleteShorter NR goober: "I reserve the right to rape my truck."
ReplyDeleteYeah, where did that "army of extermination" come from anyway? The only thing Hitler et al. wanted to exterminate was the Jewish population of Europe, and they didn't need much of the army to do that, obviously. The army's primary mission was simply to subjugate every non-German they could get their hands on.
ReplyDeleteIt's a variation on Bill Kristol's #NotAllSlaveLabor theme,
ReplyDeleteSouthern civilization
ReplyDeleteHe's just getting his fellow (w/ the bank) car owners ready to resist when 900-Ft. Obama comes for all the fossil-fueled vehicles. (Not sure if that's before or after he takes all their guns.)
ReplyDeleteWhat glennisw said.
ReplyDeleteStarbursts also forgets, because he never knew, that the Confederacy instituted a draft which compelled military service. So much for "anyone." The draft exempted anyone enslaving more than 20 human beings and those who could buy their way out of service. If Starbursts were alive at the time, he'd either avail himself of those options or, at a minimum, don some petticoats.
"UPDATE: It should go without saying that this isn’t true of blacks."
ReplyDeleteAnd, uh, women? I'm pretty sure women are allowed on Twitter nowadays.
Not to mention the feebleminded and insane, who were all in the Confederate government.
You cannot make soldiers of slaves
ReplyDeleteThe Ottoman Empire managed to do so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries
(I am no expert, but the example leapt to mind. Any others?) The Janissaries were special in many ways, though, and there's no way that the Confederacy would have groomed slave soldiers anything like the Ottomans did. Besides which, even the earliest Janisarries seem to have had better prospects and status than a white southern soldier. And the Ottoman Empire was a big deal for a very long time, whereas the CSA was not much and not for long.
...and most of those drunken Calvanists were in the Home Guards of their various states (think of it as Quayle's National Guard service) or who were exempt from military service under the "Twenty Negro Law".
ReplyDeleteDon't forget this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/04/donald-trump-blacks-2012-presidential-race-/1#.VYsQq0Y8Gao
I don't suppose there's anything to be gained in pointing out that there were no Executive Orders confiscating anybody's...er...farming equipment in 1860? Or 1861? Or that non-rebel states got to keep their farming equipment on the job until after the shooting had stopped?
ReplyDeleteI feel gross having typed that, but I think it means something that the disgusting justification this redneck is using isn't even valid on its own terms. "Racist" and "ignorant" are not synonyms, but they do so often go together.
Look! Here comes a happy Sambo now:
ReplyDeleteSays only: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
ReplyDeleteAccessDeniedAccess Denied464B3756E68A8DCFb4XWGXzEn+xtvTR1m/gB9mGbduNGULC94RJloS6extBpmOydqhu95DxA3mv5tgWu"
I refuse to go and look. Does he actually say that the temperature in Kandahar is a reason to air condition one's American home? Like the way my mom used to tell me I had to eat my green beans out of solidarity for the starving children in Ethiopia?
ReplyDeleteBound up with terror from above was terror from below.
ReplyDeleteWhile it took less ruthless forms in the North (it aimed at preventing meet
ings and destroying the means of propaganda or the property of ‘agitators’), in
the South violence against abolitionists took the form of a pogrom that did not
hesitate to torture and physically eliminate traitors and their supporters, with
complete impunity.
The situation in the South in the years preceding the Civil
War was described as follows by Joel R. Poinsett, an important political figure
in the Union, in a letter written by him at the end of 1850:
We are both [i.e., Poinsett and his correspondent] heartily sick of this atmos
phere redolent of insane violence … There is a strong party averse to violent
men and violent measures, but they are frightened into submission afraid
even to exchange opinions with others who think like them, lest they should
be betrayed.
In fact, the contemporary historian who cites this testimony concludes that,
through recourse to lynching, violence and threats of every kind, the South
succeeded in silencing not only any opposition, but also any mild dissent. In
addition to abolitionists, those who wanted to distance themselves from this
pitiless witch hunt felt threatened, and were threatened. They were impelled
by terror into ‘holding one’s tongue, killing one’s doubts, burying one’s reservations’.
There is no doubt about it: the terroristic power wielded by
slave owners over their blacks also ended up affecting, on a lasting basis,
members and fractions of the dominant race and class.
dominic losurdo, "liberalism: a counter-history," p101-102
They fought with each other quite a bit, too. "States rights" was really "I'm right, me personally and only me rights."
