This weekend James McPherson spoke out on NPR about neo-confederacy -- audio link here, or you can read the transcript.
An interesting contrast to today's media neo-confederacy blow-up with Haley Barbour and his foolishly mendacious presentation of the White Citizen's Council's activities in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Evidently he didn't think anyone noticed or remembered how they methodically, in systematic cooperation, destroyed the livelihoods of every NAACP leader in town.
This bit from one of the entries on Ta-Nehesi Coates's Atlantic Monthly blog today is something in which I too take delight; the NY Times Disunion blog is part of this. So was our Secession Ball Teach-In. You can hear the neocons strangling on their own lies as they write reams in response to these historical events, insisting secession happened because the North disrespected the slaverholders' hysterically bombastic states' rights claims and thus had nothing to do with slavery:
One of the great advantages of the internet is that when people make ignorant claims about American history, they can, with relative ease, be corrected. Andy Hall mentioned recently that this had been an awful year for Neo-Confederates. In part, I think, that's because with a mere click of the mouse you can discover what actual Confederates were saying ....And, why, yes! Secession was indeed all about slavery and nothing else.
5 comments:
From a 1907 letter written by Confederate hero John Mosby:
I wrote you about my disgust at reading the Reunion speeches: It has since been increased by reading Christians report. I am certainly glad I wasn’t there. According to Christian the Virginia people were the abolitionists & the Northern people were pro-slavery. He says slavery was “a patriarchal” institution – So were polygamy & circumcision. Ask Hugh is he has been circumcised. Christian quotes what the Old Virginians – said against slavery. True; but why didn’t he quote what the modern Virginians said [in] favor of it – Mason, Hunter, Wise &c. Why didn’t he state that a Virginia Senator (Mason) was the author of the Fugitive Slave law – & why didn’t he quote The Virginia Code (1860) that made it a crime to speak against slavery, or to teach a negro to read the Lord’s prayer. Now while I think as badly of slavery as Horace Greeley did I am not ashamed that my family were slaveholders. It was our inheritance – Neither am I ashamed that my ancestors were pirates & cattle thieves. People must be judged by the standard of their own age. If it was right to own slaves as property it was right to fight for it. The South went to war on account of slavery. South Carolina went to war – as she said in her Secession proclamation – because slavery wd. not be secure under Lincoln. South Carolina ought to know what was the cause for her seceding. The truth is the modern Virginians departed from the teachings of the Father’s. John C. Calhoun's last speech had a bitter attack on Mr Jefferson for his amendment to the Ordinance of `87 prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory. Calhoun was in a dying condition – was too weak to read it – So James M. Mason, a Virginia Senator, read it in the Senate about two weeks before Calhoun's death – Mch. 1850. Mason & Hunter not only voted against The admission of California (1850) as a free state but offered a protest against [it] wh. the Senate refused to record on its Journal Nor in the Convention wh. Gen. Taylor had called to from a Constitution for California, there were 52 Northern & 50 Southern men – but it was unanimous against slavery -- But the Virginia Senator, with Ron Tucker & Co. were opposed to giving [local] self-government to California. Ask Sam Yost to give Christian a skinning.
Take it from someone who knows: Virtually every day of teen years, Haley Barbour heard and probably said that anyone involved in the Civil Rights movement should be lynched.
Here's the WaPo, reporting on Charleston's bawl of secession celebration in the Style section today.
The WaPo would also like you to comment as to whether celebrating this event is a good thing to do.
Alas, you know there are going to be dozens of these events in the next four years.
Maybe we should start fund-raising now to throw events celebrating like those in Washington when Lee surrendered and the war was over.
Except one cannot forget that these celebrations were cut right off by the Assassination of President Lincoln.
This is the kind which we're dealing with.
Love, c.
They'll be celebrating the assassination, too.
The percentages that you're right about that are sadly high.
You quoted Mosby before; unlike me you probably have always known that Stanton put Mosby on running the hunt for Booth in MD and VA about 16 hours after the assassination.
Love, C.
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