Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire So Give Me The Straight Dope on the Confederate Flag.

IIRC, it was only Va, Al, and Tx that mentioned "slaveholding" states in their respective Ordinances.

It also appeared to me that it was used by those respective states as a means of identifying the block of seceding states.

Keep in mind for those three that used the term, other states chose a simple, and probably much more appropriate use of their ordinance, e.g. NC:



Choosing not to identify any issues in their ordinance as the other did, nor choosing to outline any solidarity in their secession, just simply wanting to GTFO.

my read...

The flag is the white guys "N" word. Between whites, it has one meaning. Between blacks, another. The "meaning" of the flag was taken over by haters, and so its stuck there. Lots of ways to honor ones heritage, but a symbol thats been corrupted by hate is probably not the first choice.

Face it, those that worship it as heritage shoulda fought harder to dispel what ever "real meaning" it has/had.

Southern black Americans have heritage too and WE all live under ONE flag.

Most in the South did not need to own slaves to understand the repercussions of having Blacks free to roam the countryside let alone complete for jobs, property and eventually vote.

As a very young boy, i would hear stories from my grandmother about her great grandfather (my GGG Grandfather) and his brothers, whom she knew till he died in 1929 (she was 10). He fought for the CSA out of Tennessee and rode under Forrest. He was told he would receive 50$ whether the war lasted 5 months or 5 years, and obviously never saw a penny. every year we would drive up to Tennessee where we have a farm, we would pass many battlefields like kennesaw mountain, chickamauga, missionary ridge, atlanta, stones river, etc

I had family members imprisoned by union and killed by the union.

I would hear the stories about generals, outnumbered, outgunned, valor, bravery, overcoming odds etc and always feel a sense of pride that I had kin who took part in that. None of my kin who fought owned a plantation or slaves. Seeing the battle flag, which i think looks "cooler" than old glory, alaways filled me with a sense of pride of my heritage and where I came from. Never once was it a white supremacy issue, it was a "Hey thats part of who I am, who we were."

That flag is woven into the fabric of my youth...

My family is a member of the: First Families of Tennessee (FFT). Membership is open to anyone who can prove direct descent from a person or persons living in any part of what is now Tennessee before or by statehood in 1796.


MY GGG Grandfather and General Forrest

Well, it appears that in the span of the Revolution to the civil war, everyone would have you believe that the inspiration to fight for freedom from oppression was totally removed from our genes and that the entire civil war was fought over keeping negros in the outbuilding.

But I guess being able to vilify a flag is the first step towards vilifying other inanimate symbols of "hate".

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html

Of course the Confederate Constitution and the Articles of Succession from all the seceding states, and primary among those the five states that included Declaration of Causes, in which slavery was the first item mentioned in most cases.

History has been effectively re-written many times throughout history, but in each case they removed all evidence to the contrary. The entire premise that slavery had little to do with the civil war is, on it's face, ludicrous. That these documents exist only attests to that obvious fact.

Was there ever any war that wasnt fought for freedom from oppression? The swastica is vilified, an rightfully so.

Are you comfortable saying the Vietnam War was fought to prevent the spread of communism? Or the invasion of Iraq to bring freedom to the populace? Wars are fought over dollars and cents regardless of what one person wrote on a piece of paper. This is not an attack on you, but a lack of faith in looking at who decided to write something down.

I am surprised no one has mentioned the Japanese-American internment which happened in WWII. Our current flag allowed 127,000 Japanese-Americans to be stripped of their property and rights and placed in concentration camps. I guess we should changes this flag too. Right?

what did our current flag do presiding over the trail of tears and wounded knee, eradication of native americans from their land, and almost genocide

I suppose the spat with the limey's circa 1776 was really over Tea taxes?

Killed a lot of Indians too.

These weren't letters to home or something scribbled on a scrap of paper. These were official documents detailing the most important issue of that day, and likely written and re-written repeatedly with much input and discussion until they were exactly right for the situation.

My purpose in the post is not to make anyone feel bad about matters important to them, but to say, No!, it is not acceptable in light of the apparent facts to say the civil war was not about slavery.

I mentioned once before that much of the black angst towards whites hinges on the fact that they can't seem to find a word identifier for whites that really upsets them. Nothing really works! Think about it.

I known it sounds simple and childish. But there is a lot of fact in the statement.

It is a frequently repeated lie on this board by the Yankees, Scallywags, and generally uninformed that ALL the Confederate states seceded because of slavery. However, that is demonstrably untrue.

I give you the case of Arkansas. Arkansas, being a slave state, got caught up in the secession fever and had a convention to decide the issue in early 1861. Guess what happened? Though the arguments were passionate and their sympathies were certainly with the seven states who had already seceded, the delegates of Arkansas decided NOT to secede. They decided that the issues, including the question of slavery WERE NOT to the point that secession was necessary or desirable.

Then Ft. Sumter happened and Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down what he called an insurrection. He asked Arkansas for its levy. I give you Arkansas' response in its Ordinance of Secession:

Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:

Thus it is DEMONSTRABLY FALSE to assert that Arkansas seceded because of slavery. Arkansas seceded because it felt that Abraham Lincoln was wrong to try to force other states to submission by force of arms and that it would have no part of that.

The same could likewise be said of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia...all of which did not secede until AFTER Ft. Sumter and AFTER Lincoln sent out the call for troops. Then and ONLY then did they join the Confederacy and align themselves with the other slaveholding states. For them, more than slavery, the issue was one of federal force and federal power. Did the president and the federal government have the right to bring the power of the federal government to bear on the individual states and to force them back into the union? For them, the answer was a resounding "no" and they threw their lots with the Confederacy.

Had Lincoln allowed the seven seceding states to go in peace. It is unlikely that Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina would have joined the Confederacy at that time.

If it helps the delicate sensibilities of the minority, I choose to be offended by the phrase "taxpayer".

They can call me that, and I will demonstrate being pissed off.

As to slavery, no one is saying that it was not a part of the reasoning about secession, to some a big part, to others a small part, but since the North was not trying to free the slaves at that time, it was mostly other things. The North wanted to limit new States from being slave states, thus building their power base. The North was in effect trying to make slaves out of the whole south by limiting their freedom, in several ways. miles

You mean it wasn't over oppression?

I agree and it's not just blacks. Women have their word(s), latino's have their's, etc. White American men, knowing both who and what they are, cannot be moved by a mere word, regardless how deprecating that word might be.

I'd like to have my word. Not to be offended by it, but to mock it.

I am having the same problem understanding what the big deal is. In my mind it is just taking pride in the part of the country where they live.

Here's the straight dope on the Confederate Flag issue and every other issue that the liberals howl about.

If you're a straight, white, conservative male, there's only one way you can make the liberals content.

Die.

So fuggum.