South Carolina Governor wants to remove Confederate flag

[Team Sergeant]

Personally I say we ban everything that's offensive to anyone and give our government special powers to do as it pleases when it pleases whenever it pleases. Because I don't think we have evolved to a level where we can govern ourselves.

I also believe that having a 103 year old supreme court justice is a great idea along with giving free housing, food, medical services, education to millions of illegal aliens.

I think that gay parades and walking around with a dildo stuck up your ass in front of the children is a freedom we should all strive for.....

The individual that came up with the idea for the movie "The Purge" is a friggin genius and should be president of the USA.


Now if you'll excuse me I have some protesting to do for the EPA so we can bring the growth of the United States to a complete fucking stop.

[Streck-Fu]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

You are ignoring a complicated, ongoing discussion over Lincoln's views on race, slavery, and politics, and how they changed over time.*

Of course his views evolved when the union army needed more men.....

How much did Lincoln's views 'evolve' in his 50s? We are not discussing the evolution of a person from the ages of 15 to 50....

Originally Posted by Lincoln, 1862. Speaking to black ministers at the White House

You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. You here are freemen I suppose.

Originally Posted by Lincoln, 1858 debates

And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Your source references the above quote and writes this about it:

The language, as so often in his public pronouncements on race, is painstakingly impartial and circumspect but not, I would argue, because he is flattering his audience’s prejudices (although this would imply he did not share those prejudices himself). While the statement is a cautious one, and admits of more than one interpretation, read literally, it is not racist. Lincoln does not say, as most whites in this period would have had no trouble saying, that blacks are inferior to whites. Nor does he say that he would not be in favor of political and social equality between the races, even if it were possible. Indeed, he does not even say that he is not in favor of such equality, only that he has “no purpose to introduce” it (about the—equally infamous—statement in which he says that his “feelings” will not admit of equality, more in a moment). Rather, Lincoln says that there is a “physical difference” between blacks and whites that makes it unlikely they will ever be able to live together on terms of full equality and that, so far as it is a “necessity” that there be inequality, he is in favor of his own race (or, as he curiously puts it, the one “to which I belong”) having “the superior position.”

That is a lot of babble without much substance in an effort to explain what Lincoln meant. All in an effort to claim that Lincoln didn't really think blacks were inferior....

[Richard]

Texas flies the CSA flag as a part of its historical heritage in its "Six Flags Over Texas" theme which recognizes the six governing bodies that have governed over its territories - Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, CSA, and USA.

I don't think anybody could misconstrue the CSA's flag being displayed in such a thematic way as it is at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin (atchd pic) as being in any way representative of any of its governing bodies today.

Personally, I wouldn't see any problem with flying the CSA flag co-equally in historical context with the American flag at places such as the Texas Civil War Museum near Fort Worth, either, but they don't do so and their flags are all encased in displays inside the musuem.

Inre to some of the arguments being presented in this thread, I think one has to consider that at that point in our nation's history (the 19th Century) "white supremacy" was an idea prevalent to the period.

This pervasive belief in white supremacy provided the rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.”

Given this belief, most white Southerners - and many Northerners - could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains.

Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not protected. “The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy as well.

The CSA's constitution and the numerous state's declarations of secession confirm these ideas.

Americans have always been optimists, looking to the future and American society's more prosperous upper classes, and expecting to join them one day - the proverbial "American dream."

“The two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black,” declared South Carolina’s senior senator John C. Calhoun on the Senate floor in 1848. “And all the former {white}, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.”

In other words, like homeownership today, slave ownership was aspirational, attracting not just those who owned slaves but those who perhaps wished to one day, an idea based upon the notion of "white supremacy" thought to be so foundational to the country at that time that those who sought to end it were branded heretics worthy of death.

My GG-Grandfather lived in Texas when the Civil War began, having settled in the Republic in 1836. He was a farmer near Comanche Peak and owned no slaves, yet - as did any of the state governments, businesses, and citizens who lived in any of the slaveholding territories as well as those living in much of the rest of the nation - he surely benefited from the profits gained by those who did own slaves. He voluntarily joined the CSA’s “cause” to retain this society, and was a corporal in Company I, 13th Texas Cavalry. Why? We have no idea because we have no family records of his reason(s).

Personally, I would like to think that I would have made a different choice had I been in a similar situation. But had I, like my GG-Grandfather, been a member of the South’s perceived “upper class” (whites, whether wealthy or poor) at that time in history… who knows.

It's complicated, for sure, but the question we struggle with today is should a symbol of that past and its aftermath (e.g., a CSA battle flag) be flying at any government building (other than a museum or historical memorial site) alongside a current state and national flag which are meant to represent equality of treatment for all its citizens?

Richard

[Streck-Fu]

Given this belief, most white Southerners - and many Northerners - could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains.

Some northern states may have outlawed slavery, not because they thought the blacks equal to the whites but because they wanted no blacks in the state at all. Though slavery was outlawed in Indiana in 1820 and there were very few slaves to free, they were not exactly open to accommodating free blacks.....

The Indiana state constitution of 1851:

Article 13

Section 1. No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.

Section 2. All contracts made with any Negro or Mulatto coming into the State, contrary to the provisions of the foregoing section, shall be void; and any person who shall employ such Negro or Mulatto, or otherwise encourage him to remain in the State, shall be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.

