South Carolina's More Perfect Union
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
The people of South Carolina saw the Union broken by virtue of the nullification of the US Constitution by Northern personal liberty laws; these were the same States which railed against South Carolina in 1832 over tariff nullification.  The incessant abolitionist agitation which threatened violent slave insurrection, and the election of a purely sectional president settled the matter for South Carolina as it chose to peacefully form a more perfect union.  Had the meddling Northern States tended to their own domestic issues like hard 16-hour workdays for young women and children in factories, low wages and tenement slums, the South would have found peaceful solutions to the African slavery inherited from the British colonial labor system.
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
 
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South Carolina’s More Perfect Union
 
“On November 13, the General Assembly in joint session ratified and act calling for a convention in Columbia on December 17. The election of delegates was set for December 6.  Five former United States senators, the chief officers of Furman University and Limestone College, two railroad presidents, and a dozen clerics were among the 169 men elected as delegates to the convention. The majority were college graduates.  More than one hundred were planters, and many of these planters had also passed the bar.  More than forty had served in the State Senate, more than one hundred in the House of Representatives.
 
The convention assembled in Columbia’s First Baptist Church and, on its first day, unanimously resolved that “the State of South Carolina should forthwith secede from the Federal Union.” John A. Inglis introduced the resolution. Before the convention adjourned….[a committee was formed] to draft an ordinance and appointed John A. Inglis as chairman.  By the next evening, the committee had agreed on the text that they would introduce for South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession.
 
On November 29, the [Charleston] Mercury printed a draft ordinance contributed by a “W.F.H.,” who noted that “the speedy secession of the State may be considered a fixed fact” and offered “a sort of diagram on which the problem can be worked.”  The draft took nearly one hundred lines of newsprint.
 
On December 4, the Mercury responded to the draft submitted by its “esteemed correspondent.” Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr., son of the secessionist leader and editor of the newspaper….objected to the “batch of details” which blurred the draft’s “force and dignity.”
 
We do not know how many drafts the committee had to consider in the few hours in which it did its work, but besides the draft printed in the Mercury, a manuscript document containing two other drafts, both unsigned, survives.
 
The longest of these additional drafts, “An Ordinance to withdraw from the Confederacy heretofore existing under the name of the United States of America,” is dated December 11.  Its preamble cites tariffs, the obstruction of the recovery of fugitive slaves, “hostile agitation against the Southern institution of Slavery,” and the election of Abraham Lincoln as its justification and notes the declaration of 1852.
 
Eleven sections follow. They declare “the Confederacy heretofore existing between the State of South Carolina and the other States” dissolved, amend the State constitution, direct the governor to send a commissioner to President [James] Buchanan, provide for [foreign] trade, and empower the governor to appoint postmasters.
 
Inglis’s committee, doubtless to satisfy those who wanted no further delay in officially leaving the Union, chose to present a much shorter and simpler text. [In] the afternoon of December 20 [1860], Chairman Inglis rose to present the committee’s [Ordinance of Secession].  There was no need for debate. Behind closed doors, a roll call vote was taken, alphabetically by surname, ending with “Mr. President.” It began at 1:07 P.M. and ended eight minutes later, at 1:15 when [convention President] David F. Jamison said “aye.”  South Carolina had seceded by unanimous vote.”
 
(Relic of The Lost Cause, The Story of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession, Charles H. Lesser, South Carolina Department of Archives & History, 1990, pp. 4-5)
 
 

An Open Report
 
From: hk.edgerton@gmail.com

 
On Tuesday April 17, 2012, I would travel to Murphy, North Carolina and speak to the Cherokee Guards Camp #893 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
 
On Thursday April 19, 2012, Terry Lee and I would travel to Marion, Alabama, and as the guest of Commander Gary Johnson and his wife Mrs. Sandra Johnson, we would attend the annual Historical Commission of Perry Counties banquet.
 
