The South will rise again.

The only thing that has risen down south is my....... Damn this Rocket Power Dancer poster is nice........

 

There was a big thread on the reasons for the start of the civil war earlier, it was quite informative.

What it boils down to is this : Slavery was the reason used in the South Carolina Decleration of Secession for their secession from the United States.

 

That's my favorite debate of all time on this bbs.


This issue can be so confusing.....I just don't want to get into it again. I'll just say that the South has a very distinct culture from the North, and let it go at that.

I hate that so many of our (Southern) symbols are waved around by hate groups. It is for that reason that we have such a bad rap.

F*ck the racists. They don't stand for us.

 

The Confederate battle flag did not exist until the formation of the Confederacy which strangely enough was completely comprised of slave holding states so I don't know how you think it's a "Southern" symbol. Strange coincidence that this "Southern symbol" appeared just as we weren't about to fight a war about slavery that in prior posts you want to use as an excuse for reparations for slavery. How does that work? We didn't fight a war for slavery but feel free to thank us for fighting a war for slavery?


Flag Fallacies
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/confederate1.html

Another misperception is that in a number of Southern states some version of the Confederate flag had been flown without interruption since the Civil War. For the most part, the Southern states that raised the Confederate battle flag or incorporated it into their state flag did so during the 1950s and 1960s, in a defiant stand against integration. Denmark Groover, the Georgia House floor leader who in 1956 sponsored the legislation to add the Southern Cross into the state flag, has freely admitted as much. He maintains that he and many of Georgia's legislators at the time were staunch segregationists who had urged that the Confederate symbol be added to the flag as a protest against federal integration orders. In 2001, 45 years later, Groover, now retired, again voiced his opinion on Georgia's flag, this time advocating that the divisive symbol be removed.

 

The Confederate battle flag did not exist until the formation of the Confederacy which strangely enough was completely comprised of southern states so I don't know how you think it's a "Slavery" symbol.

 

You probably wouldn't know.

 

13 years ago when I had World History my sophomore year in high school, my teacher said this saying several times during the year.

He said that to illustrate "culture" and how many Southerners took the loss of the Civil War to the North very hard. He also was letting us know that they are still "rednecks" today that feel that the South should be like it was before the Civil War. You are always going to have groups that are ignorant and could care less on who they offend. Those people certainly don't represent my view of the South and my feelings towards "Yankees." (although I do have a little disdain toward Yankees, but not to that extreme ).

I may be off-base here, but the impression that I got from my teacher is that saying was a popular slogan of "disgruntled" Southerners who longed for the days of the Antebellum South.

Not trying to defend Buck here, but I read his post as one of sarcasm that makes fun of this mentality and those who are "disgruntled", but I can't speak for him...only interpret what I read (and that may have not been done too well).

 

You see it as a racist symbol, then fine by me. I see it as a symbol of the South, of our heritage, not hate. If you want to feel some kind of white guilt about it, then you go right ahead.

Umm....what? I can trace back my family history a good bit, so my family has been here quite awhile. I had many ancestors fight and die on both sides of that war, North and South. The funny thing is, none of my Confederate ancestors owned slaves. Not one. Those on the Union side fought and died for their homeland, and those on the Confederate side did the same. The world was a different place, so I won't sit and pretend to understand their reasons in this modern day.

What is your point and why did you direct this to me?

 

Originally posted by Lynus302
You see it as a racist symbol, then fine by me. I see it as a symbol of the South, of our heritage, not hate. If you want to feel some kind of white guilt about it, then you go right ahead.

I see it as the what it is, a battle flag for the Confederacy which fought a war to keep the right to enslave people. If you're fine with that then you need to shake yourself. I'm not white and my only guilt has to do with warped people in the South watching too many Dukes of Hazzard reruns and not having much of a clue what the Confederate flag represents. You want to think it represents Southern Belles and Carolina mansions but what it repsents is the bigotry of a people that would fight a war to keep people enslaved. It's just as insulting as the Swastika and anyone who thinks that's a symbol of German heritage is also pretty warped.

