Don't Kid Yourself -- "Southern Heritage" Is All About Race

[DanS]

Whenever I see the stars and bars, I'm reminded of Southern Heritage, but not in anyway good. I'm reminded that the civil war really was fought for slavery on the South's part and against it on the North's. For some reason we're supposed to ignore the "elephant in our living room" of slavery in the whole mess for the sake of Southern pride--what a charade. I'm reminded that we're only 40 years from segregation even here in the Nation's capital.

My sister lives in Louisiana, and the common refrain among whites (including her, by now) is that this heritage stuff is about the freedom blah. But the truth remains. The power structure is still white in most areas and many blacks feel instinctively threatened by it. The blacks are the poorest of the lot.

Good thing we don't have Lott as our GOP leader any more. A GOP made up of "Southern Heritage" codewords ain't my Grand Ole Party.

"Southern Heritage" is just a code word for keeping the blacks down.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52100-2002Dec29.html

[My Wife Hates CIV]

This is common knowledge.

BTW MarkG - This site's subscription to SpellChecker.net has expired.

[DanS]

Good God, why did you need to spellcheck that post.

[DinoDoc]

Waits for MtG.

[Arrian]

Ah, and here I thought the forum was gonna be boring today. Thank you, DanS, for livening things up a bit. :ducks for cover:

-Arrian

[DanS]

"Waits for MtG."

[monkspider]

You have my support Dan.
*runs*

[DanS]

Don't cower in the shadows, boys. Join the Union ranks! Our cause is just and our rifles true.

[Lancer]

Remember Fort Sumpter!

Anyone know any good sites where I can wait out my ban?

Btw, whatever happened to that wierd SMAC site?

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Originally posted by DanS
Good God, why did you need to spellcheck that post.

?? because i can't speell. i kinda figured one wouldnt have to ask.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Bump for MtG .

[Dis]

I have western heritage. What is that?

West is best! West is best!

[MichaeltheGreat]

I can not disappoint an audience which awaits.

Correction: Cracker Heritage is all about race. I can think of plenty of other pejoratives for the less enlightened folks down further south.

The monolith argument is as full of BS as any of the southern revisionists' claims.

Seven of fourteen states who did not willingly support the Union did so for reasons clearly identified with slavery, however, tariffs and other forms of regional economic warfare (between cotton planters in the south and wholesale consumers in the north) played a role in aggravating the north-south political divide.

Other states seceded or declared neutrality for different reasons - Virginia being the only state to first reject secession, then approve it after Lincoln's call for "volunteers" to be furnished by the states and put under Federal control. Virginia was directed to raise and turn over some 2300 "volunteers" to invade other states, and was itself to be the clear invasion route for Federal armies.

The north fighting to get rid of slavery argument is a crock also. The Emancipation Proclamation was very unpopular throughout much of the Union Army, particularly the less gentrified folks out west, (most of 'em probably couldn't read those big words, or see ol' Abe with his fingers crossed behind his back )

Delaware remained a Union slave state until passage of the 13th Amendment, and if you read the full text of the Emancipation Proclamation and research the background to it, it was a document declaring a form of ecnomic warfare, rather than a beacon of freedom for the black man. A number of abolitionists were disgusted with it, and one of the cabinet (I think it was Stanton) referred to it as not freeing those blacks in Union control, and freeing those not in Union control.

The transparency of that document is obvious if people read it: It had a starting trigger of January 1, 1863, over three month after issuance, and provided that slaves would be declared free only in those areas not within the union at the time. Any state or region which rejoined the union would have been allowed to keep it's slaves, and that's stated on the face of the document.

Let's be practical for a moment (and un-PC as all hell ), and assume there was no secesh and no little war. That Sumter was just a fireworks show for the enjoyment of the citizenry, and Major Anderson and Captain Doubleday were the guests of honor.

Do you really think the north was going to free six million slaves, and tell everyone "ok, you're free, so the bossman has to pay you cash wages, and if you don't like what he pays, you're free to move about anywhere you want?" Mind you, you have a southern economy that is illiquid by nature (a fact that was hardened by the crash of 1857), southern plantation owners in debt to Yankee banks for the purchase of slaves, and a north that was recovering from the effects of the 1857 liquidity crisis? (one reason for passage of tariff laws to extract currency from the south, or force it to trade domestically with northern mills and buy northern products in trade at inflated prices).

Tell me now, how much political support (absent a war to "preserve the Union" would there be for:

Giving freed slaves their 40 acres and a mule in lieu of the Homestead Act of 1862, which was for the benefit of white people?

Having the Federal government take over the debt of plantation owners whose "collateral" had just walked off to go up north looking for paying work?

Yankee banks forgiving their slave debt, rather than foreclosing on plantation owners, and then selling the plantations over to their friends and political cronies, the Yankee mill owners?

Having a Federal tax on white people (since the just-freed slaves didn't have any money, who else would you tax) to provide some form of relief to the just freed slaves?

Having hundreds of thousands of ex-slaves moving into northern cities and towns competing with white unskilled labor? (Maybe the Molly Maguires would have been the start of the Yankee Klan)

Giving blacks full civil rights including suffrage? (mind you, it would be 60 more years before white males deigned to give women the vote?)

Accepting blacks for military service (as something other than camp labor)?

How about Federal taxes to pay blacks to return to Africa (sort of Liberia on a mass scale)? That's about the closest chance you had to do something absent a war for other purposes.

So tell me how resoundingly the north was out to free the slaves? That came along when the war was all but won, when people were so distracted by battle news, casualties, the draft and other issues that things like paper money and debt financing of government were unquestioned.

Mind you, in northern cities such as Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, and others, restrictive covenants on land (agreements not to sell to "negros" and jews) were common until declared unenforceable by SCOTUS. Remember that famous trial by Clarence Darrow, where a black man was put on trial for murder for shooting a white man in a mob that was there to burn him and his family out of their home? What part of the country was that in, huh? And when?

"Moral abolitionists" (those opposed to slavery purely on the grounds of rights, as opposed to those opposed to it because it was the underpinning of the southern economy and the key to breaking the backs of the cotton producers) were a very small minority on the political scene in 1860.

The current "Heritage" movement in the south is of course contaminated by *******s who realize white sheets immediately turns off 3/4 of your audience, and makes most of the rest quietly back away a few steps. The worst thing is that most of the dumbasses aren't from the social class that ever held slaves in the first place, so it's not even their ancestor's sins they deny.

There's nothing that an acknowledgement of the evils of slavery (and Jim Crow) and efforts to cure that legacy would do to diminish southern heritage (after all, we still kicked your asses in anything close to a standup fight ) There are plenty of fundamental evils in the history of the American colonies and the US in general that the south doesn't need to duck away from it's share.

Instead, what you've got is competing schools of revisionists. So many axes, so few grindstones.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DanS
Don't cower in the shadows, boys. Join the Union ranks! Our cause is just and our rifles true.

Not that you could use them, but those 100,000 or so you boys left for us on the battlefield just in 1862 alone were fit enough for service.

[Dis]

yes but MTG, most white trash don't know any of those things you pointed out. To them the southern defiance was about slavery and protecting their way of life.