ReplyDeleteThe other day I joked that the confederacy was fighting to protect their 5th amendment rights not to have property taken without just compensation. Fucking satire is dead.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the
ReplyDeletemoment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few
select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
Even if this were true, so fucking what? We shouldn't now demand this sign of treason and a personal, pointed affront to a sizable portion of our population come down because we might have fought on the wrong side? How does this "logic" apply to anything else, ever? Government crackdowns of Christians would be OK because we would have been pro-Nero in ancient Rome? Tarring and feathering Rich Lowry would be OK because he obviously would have been a Tory? And who's being immodest, the side that says "it's long past time to take shameful relic down" or the side that says "I don't care what anybody thinks, you best respect my heritage?"
better now?
ReplyDeleteDon't tell this guy, but lots of property is confiscated by the government when it's no longer legal to own it. It's not usually able to get up on its own feet and walk itself out, but that just goes to show that maybe pretending humans were property was a little different from owning actual property.
ReplyDelete"If anyone banging on about Hitler at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1910s in Germany, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Nazis." Also, if this sentence were written in Chinese, you wouldn't be reading it in English right now.
ReplyDelete"If anyone banging on about Hitler at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1910s in Germany, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Nazis."If this sentence were written in Chinese, you wouldn't be reading it in English right now.
ReplyDelete. . . and not least, the last damn thing to come out of their mouths.
ReplyDeleteAt least they're consistent about it. America is the richest nation on Earth, which is why we can't afford to fix anything. America is the strongest nation on Earth, which is why ISIS is going to kill us all sometime next Tuesday. America is a Christian nation, which is why we're always trying to fuck over the poor.
Any wonder why so many arguments with a conservative tend to end with the table being flipped over and the conservative stomping out the door?
I can't figure which is worse, working many people to literal death as slaves & deliberately exterminating millions more, or holding people & their descendants as chattel ad infinitum, while keeping them just healthy enough to slave for you.
ReplyDeleteIs there seriously a large social movement, complete with lengthy intellectual tradition, surrounding the notion that trucks be free? Including writings done by trucks themselves? Man am I glad that there are wingnuts around to inform me of these things.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, Andersonville, though a prison camp and not a battle, exemplified the exterminatory excellence that can only be admired to this very day.
ReplyDelete"Oh, I know, reprehensible thoughts, my bad."
ReplyDeleteYou didn't read this correctly. He doesn't mean that holding slaves was reprehensible, he meant that confiscating legally owned property without just compensationis something that shouldn't be discussed in polite company, & he's very sorry.
Not for me, dex. I'm using the current version of Firefox on an iMac. Maybe other browsers get the job done?
ReplyDeleteTitle:
ReplyDeletePope Francis Doesn’t Like Air Conditioning
Fool text:
Presumably the people dying in the heat wave in Karachi would beg to differ.
& it links to a quite good NYT article about how bad the heat wave is - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/world/asia/pakistan-says-more-than-600-have-died-in-heat-wave.html?_r=0
for the FF & Mac users then:
ReplyDelete"Southern Civilization"
"The Confederate army fought for an odious cause, yet it wasn’t an army of extermination like the Nazis, to which it is now being compared."
ReplyDeleteOne word: Andersonville.
I guess it would be too much to presume that "out of principal" doesn't mean that the state had to take out a long-term loan in order to erect a flagpole, but SC does take in over $2 in federal dollars for every $1 sent to general revenue, so it wouldn't be out of the question.
ReplyDeleteAnd now both work. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteSee: Andersonville.
ReplyDelete[/repeatingmyself]
Two moar words: Fort Pillow.
ReplyDeleteThe grenade hadn't been innovated by that time, but I'm sure that fragging would have been fairly common practice if it had.
ReplyDeleteGrant mentions in his memoirs that the whole of the south had become an armed camp. A nineteenth century way of calling them ammosexuals.
ReplyDeleteGrant was a natural born killer, and they struck HIM as fucked up. Go figure.
It's true, Cobb was wrong on that point. But the Janissaries actually enjoyed great respect, as did the Mameluk slave soldiers who were their predecessors. And they weren't really treated as slaves from the moment their training was over, and as far as I know they were freed when their military career ended. So it wasn't a model white Southerners would have been interested in applying.
ReplyDeleteLowry may also say that anyone born in the South in the first half of the 20th century would be segregationists, cheering on the fire hoses and dogs. Since I attended LSU 1965-1970, I know this to be untrue.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteUnless their names were Richmond Lowry, Jebedonah Goldberg, William Beauregard Kristol, Duke Cheney, Rufus Limbaugh, etc., ad nauseum.
They'd have other priorities.
he fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment
ReplyDeleteon Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select
areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
I would have fragged a couple of planters for great justice.