Umm....what? I can trace back my family history a good bit, so my family has been here quite awhile. I had many ancestors fight and die on both sides of that war, North and South. The funny thing is, none of my Confederate ancestors owned slaves. Not one. Those on the Union side fought and died for their homeland, and those on the Confederate side did the same. The world was a different place, so I won't sit and pretend to understand their reasons in this modern day.

You said on these boards that the Civil War was not about slavery and then later you bashed reparations by saying you were owed a thank you for your ancestors who fought to free the slaves. Is the Civil War only about slavery when you want a thank you? I find your use of "states rights" to be comensurate with drug dealers calling cocaine "product". What do you feel guilty, ashamed, or so indifferent about that you disguise slavery with the term states rights?

This is your direct quote by the way.

This lady needs to get over herself. I don't owe her a thing, except maybe a "Thank You" for the good half of my ancestors who fought and died to free her ancestors.

What is your point and why did you direct this to me?

You have claimed here that the Confederate flag isn't about hatred but rather southern heritage. You claim that hate groups misuse the symbol. Here I have an admission from a Georgia legislator that the introduction of the Confederate flag into various southern state flags was a symbol of their support for segregation and presumably their hatred for blacks. So are state legislatures now considered hate groups or is that ole flag maybe just a symbol of hatred after all? The southern legislatures that incorporated that flag into their own state flags in support of segregation didn't seem too confused about what the Confederate flag represents.

 

I was born and raised in Texas, as were my parents.

The Confederate Flag doesn't represent a single thing about me, as far as I'm concerned.

It's a piece of a sad, tragic part of this country's history - and as such, should exist as a historic symbol in a museum.


But somehow I doubt the teenager with the flag draped across the back of his mud-stained pickup could name a single Civil War general, much less recite some history. So what does it become then?


People are divided enough as it is - "The South Shall Rise Again" is inane.

 

This is just about half of the speech cause it's pretty long. I think this guy might have known what secession and the Civil War was about and I lost count of how many times he referred to slavery.

Call for a Referendum on a Tennessee Secession Convention
Speech of Tennessee Governor Isham G. Harris
January 7, 1861

THE ninth section of the third article of the Constitution, provides that, on extraordinary occasions, the Governor may convene the General Assembly. Believing the emergency contemplated, to exist at this time I have called you together. In welcoming you to the capitol of the State, I can but regret the gloomy auspices under which we meet. Grave and momentous issues have arisen, which, to an unprecedented degree, agitate the public mind and imperil the perpetuity of the Government.

The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizen; the rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely sectional party, whose bond of union is uncompromising hostility to the rights and institutions of the fifteen Southern States, have produced a crisis in the affairs of the country, unparalleled in the history of the past, resulting already in the withdrawal from the Confederacy of one of the sovereignties which composed it, while others are rapidly preparing to move in the same direction. Fully appreciating the imortance of the duties which devolve upon you, fraught, as your action must be, with consequences of the highest possible importance to the people of Tennessee; knowing that, as a great Commonwealth, our own beloved State is alike interested with her sisters, who have resorted, and are preparing to resort, to this fearful alternative, I have called you together for the purpose of calm and dispassionate deliberation, earnestly trusting, as the chosen representatives of a free and enlightened people, that you will, at this critical juncture of our affairs, prove yourselves equal to the occasion which has called for the exercise of your talent and patriotism.

A brief review of the history of the past is necessary to a proper understanding of the issues presented for your consideration.

Previous to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, each State was a separate and independent Government-a conplete sovereignty within itself --and in the compact of union, each reserved all the rights and powers incident to sovereignty, except such as were expressly delegated by the Constitution to the General Government, or such as were clearly incident, and necessary, to the exercise of some expressly delegated power. The Constitution distinctly recognizes property in slaves--makes it the duty of the States to deliver the fugitive to his owner, but contains no grant of power to the Federal Government to interfere with this species of property, except "the power coupled with the the duty," common to all civil Governments, to protect the rights of property, as well as those of life and liberty, of the citizen, which clearly appears from the exposition given to that instrument by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford. In delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Taney said:

"Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion upon a different point, the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."