On Friday morning, April 20, 2012, Commander Johnson, Terry Lee and myself, would place some hundred or more Confederate Battle flags on the graves of the Confederate dead at the local cemetery in Marion. The highlight of the morning was when two Black grave diggers approached me and one would ask why we were placing the flags on the graves, and when I told him about not only Confederate History Month, but also the upcoming Confederate Memorial Day; he would ask if he could have a flag? I obliged and was moments later chided by Commander Johnson for not giving one to the other grave digger. Commander Johnson promptly engaged in a lively conversation with the two men, giving a flag to the other gentleman who accepted it with a great big smile on his face. Commander Johnson would invite them to the Sons Camp meeting of the upcoming Sunday where Terry Lee and I would speak, but they would tell us that they lived in Selma, but would try to attend.
 
After attending Church on Sunday morning, to a pack house at the Chamber of Commerce building, Terry Lee and I would speak to the Camp and some very distinguish members of the community that included many who had traveled from afar to see and hear us. Terry Lee's new Historic March Across Dixie Pictorial Documentary book was well received as sales were very brisk.
 
The downside to our visit to this small Alabama community that I have had the opportunity to visit on at least three occasions always seem to come with the mentioning of Albert Turner, a suppose Black civil rights activist and local County Commissioner whose name most oft is always mentioned with corruption and terror. I had been told by many on a previous trip how Mr. Turner had grabbed and choked a Black female at a Commission meeting for disagreeing with him. He had even gone on his Sunday morning radio broadcast proclaiming that if anybody messed with him that he would shoot them down like he did a dog that was in his trash can. Most of the White citizens who I came in contact with invariably always brought his name up. His new tactic they told me was to have some of his henchman burn down their homes or at least threaten to, if they challenged him on anything. Even the Black folks who I spoke to seemed terrified of Mr. Turner. They told me of some Blacks losing welfare and other entitlements for challenging Albert.
 
On Sunday morning of April 22, 2012, I would listen to Mr. Turner’s radio program where he would explain the firing of a Black female worker who had gone to the press about her job loss caused by Mr. Turner. I was amazed at the level of involvement that this Commissioner would place himself in the everyday affairs of a City Department. Mr. Turner was also heard to remark that he would be very happy when there were no White people living in Marion.
 
I only mention Mr. Turner because so many people in this small town, both Black and White asked me to use my influences to help them right a wrong that keep an honorable people from living in harmony. I have always enjoyed my visits here , and the historical significance to the Confederacy as I would come to call this place home, and it is always an honor to stay in General Nathan Bedford Forrest's headquarters home now owned by Commander Johnson and his wife.
 
On Saturday morning, May 5, 2012, I would miss the Confederate wedding of Commander Mike Parrish of the Jackson Rangers Sons of Confederate Veterans in Sylvia , North Carolina because for the third straight year I would be asked by the The Columbus County Volunteers Camp 794 to deliver the keynote speech for Confederate Memorial Day in Whiteville, North Carolina. The highlight of the morning there was participating in the posting of the Battle flag on the flag pole on the Courthouse grounds in downtown Whiteville, and being with so many who served up so much love.
 
Tonight, May 15, 2012, at the Burnsville Town Center in Burnsville, North Carolina, I shall deliver a speech to the Colonel John B. Palmer Camp 1946 Sons of Confederate Veterans . On Saturday May 19, 2012, I shall deliver the keynote speech at the yearly Memorial service for Captain Henry Wirz CSA at his grave site in Mt. Olivet Roman catholic Cemetery, 1300 Bladensburg Road NE, Washington, DC at 11:00 AM. The Memorial Service is sponsored by the Maryland division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
 
HK Edgerton
 

 

Clamor of Fanatics and Emancipation Destruction

From: bernhard1848@att.net

The abolitionists of the North would not offer a practical and peaceful solution to the dilemma of colonial British slavery still existing in the American South – that South only desired to eradicate slavery in their own time, as the North had done.  The world had observed the murderous result of emancipation in the West Indies, and Southerners greatly feared the same in their land, and instigated by fanatic abolitionists. Virginian Robert E. Lee, an emancipator of slaves himself, believed the progress of Christian humanity toward the enslaved black man would better, and peacefully, resolve the issue, and with peace between the races.  It is important to remember that the free States of the North were formerly slave States.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

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The Clamor of Fanatics and Emancipation Destruction:

“It is scarcely in the power of human language to describe the enthusiastic delight with which the abolitionists, both in England and in America, were inspired by the spectacle of West India Emancipation.  We might easily adduce a hundred illustrations of the almost frantic joy with which it intoxicated their brains [but we might also illustrate] how indignant [the abolitionist] became that others were not equally disposed to part with their sober senses.