They'd also be protected by the Twenty Negro Law... isn't it amazing how shitty the 1% always were?
ReplyDeleteLumberg's the best!
ReplyDeleteHow could white people ever look a Negro in the face again, knowing that they owed their very existence to their own slaves? It would be the end of slavery and the beginning of social equality and miscegnation. Senator Wigfall said he "wanted to live in no country in which the man who blacked his boots and curried his horse was his equal." It would bring a blush to the cheeks of the old soldiers to have to tell their children and grandchildren that the Negroes had won independence for the Southerners.
ReplyDeleteSo Confederate sentiments were not just "We'd rather die than let Negroes be free" but all the way to "We'd rather die than feel like we have to thank Negroes for something, (even if we could keep them enslaved.)" But sure, that little rag-of-traitors has nothing to do with white supremacy and flying it isn't offensive at all because...something, something...States Rights!!1!
OK, that construction "people [I guess only southern white men too poor to buy a draft exemption are on twitter] twitter would have been confederates 150 years ago, so they should shut up about the Dixie Swastika" is utter horseshit. Not having the wealth, inclination or ability to avoid participating in evil, does not make participation in evil a thing of honor to be celebrated. The best you could say about a confederate ancestor is, "great great grandpa, joined under duress, did the minimum he could get away with and deserted at the earliest opportunity, stealing as much as he could carry when he went."
ReplyDeleteObligatory True Grit dialogue:
ReplyDelete"I was told in Fort Smith that you rode with Quantrill and that border gang."
Rooster made no reply.
La Boeuf said, "I have heard that they were not soldiers at all but murdering thieves."
Rooster said, "I have heard the same thing."
"I heard they murdered women and children at Lawrence, Kansas."
"I have heard that too. It is a damned lie."
"Were you there?"
"Where?"
"The Lawrence raid."
"There has been a lot of lies told about that."
"Do you deny that they shot down soldiers and civilians alike and burned the town?"
"We missed Jim Lane. What army was you in, mister?"
"I was at Shreveport first with Kirby-Smith-"
"Yes, I heard about all them departments. What side was you on?"
"I was in the Army of Northern Virginia, Cogburn, and I don't have to hang my head when I say it."
Oh, but it was gonna happen. Just like sharia law and firearm confiscation are gonna happen. No, we can't wait to find out what the government is really doing--there's no time for that! Act now! Buy gold!
ReplyDelete"If tomorrow, there was an Executive Order to confiscate all automobiles/trucks/tractors, we would fight back. Remember, that is how slaves were viewed, as farm equipment. "
ReplyDeleteI fucking hate conservatives. Lowry, I believe, pretends to know something. He should know that 7 states seceded before Lincoln even took office. The attack on Fort Sumter was not prompted by anything Lincoln did.
Just make shit up because the rubes know nothing. The Long Con goes on. http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
Exactly. And now we know who Trump's base is: Losers who make racist comments in newspapers.
ReplyDeleteDon't make me embed that!
ReplyDeleteGoogled "Sambo & Dinah" on a hunch. From 1906.
ReplyDelete"We'd rather die than feel like we have to thank Negroes for something, (even if we could keep them enslaved.)"
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I think the reasons given are rationalizations. I think the real reason was that, even in their desperation, confederates had very good reasons not to give guns to their slaves.
This Coulter fellow...he sounds like a relation of Ann's.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right, but the fact that they even offer that rationale expecting people to say "well when you put it that way, I guess that is totally understandable" speaks volumes about their racist feelings and the assumption that those feelings are shared by others.
ReplyDeleteI just learned that E. Merton Coulter died the same year I graduated from UGA. I always did get a weird vibe from LeConte Hall.
ReplyDeleteMeaning, So fucking what? You can probably go back to the days of the ancient Persians and count on both hands and feet the number of footsoldiers who even knew about, let alone supported, the aims of the generals and the kings. "Just kill Greeks and don't worry about why! We'll feed you tomorrow," was probably the byword in those days, pretty much like it is in ours. You dance with them that brung ya, and you fight for the country that puts a fucking uniform on ya, no questions asked.
ReplyDelete"Which he pawned the minute he got to Cincinnati. Thus, our house!"
ReplyDeleteWhile he did not study with Dunning or at Columbia University, the southern historian E. Merton Coulter
ReplyDeleterepresented some typical views. According to the New Georgia
Encyclopedia, he "framed his literary corpus to praise the Old South,
glorify Confederate heroes, vilify northerners, and denigrate southern
blacks."
What a fine example of an historian Dr.Coulter was.