"And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only power conferred, is the power coupled with the duty, of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights."

This decision of the highest judicial tribunal, known to our Government, settles the question, beyond the possibility of doubt, that slave property rests upon the same basis, and is entitled to the same protection, as every other description of property; that the General Government has no power to circumscribe or confine it within any given boundary; to determine where it shall, or shall not exist, or in any manner to impair its value. And certainly it will not be contended, in this enlightened age, that any member of the Confederacy can exercise higher powers, in this respect, beyond the limits of its own boundary, than those delegated to the General Government.



The States entered the Union upon terms of perfect political equality, each delegating certain powers to the General Government, but neither deterring any power to the other to interfere with its reserved rights or domestic affairs; hence, there is no power on earth which can rightfully determine whether slavery shall or shall not exist within the limits of any State, except the people thereof acting in their highest sovereign capacity.

The attempt of the Northern people, through the instrumentality of the Federal Govermuent--their State governments, and emigrant aid societies--to confine this species of property within the limits of the present Southern States--to impair its value by constant agitation and refusal to deliver up the fugitive--to appropriate the whole of the Territories, which are the common property all the people of all the States, to the Southern man who is unwilling to live under a government which, may by law recognize the free negroe as his equal; "and in fine, to put the question where the Northern mind will rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction" is justly regarded by the people of the Southern States as a gross and palpable violation of the spirit and obvious meaning of the compact of Union--an impertinent intermeddling with their domestic affairs, destructive of fraternal feeling, ordinary comity, and well defined rights.

As slavery receded from the North, it was followed by the most violent and fanatical opposition. At first the anti-slavery cloud, which now overshadows the nation, was no larger than a man's hand. Most of you can remember, with vivid distinctness, those days of brotlierhood,.when throughout the whole North, the abolitionist was justly regarded as an enemy of his country. Weak, diminutive and contemptible as was this part in the purer days of the Republic, it has now grown to collossal proportions, and its recent rapid strides to power, have given it possession of the.present House of Representatives, and elected one of its leaders to the Presidency of the United States; and in the progress of events, the Senate and Supreme Court must also soon pass into the hands of this party--a party upon whose revolutionary banner is inscribed, "No more slave States, no more slave Territory, no return of the fugitive to his master"--an "irrepressible conflict" between the Free and Slave States; "and whether it, be long or short, peaceful or bloody, the struggle shall go on, until the sun shall not rise upon a master or set upon a slave."

Nor is this all; it seeks to appropriate to itself, and to exclude the slaveholder from the territory acquired by the common blood and treasure of all the States.

It has, through the instrumentality of Emigrant Aid Societies, under State patronage, flooded the Territories with its minions, armed with Sharp's rifles and bowie knives, seeking thus to accomplish, by intimidation, violence and murder what it could not do by constitutional legislation.

It demanded, and from our love of peace and devotion to the Union, unfortunately extorted in 1819-'20, a concession which excluded the South from about half the territory acquired from France.

It demanded, and again received, as a peace offering in 1845, all of that part of Texas, North of 36 deg. 30' North latitude, if at any time the interest of the people thereof shall require a division of her territory.

It would submit to nothing less than a compromise in 1850, by which it dismembered that State, and remanded to territorial condition a considerable portion of its territory South of 36 30.

It excluded, by the same Compromise, the Southern people from California, whose mineral wealth, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate, is not surpassed on earth, by prematurely forcing her into the Union under a Constitution, conceived in fraud by a set of adventurers, in the total absence of any law authorizing the formation of a Constitution, fixing the qualification of voters, regulating the time, place, or manner of electing delegates, or the time or place of the meeting of such Convention. Yet all these irregular and unauthorized proceedings were.sanctified by the fact that the Constitution prohibited slavery, and forever closed the doors of that rich and desirable territory against the Southern people. And while the Southern mind was still burning under a humiliating sense of this wrong, it refused to admit Kansas into the Union upon a Constitution, framed by authority of Congress, and by delegates elected in conforinity to law, upon the ground that slavery was recognized and protected.