Section 3. All fines which may be collected for a violation of the provisions of this article, or of any law which ay hereafter be passed for the purpose of carrying the same into execution, shall be set apart and appropriated for the colonization of such Negroes and Mulattoes, and their descendants, as may be in the State at the adoption of this Constitution, and may be willing to emigrate.

Section 4. The General Assembly shall pass laws to carry out the provisions of this article

[PSM]

Any time you cave to the Left, you establish precedence. The American flag will be next.

Pat

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Streck-Fu

That is a lot of babble without much substance in an effort to explain what Lincoln meant. All in an effort to claim that Lincoln didn't really think blacks were inferior....

It is noted that you dismiss as "babble" an ongoing conversation among professional academics who have spent their careers researching antebellum America. IRT, your argument that Lincoln's anti-slavery views did not mean he thought blacks were inferior is historiographically sustainable.

The part that you continue to miss is the difference between having views of racial superiority on the one hand and being pro slavery on the other. In the 1856 and 1860 presidential elections, the Republican party opposed the extension of slavery to the territories <<LINK1>><<LINK2>>. The southern-led Democratic party favored the continuation of slavery both within the slave states and the territories <<LINK3>><<LINK4>>.

Do you really think that the two positions are equivalent? If so, you are overlooking available contemporaneous evidence. The state of South Carolina put it this way.<<LINK5>>.

[....]

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

[Streck-Fu]

....your argument that Lincoln's anti-slavery views did not mean he thought blacks were inferior is historiographically sustainable.

That is not my view nor what I wrote.

The part that you continue to miss is the difference between having views of racial superiority on the one hand and being pro slavery on the other.

Are you asserting that it is possible to support the slavery of blacks without being a racist?

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by Brush Okie

So if the confederate flag is NOT a symbol of racism, why did they not fly it at half mast after the shooting like the other flags?

Let me be clear.

One symbol/symptom of racism is the CSA battle flag..
But getting rid of the flag does not get rid of racism.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Streck-Fu

The Indiana state constitution of 1851:

Article 13

One would have to understand the migration patterns which settled Indiana - a South to North as opposed to the more commonly experienced East to West population movement.

As far as Article XIII goes, the Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution (13, 14, 15) essentially nullified this article.

Here's a good read on the 1850 constitutional convention and the issues.

"Indiana Constitution". The Indiana Historian, June 2002.

http://www.in.gov/history/files/const1851.pdf

[Streck-Fu]

Originally Posted by Richard

[COLOR="Lime"]One would have to understand the migration patterns which settled Indiana - a South to North as opposed to the more commonly experienced East to West population movement.

Oh, I know and posted that because of the continued references to Northerners as liberators of the slaves. As a state, through, Indiana was not friendly to blacks whether free or slave. It was not easily defined by the Ohio River, in spite of what many historians claim today. The population of Indiana was very pro-union and provided 10s of thousands of troops for the Union army. They even openly accepted recruits from Kentucky when that state's governor refused to mobilize troops for either army. However, Indiana was still split regarding race and the Emancipation Proclamation making the freeing of the slaves a war priority caused a large number of desertions.

Your source above, only mentions Article 13 with:

Negroes and Mulattoes
A full range of Hoosier attitudes
towards Negroes and Mulattoes also
prompted lengthy, heated debates about
their immigration to Indiana.
No delegates favored full equality for
Negroes and Mulattoes, and Article XIII
of the new Constitution (prohibiting
their immigration to Indiana) was
approved by the convention by a vote of
93 to 40. The convention also agreed
that Article XIII should be voted on
separate from the rest of the Constitu-
tion

Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and to a lesser extent, Ohio saw a large number immigrants from the southern states. There is a joke here on that subject: What is the definition of a Hoosier? Someone from Kentucky that couldn't get to Michigan.

[PRB]

Originally Posted by PSM

Any time you cave to the Left, you establish precedence. The American flag will be next.

Pat

This is not a left/right issue...I am a conservative. Confederate battle flags should not be flown on State/Fed property.
They belong to history and museums/re enactments etc.

[PSM]

Originally Posted by PRB

This is not a left/right issue...I am a conservative. Confederate battle flags should not be flown on State/Fed property.
They belong to history and museums/re enactments etc.

I understand and totally agree with you. It's just that it should have been settled earlier but now it looks like they are caving to the Left and that will encourage them to dig deeper. The Indian nations will claim that the Stars and Stripes represent repression to their people and should be replaced.

Pat

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Streck-Fu

Your source above, only mentions Article 13 with:

You need to reread the article and its cited docs.

Richard

[RCummings]

Possibly another perspective. My Great Grandfather also fought for the south. His family lived far back in the hills of Virginia far from any notion of what the war was about. When the North came thru they stole all of his families food, so he went after them because they stole not because of some BS that the governments said. He returned to the farm after the war and put all the junk, rifle, CSA cash and the knife that he made under the floorboards of the cabin because he had no use for the items. How many folks fought for the same reasons, they had no newspapers no slaves and no communication with anyone but the folks that lived in the area.

As far as the Bars and Stars, Great Grandfather probably could have cared less, people that want to take it down should probably take it down, on the other hand if folks want to force the issue by forcibly removing the Bars and Stars I suppose that Great Grandfather would have decided whether or not to take it personally and act according to what he believed was right or wrong.

Bob

[Streck-Fu]

Originally Posted by Richard

You need to reread the article and its cited docs.

Richard

Of course there was discussion and debate but, the point still stands that heading into the 1860 election, the majority of the people in many states north of the Ohio River, were not as accepting of blacks and freed slaves as is often taught in elementary history.