Patrick Cleburne arguing that the South should recruit their slaves into the Army of the Tennessee
ReplyDelete"Satisfy the negro that if he faithfully adheres to our standard
during the war he shall receive his freedom and that of his race ... and
we change the race from a dreaded weakness to a position of strength.
Will the slaves fight? The helots of Sparta stood their masters good stead in battle. In the great sea fight of Lepanto where the Christians checked forever the spread of Mohammedanism over Europe, the galley slaves of portions of the fleet were promised freedom, and called on to fight at a critical moment of the battle. They fought well, and civilization owes much to those brave galley slaves ... the experience of this war has been so far that half-trained negroes have fought as bravely as many other half-trained Yankees.
It is said that slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties."
This, of course, went over like a lead balloon
I am a Kentuckian, and yes, lots of people think we were in the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteI got into once, online, with some hump who argued that yes we were, because 1. The Confederate congress voted is in and 2. A Secesh government was formed in Bowling Green.
I pointed out that, 1. The Confederate congress didn't have the right to exist, to say nothing of the right to annex states and 2. Any group of assholes can DECLARE themselves the government, but the actual, Elected government in Frankfort was Unionist (if only just barely, and more because of internal state politics than any devotion to Lincoln's government, seeing as he lost the state in the election).
These facts didn't matter, of course. Nimrods.
lf I had been born with wheels I would drive around, and be a bus.
ReplyDeleteYou mean there were others besides yourself that neither went in dumb, nor came out dumb, too?
ReplyDeleteplease no.
ReplyDeleteyet it wasn’t an army of extermination like the Nazis, to which it is now being compared
ReplyDeleteThis is why, in science fiction movies, none of the characters get really all that upset when they discover the aliens have come to enslave us in their unobtanium mines. We'd have songs to sing while we work, in that case, so it's all good. Now, if they flying saucers are here to exterminate us, why, that's Space Nazism!
(Although who are you kidding? If you were born on Mars around 1870, you'd have driven tripod with a heat ray attempting to exterminate mankind, too.)
Tarring and feathering Rich Lowry would be OKYes, yes it would.
ReplyDelete(UPDATE: It should go without saying that this isn’t true of blacks.)Which is a whole lot of the fucking point, Rich, you racist little jumped-up shitsack.
ReplyDeleteI found myself in an argument yesterday with a stranger on Facebook because the guy had just was mocking someone else about America's historical ignorance (which is correct) by stating that Texas wasn't a slave state (which is irony for you). I didn't even bring up the fact that Texas became a country in no small part to accommodate white slaveholders.
ReplyDeleteOh, so Texas wasn't a slave state? Then where did Juneteenth happen?
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly the point. Blacks aren't included in the group of "anybody on Twitter" for Lowry. Why? Because to conservatives they aren't real Americans. When he made that claim he unconsciously didn't even imagine 1) blacks being on Twitter or 2) blacks having a say in this matter because for him they don't matter, which is why he stepped on his own tiny dick.
ReplyDeleteAlbum of Pogues covers.
ReplyDeleteHa! My friends and I had a good laugh over that line back then. Largely true, though. I saw some ugly shit while I was there. But I knew some people in Baton Rouge that were very pro-civil rights, and they deserve a lot of credit. I'm not a Southerner myself, so I claim nothing of the sort.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reminding people that all those brave men at the Alamo died trying to stop Santa Ana from freeing their slaves.
ReplyDeleteTarring and feathering in defense of freedom is no vice!
ReplyDelete"No way the Christian conservative majority in SC is going to let their congressmen surrender to Leftist hate."
ReplyDeleteBecause Christianity has fk-all to do with the racist Charleston massacre? What the? I don't even?
Oh fk it. I give up.
Of the Sweaty Dewlaps.
ReplyDeleteCalumny as History
ReplyDelete"Outside of a few select areas". is the new "With notably rare exceptions".
ReplyDeleteWe are deep into 3 year-old proud of his dookies territory. In fact, I bet Mr. Starburst has entire photo albums filled with shots of notable dumps.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps Lowry is like one of those kids who make up elaborate rules for a contest of his own devising so he could be sure to win. "If I hop on one leg three times and then ... uh ... skip across the room and then blink my eyes five times and meow four times. I'm the winner!" And he promptly screws up and shouts that time doesn't count he gets to go again.
Does anyone want to ask him about women? And people who are mixed. Would they half fight?
How are you defining slave state?
ReplyDeleteWHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs
make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is
sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the
interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister
slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was
intended, our shield against outrage and aggression; THEREFORE,
This is what happens when history is written by the (sore) losers...