It claims the constitutional right to abolish slaverv in the District of Columbia, the forts, arsenals, dock-yards and other places ceded to the United States, within the limits of slaveholding States.

It proposes a prohibition of the slave trade between the States, thereby crowding the slaves together and preventing their exit South, until they become unprofitable to an extent that will force the owner finally to abandon them in self-defence.

It has, by the deliberate Legislative enactments of a large majority of the Northern States, openly and flagrantly nullified that clause of the Constitution which provides that- "No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such labor may be due."

This provision of the Constitution has been spurned and trampled under foot by these "higher law " nullifiers. It is utterly powerless for good, since all attempts to enforce the fugitive slave law under it are made a felony in some of these States, a high misdemeanor in others, and punishable in all by heavy fines and imprisonment. The distempered public opinion of these localities having risen above the Constitution and all other law, planting itself upon the anarchical doctrines of the " higher law," with impunity defies the Government, tramples upon our rights, and plunders the Southern citizen.

It has, through the Governor of Ohio, as openly nullified that part of the Constitution which provides that-"A person charged in any State.with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from jistice and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime."

In discharge of official duty, I had occasion, within the past year, to demand of the Governor of Ohio " a person charged in the State (of Tennessee) with the crime " of slave stealing, who had fled from justice, and was found in the State of Ohio.' The Governor refused to issue his warrant for the arrest and delivery of the fugitive, and in answer to a letter of inquiry which I addressed to him, said: 'The crime of negro stealing not being known to either the common law or the criminal code of Ohio, it is not of that class of crimes contemplated by the Federal Constitution, for the commission of which I am authorized, as the executive of Ohio, to surrender a fugitive from the justice of a sister State, and hence I declined to issue a warrant," &c.; thus deliberately nullifying and setting at defiance the clause of the Constitution above quoted, as well as the act of Congress of February 12th, 1793, and grossly violating the ordinary comity existing between separate and independent nations, much less the comity which should exist between sister States of the same great Confederacy; the correspondence connected with which is herewith transmitted.

It has, through the executive authority of other States, denied extradition of murderers and marauders.

It obtained its own compromise in the Constitution to continue the importation of slaves, and now sets up a law, higher than the Constitution, to destroy this property imported and sold to us by their fathers.

It has caused the murder of owners in pursuit of their fugitive slaves, and shielded the murderers from punishment.

It has, upon many occasions, sent its emissaries into the Southerri States to corrupt our slaves; induce them to run off, or excite them to insurrection.

It has run off slave property by means of the "underground railroad," amounting in value to millions of dollars, and thus made the tenure by which slaves are held in the border States so precarious as to materially impair their value.

It has, by its John Brown and Montgomery raids, invaded sovereign States and murdered peaceable citizens.

It has justified and "exalted to the highest honors of admiration, the horrid murders, arsons, and rapine of the John Brown raid, and has canonized the felons as saints and martyrs."

It has burned the towns, poisoned the cattle, and conspired with the slaves to depopulate Northern Texas.

It has, through certain leaders, proclaimed to the slaves the terrible motto, "Alarm to the sleep, fire to the dwellings, poison to the food and water of slaveholders."

It has repudiated and denounced the decision of the Supreme Court.

It has assailed our rights as guarantied by the plainest provisions of the Constitution, from the floor of each house of Congress, the pulpit, the hustings, the school-room, their State Legislatures, and through the public press, dividing and disrupting churches, political parties, and civil governments.

It has, in the person of the President elect, asserted the equality of the black with the white race.

These are some of the wrongs against which we have remonstrat- ed for more than a quarter of a century, hoping, but in vain, for their redress, until some of our sister States, in utter despair of obtaining justice at the hands of these lawless confederates, have resolved to sever the ties which have bound them together, and maintain those rights out of the Union, which have been the object of' constant attack and encroachment within it.

No one will assert that the Southern States or people have, at any time, failed to perform, fully and in good faith, all of the duties which the Constitution devofves upon them.

Nor will it be pretended that they have, at any time, encroached or attempted aggression upon the rights of a Northern sister State. The Government was for many years under the control of Southern statesmen, but in originating and perfecting measures of policy, be it said to the perpetual bonor of the South, she has never attempted to encroach upon a single constitutional right of the North. The journals of Congress will not show even the introduction of a single proposition, by any Southern Representative, calculated to impair her rights in property, injure her trade, or wound her sensibilities. Nor have they at any time demanded at the hands of the Federal Government, or Northern States, more than their well-defined rights under the Constitution. So far from it, they have tolerated these wrongs, from a feeling of loyalty and devotion to the Union, with a degree of patience and forbearance uparalleled in the history of a brave and free people. Moreover, they have quietly submitted to a revenue system which indirectly, but certainly, taxes the products of slave labor some fifty or sixty millions of dollars annually, to increase the manufacturing profits of those who have thus presistently and wickedly assailed them.

To evade the issue thus forced upon us at this time, without the fullest security for our rights, is, in my opinion, fatal to the institution of slavery forever. The time has arrived when the people of the South must prepare either to abandon or to fortify and maintain it. Abandon it, we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity, and domestic happiness. We owe it to the mechanic whose shop is closed, to the multiplied thousands of laborers thrown out of employment, to the trader made bankrupt by this agitation. We owe it to ourselves, our children, our self-respect and equality in the Government, to have this question settled permanently and forever upon terms consistent with justice and honor, and which will give us peace and perfect securiity for the present and future.

 

And the award for longest post that absolutely no one will bother to read goes to.......

I guess I just can't be bothered to care enough about the brief history of the Confederacy and what it may or may not have stood for to get all worked up about keeping the flag around. It's a corrupted symbol at this point. Whatever meaning it may have had as a symbol for the beauty of the South or whatever is long gone. It's nothing but a symbol of hate anymore, and I don't have any problem with it being disappeared.

Why must the Confederate Battle Flag be the symbol for the South? Why can't we celebrate the good things about the South without using that symbol that has been co-opted by hate groups and used in defiance against integration and whatnot? The Confederacy had several flags, some of which are apparently not offensive to African-Americans and others (I've not heard of anyone complaining about the Confederate Flag that flies over Arlington these days). Why do we insist on using the one that is also a symbol of hate to show our support for the "South" (of course, I'm no fan of the Deep South anyway. I don't like to leave Texas, a state that was part of the Confederacy but far different from "The South", especially these days)? I suspect Germans can celebrate thier heritage without whipping out a Swastika. Why are we unable to use less-offensive symbols to celebrate whatever heritage it is that we want to celebrate?

Is it really only possible to celebrate the heritage of the South with that one Confederate Battle Flag (the flag that wasn't even the official flag of the Confederacy)?

But hey, I guess it's none of my business. I don't want to celebrate the heritage of the South (don't really want to celebrate the heritage of the North, either). I don't even like to admit that half my family is from Arkansas.

 

The Confederate Flag, like it or not, is a symbol of the south and also reminds us of the Civil War. The war wasn't fought to preserve slavery. That was an excuse that the North used to start the war.

 

Did you even bother to read what Timing posted?

 

My family on my Mom's side immigrated from Germany (Prussia) to the Hill Country around 1832, IIRC. My dad's side is English, German & Cherokee & have lived in the Marble Falls area since after the Civil War. Not a slaveholder among my direct relatives, something I'm immensely proud of.

In no way was I denigrating those who fought for the South. Most were fighting for their homeland & probably had little idea the true political motives behind Secession.

I am a Texan, not a Southerner. The Confederate Battle Flag, the concept of the "Old South" mean absolutely nothing to me. They don't represent me or my heritage. Why someone would take pride in the single most divisive symbol of the darkest period in our country's existence is beyond me.

 

AND THE NOMINEES ARE:

1. The Mint Julep

2. really, really sweet iced-tea

3. boiled peanuts

4. grits

5. Dogwoods

6. Azaleas

It's either beverage, food, or foliage!