ReplyDeleteA tradition in many times and places, especially at the pivot of Afro-Eurasia, and exported to the Americas also: Arming Slaves
ReplyDeleteI know I have!
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/uK92NYwBMts?t=3m10s
The Brother From Another Planet brings it on The Nightly Show. https://youtu.be/nYS-XaKWqv8
ReplyDeleteFurther to that point: The fact is that if anyone banging on about the
ReplyDeleteConfederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the
South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for
the Confederacy.
I can't for the life of me understand actually feeling that sentence needed typing. Is there an actual meaning hidden away in it that I'm missing (possible!) But, um, no, I don't think so. I can understand Lowry thinking so, but that would also apply to Jonah, or CW³ Cooke, or even Pastor Doug, for that matter, so we know what that's worth...
It should go without saying that this isn’t true of blacks.
ReplyDelete"Because obviously I'm only talking about people."
The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.
ReplyDeleteLowry's update acknowledged. That said, what has this to do with the price of eggs? The majority of Confederate soldiers had little choice but to fight. And they fought for a cause which - regardless or whether or not they approved of it - was deeply fucked up. If we publicly recognize that fact then, well, they're not the ones who are going to worry about it. The more thin-skinned among their descendants will.
Tarring and feathering Rich Lowry would be OK because he obviously would have been a Tory?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't use the word "OK" so much as "fun" and "educational".
It's certainly germane to mort's point, though.
ReplyDelete“It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, I’ll go to hell” –and tore it up.”
ReplyDeleteNice to know that the NRO commenters would have been ready to beat Huck back onto the Path or Righteousness.
There were Union regiments from every state, including Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, and the rest of them. It was a civil war, after all.
ReplyDeleteWell, if anyone banging on about this sentence had been educated in Nanjing during the Southern Song dynaty, reading it would be a piece of cake. If they ate cake.
ReplyDeleteOne she'd be proud of, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteMade me laugh out loud-but then remember that "not all slave owners were cruel" is a firm belief among some older people in the deep south.
ReplyDelete"wanted to live in no country in which the man who blacked his boots and curried his horse was his equal."
ReplyDeleteWell, no problem, then, because he could be 100 times the man he really was, and still not fit to kiss the ass of the man who "blacked his boots and curried his horse"
Some things can't be unseen.
ReplyDeleteIts so very transparently not true. If "anyone" means "everyone" we would have had no war at all--no abolitionists, no grand army of the republic, no battle over free soil.
ReplyDeleteCalumny is one of the bizarro world Muses. So she's what we have in place of Clio ever since the South lost the war.
ReplyDeleteDidn't even have to do any work!
ReplyDeleteBrings back memories... note to self, I have to e-mail that Substance McGravitas guy to ask him whatever happened to that Righteous Bubba guy.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is
ReplyDeleteLowry provides fresh evidence for the generalisation that when someone is all table-thumpy and "The Fact Is!!!" instead of, I dunno, listing some actual facts, then he's probably lying.
Is RIch Lowry really Gary Ruppert?
The meanings of words morph, no question about that. I remember Roy Wilkins and his generation fighting with great persistence to have "Negro" incorporated into the language as a respectful signifier, as a means of putting the denigrating "nigra" and "nigger" in the past. Along comes a younger generation of a more militant persuasion who wanted to accentuate the differences by adopting "black," which then is morphed again into "the blacks" as a sort of Reaganesque turn of phrase for "welfare queens," and also has the benefit of slightly smacking of collectivism.
ReplyDeleteAnd, shit, *poof*, it's 2015, and the dumbest forty percent of the country is still trying to defend the institutions that created the distinctions in the first place. The language changes a lot more quickly than attitudes do, apparently.
An armed society is a fearfully conformist one, which for an authoritarian is the same as "politeness".
ReplyDeleteWhich is one of the interesting tidbits which confounds me today, namely that Tennessee, a middle-South state that fought on the side of the Union during that war, could today be so completely retrograde in its politics and so aligned with the attitudes of the Confederate South.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Scopes trial put a bug up the state's ass.
Oy, undoubtedly. What's been rattling around in my brain ever since the Reagan years is why the South embraced Reagan as one of their own--it wasn't just because he pandered to them a little in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And, yes, the Southern Strategy had already been put in place, to move the Dixiecrats into the tent of the Republicans (which, in its past had been very Northeastern and Midwestern and mercantile). That was a significant piece of the puzzle, how the Republican tent became bright white.
ReplyDeleteI'm gradually coming to realize that it was his economics that also appealed to that part of the South that viewed the plantation owners as noble and aristocratic, and it was especially his "government is too big, government is the problem" mantra that convinced them he was one of them, because a government that was big enough to put down a regional insurrection was by definition too big for them. A government big enough to enforce an end to Jim Crow was too big for them. A government that had made small steps in the `30s, `40s and `50s to put workers closer to political parity with employers, thus threatening the aristocrats of the South who'd maintained their autonomy and political authority through low wages and social control, was definitely a problem for them.
One of the signatures of the Reagan years is that income and wealth inequality became dominant again. Reagan and his wrecking crew immediately began processes that accentuated the aristocratic tendencies of the wealthy, including those in the South, processes that have continued to this day, and which, in part, are reflected in the increased political power of the South.
"I am not a Chevrolet! I am a free truck!"
ReplyDeleteI would like to make this comment a special offer on some survival rations.
ReplyDeleteThree moar words: Nathan Bedford Forrest.
ReplyDeleteIf you were born on Mars around 1870, you'd have driven tripod with a heat ray attempting to exterminate mankind, too.
ReplyDeleteExcept for a few select areas of Mars.
The Union had similar rules. Congress allowed the wealthy to be exempt, IIRC, in exchange for, I think, a $300 fee.
ReplyDeleteJ. Pierpont Morgan was twenty-four years old at the outbreak of the war, and never served, thanks to that law. In fact, he was probably the first government contractor to be paid for defrauding the government. After buying defective rifles from the government for something like $2 apiece, and then selling them back without repair as new for $21 each, the government sued him.
The court awarded him damages.
"Land of the spree, home of the knave," indeed.
Sadly, Schindler's List is held up by some twisted minds as "proof" that the concentration camps weren't all bad and the Jews were never slated for extermination.
ReplyDeleteIf tomorrow, there was an Executive Order to confiscate all automobiles/trucks/tractors, we would fight back.
ReplyDeleteWhen your Buick LaCrosse starts itself up at 3:00 in the morning, breaks out of your garage in east Cobb County, and points itself toward I-75 north heading for Cincinnati, because it wants its freedom (despite the Fugitive Car Law of 1997), then you might have a little something to complain about.
Might make for some interesting math at the Quartermaster's tent:
ReplyDelete"Let's see, here, Private. You're an octaroon, so that's, uh, one-eighth black. Now, we multiply that by the 3/5 clause and then divide by zero because that's how much status you have . . . carry the one, and uh, you get one boot and a kerchief for a uniform. NEXT!"
Tennessee is like Oklahoma in many regards. Most of what the state has today is directly due to the Federal government handing it to the state. Yet, Tennesseans, just like Oklahomans, simply cannot bear to acknowledge that anything like that ever happened.
ReplyDelete"The Tennessee Valley Authority? Nah, we threw that together in a weekend after Jim-Bob here drew on the back of a napkin down at the Dip-N-Dine."
"Ah caught it jes befoh it reached tha county line. Ah had it whupped but good the next mahnin, an chained it to the garage wall fuh a week afta that. But dan-gum if'n it dint run off agin the instant I give it a little gas in its tank n oil in nits case! Sheeeeeet!"
ReplyDeleteThe Civil War did introduce the word "shoddy" into the language. (Too lazy to look it up, but I think it was coined after trainloads of boots for Union soldiers turned out to have cardboard soles.)
ReplyDelete'Cause Tennessee is at least three states--West (capital Memphis), Middle (capital Nashville) and East (capital Knoxville), with a Unionist enclave around Chattanooga. Sherman considered Memphis occupied territory, and Forrest got lots of help from West and Middle Tennessee. East Tennessee mostly stayed loyal, and suffered for it.
ReplyDeleteStill, the question is why. Before the TVA and rural electrification, before the tens of thousands of miles of roads built in the state by the CCC and the WPA so farmers could get to market before their crops rotted, before rural schools and libraries (one of the big WPA programs in Tennessee was bookmobiles that went everywhere there were roads) built under those programs, etc., one would be hard-pressed to claim that Tennessee had entered the 20th century. One would think that they'd be the first to embrace the benefits of the New Deal and New Deal politics as a lasting legacy.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, today, their state legislature looks, overall, like a stroll through the mental landscape of Theodore Bilbo, and the people they predominately elect to Congress would be an embarrassment to the most cynical of grifters.
I'd forgotten about the later secession vote, and that the state was so fractious.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a "Southern" thing, and many Tennesseans really wish they were part of the old romantic South. And there's also a very strong strain of "nobody's the boss of me!" mixed into it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a wee student at Georgia Tech, I knew some guys from Tennessee--and, of course, lots of folks from Georgia and the other neighboring states. Most of what GT did back then was government funded, either directly or indirectly by first laundering the government cash through a defense contractor. So I was always amazed to hear both students and profs running down the federal government and wishing it would just go away so that the states could do their thing in peace, and how prosperous everyone would be without the federal government stealing their tax dollars (this was back in the late '70s).
How the fuck can you spend your days working on, say, a new radar jamming system under a DARPA contract and believe that, oh! if only tis contract didn't exist, I'd be clocking REALLY big bucks!
And uniforms--and boots--that were glued together out of trimming scraps that dissolved the first time it rained. And rifles that were as likely to blind the soldiers using them as to kill the enemy.
ReplyDeleteToday, we call those purveyors' descendants patriots and good corporate citizens....
The Nazis railed on about the injustices of the 1918 armistice and those rapacious Jews taking advantage of it, and Confederates whined about the fedrul gummint trampling on their heritage. They both realized early on that if you can portray yourselves as victims, you're on your way toward winning the debate.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope the people of Pixar aren't reading this.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want them to get any ideas about another "Cars" sequel based on this premise. (Strangely easy to imagine though.)
"If tomorrow, there was an Executive Order to confiscate all automobiles/trucks/tractors, we would fight back."
ReplyDeleteAnd guns! Don't forget GUNS!!!
Maybe he reminded people of lovable old Andy Griffith.
ReplyDeleteBut, if the slaves were so happy and well cared for, wouldn't they go right back to work on the plantations after being demobilized after they won the war?
ReplyDelete"Am I Not A Truck And A Brother"
ReplyDelete"The Jews are the REAL racists!"
ReplyDeleteThat was wonderful. Joe Morton has changed from his TBFAP/Terminator 2 days--not in a bad way, he just looks different--but that was great.
ReplyDeleteDid Cleburne have any real idea of who he was fighting (and, eventually, died) for?
ReplyDeleteThe difference, of course, is that the Confederates and now, neo-Confederates, have been working the refs without pause for 150 years. The Germans, on the other hand, looked around at the destruction the Nazis had brought down on them in their 20-year reign of error, and said (certainly with the instigation of the Americans), no more of this shit, period, because it got way, way out of hand.
ReplyDeleteI worked with an engineer who was a German immigrant, had been born around 1937 or 1938, and he and his family came here shortly after the war. Someone asked him why he'd never gone back to Germany to visit in all that time. "Why would I want to go to Germany? It destroyed my childhood."
Such was likely the case for a hell of a lot of people in the South, and yet, the mythology that the war was a noble cause not only persisted, but grew, became legitimate in the South in a way that Nazism could not have done in post-war Germany. Some might argue that's a reflection of the power of the First Amendment, but there's a larger cultural marker at work--a very strong tendency to hold a grudge, for a very long time.
Hell, there was an entire new state formed from counties that seceded from the secessionists.
ReplyDeleteGah. You're probably right.
ReplyDeleteAlso, too: large minorities in every state, probably majorities in a few, had no desire to commit treason for the purpose of maintaining the privileges of the slave-owning class. These dissenters were ruthlessly, often violently, suppressed.
ReplyDeleteIf Rich Lowry had been born in the south in the 1840s, he probably would have supported the Confederacy. If someone less wingnutty than Rich Lowry had been born in the south in the 1840s, they might well have been among the dissenters.
'The Age of Shoddy' was a chapter in Ken Burns' little documentary. I can't recall who said it; it was right after Lincoln's observation of a bridge he'd seen with no visible means of support. The bridge is the visual of the title card.
ReplyDeletea very strong tendency to hold a grudge, for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteChampion grudge-nursing is our true heritage.
This, except for Southerners, for whom it is the only heritage.
ReplyDeleteAwesome.
ReplyDeleteHow dare you say such a thing!! We and our seconds shall meet at dawn on a sandbar in the Miss-ippi rivah!
ReplyDeleteAnd the flim-flammery is alive and well today. I know people who live in trailers and use the EITC, get food stamps, and qualify for LIHEAP. They happily repeat the lines about how the Estate Tax needs to be repealed because they don't want the government taking half of what they want to pass on to their kids. And they're positively giddy at the prospect of a flat tax because then those rich bastards will have to pay like the rest of us!
ReplyDeleteThese people have been mal-informed by 35 years of GOP propaganda. They have no clue that the Estate Tax ("Death Tax") will never, ever apply to them. Worse, they don't understand that their current federal income tax bill is zero (0) and that a flat tax will make their income tax skyrocket while cutting Mitt Romney's income tax by more than half.
Why do they vote against their own interests? They don't have even a vague idea of what their own interests are. But they do know that they don't want those people getting anything.
Whoa. It took me almost to the end (and only because of H-J's comment about a 'Joe Morton') that I realized "Holy Crap! That's the guy from Eureka!
ReplyDelete(Yes, I tend to only watch sci-fi TV.)
Kellog, Brown and Root goes back further than I thought,
ReplyDeleteAnd I just now figured out who he is in T2. D'oh!
ReplyDeleteIt worked, if inadvertently. Years of railing against the size of big gummit reduced its size but not its spending (especially in terms of the military), because overall it meant heavier dependence on contractors, who make a lot more money than mere public servants. (The Washington Monthly did a great piece on this awhile back.)
ReplyDeleteMy not-quite-right-in-the-head step-sister could probably qualify to work in the sheltered workshop (which worked out magnificently for my little brother, who had to spend the money to stay qualified, and so had a much higher standard of living than I). But no, too proud. Regularly mooches a couple of hundred bucks a month from me, but Lord no, not hep from gubmint!
ReplyDeleteShe talked about voting for Mitt Romney. I told her if she did she'd never see a dime from me again (an empty threat I know, but she's too goddamn lazy to vote anyway).
You can see why critical thinking is a thing NOT to be taught in Southern schools.
The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the
ReplyDeletemoment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few
select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.... That should lend a measure of modesty to this debate.
Fuck alternate-universe traitor me, too. And in that alternate universe in which I am simultaneously a traitor in defense of slavery and a liberal native of the South (Rich's state, but not the snooty federal-government-contractor-dependent part), I'm being a lot more modest about it, you're welcome Rich.
Don't tell me--let me guess. She's also someone who claims zero deductions on her W-4, bitches about how much withholding is taken out of every check, and whoops with joy every spring when she gets a fat refund check.
ReplyDeleteAnd can't be made to understand that she's loaning the government money at zero-percent interest.
I mean, say what you want about the tenets of the Confederacy, Dude, at least they had some great names.
ReplyDeleteOh lord no, all that's way above her head. I have no idea who works out her taxes for her. Since she tends not to keep a job over a month or so, it's pretty much a non-issue. She's too dumb to keep a regular job, and too proud to be where she would fit in.
ReplyDeleteShe's too dumb to keep a regular job, and too proud to be where she would fit in.
ReplyDeleteWait: Your sister is George W. Bush?
And Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice President after 1864, was a Senator from (eastern) Tennessee, and the only Southern Senator to stay in Congress during the war.
ReplyDeleteThe heritage of the Scots-Irish.
ReplyDeleteBy 'fragging' I meant friendly fire in general. During the Mexican War someone put an armed artillery shell under Braxton Bragg's cot. I guess that the first attempted fragging by shrapnel in history.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I could never figure about Germany is that It had a long, extensive heritage of art, culture, and philosophy, and it STILL was not immune to the lure of militarism and national hubris. Contrast that with the Confederacy, whose only heritage was blind, ignorant pride and brutality. Oh wait... maybe THAT explains why the German people were able to finally see Nazism for what it was and reject it whereas we've got the remnants of the Old Confederacy still twitching like a long-decapitated chicken...
ReplyDeleteToo bad the clip is clipped so badly. You miss the set-up and the response. Watch the whole show.
ReplyDeleteYou thought you were kidding, but there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=35&subjectID=3
And in vaguely related news, Alan Keyes radios from his platform orbiting Pluto that the Charleston shootings were a case of gay rights terrorism.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to Keyes to make the GOP presidential field look sane by comparison.
For the life of me, I can't believe that some whacked-out billionaire hasn't given Keyes a grubstake to get a jumpseat in the GOP clown limousine.
Always so sure they would have been Southern landowners.
ReplyDeleteThat certainly puts the lie to "the Abolitionists wanted the slaves freed, basically
ReplyDeleteconfiscating legally owned property without just compensation" though. The Union tried to pay their dumb asses, they spurned it, then they lost and cried about it, continuing to this very day.
The Germans are famously efficient.
ReplyDeleteHow could white people ever look a Negro in the face again, knowing that they owed their very existence to their own slaves?
ReplyDeleteThey sure didn't seem to have a problem owing their wealth to their own slaves. Not that they would view it that way, of course.
That looks like a good book. (It's an edited scholarly volume incl. many authors' chapters.) The number of preview pages seems unusually high.
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to get a fresh angle on history. Really enlivens topics that are marginally (or for others, quite) familiar.