In one day, probably seven hundred thousand of human beings were rescued from bondage to full, unqualified freedom. The crowning glory of this day was the fact that the work of emancipation was wholly due to the principles of Christianity.  The West Indies were freed, not boy force, or human policy, but by the reverence of a great people for justice and humanity.

[The good people of the free States] did not go into raptures over so fearful an experiment before they had some little time to see how it would work.  They did, no doubt, most truly and profoundly love liberty.  But then they had some reason to suspect, perhaps, that liberty may be one thing, and abolitionism quite another.  Liberty, they knew, was a thing of light and love; but as for abolitionism, it was, for all they knew, a demon of destruction.

We shall begin with Jamaica. The very first year after the complete emancipation of the slaves of this island, its prosperity began to manifest symptoms of decay.  The abolitionist not only closed his eyes on every appearance of decline in the prosperity of the West Indies, he also seized with avidity every indication of the successful operation of his [emancipation] scheme, and magnified it to both himself and to the world.

[But] “Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are falling to decay…”It is impossible [to not arrive] at the conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro has had little effect except that of enabling him to live at the expense of the planter so long as any thing remained.  Sixteen years of freedom did not appear to its author to have “advanced the dignity of labor or of the laboring classes one particle,” while it had ruined the land, and this great damage had been done to the one class without benefit of any kind to the other.”

In relation to Jamaica, another witness says: “The marks of decay abound….People who have nothing, and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still left;….the lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by a species of miracle.

We might fill volumes with extracts to the same effect. We might in like manner point to other regions, especially to Guatemala, to the British colony on the southern coast of Africa, and to the island of Hayti, in all of which emancipation was followed by precisely similar events.  By the act of emancipation, Great Britain paralyzed the right arm of her colonial industry. The laborer would not work except occasionally, and the planter was ruined. The morals of the negro disappeared with his industry, and he speedily retraced his steps toward his original barbarism.  All this had been clearly foretold.

Precisely the same thing had been foretold by the Calhoun’s and Clay’s of this country. The calmest, the profoundest, the wisest statesman of Great Britain likewise forewarned the agitators of the desolation and the woes they were about to bring upon the West Indies. But the madness of the day would confide in no wisdom except its own, and listen to no testimony except the clamor of fanatics.  Hence the frightful experiment was made…..

But what is meant by freedom of the emancipated slaves, on which so many exalted eulogies have been pronounced? Its first element, it is plain, is a freedom from labor – freedom from the very first law of nature.  In one word, its sum and substance is a power on the part of the freed black to act pretty much as he pleases.”

The magnificent colony of St. Domingo did not quite perish….the entire white population soon melted, like successive snowflakes of snow, in a furnace of that freedom that Robespierre had kindled.  The atrocities of this awful massacre have had, as the historian has said, no parallel in the annals of human crime. “The negroes,” says Alison, “marched with spiked infants on their spears instead of colors; they sawed asunder the [white] male prisoners, and violated the females on the dead bodies of their husbands.”

The work of death, thus completed with such outbursts of unutterable brutality, constituted and closed the first act in the grand drama of Haytian freedom.  In this frightful chaos, the ambitious mulattoes, whose insatiable desire for equality had first disturbed the peace of the island, perished miserably beneath the vengeance of the very slaves whom they had themselves roused from subjection and elevated into irresistible power.  Thus ended the second act of the horrible drama.

[In the new independent Negro state, the lands] were divided out among the officers of the army, while the privates were compelled to cultivate the soil under their former military commanders….No better could have been expected except by fools or fanatics. The blacks might preach equality, it is true, but yet, like the more enlightened ruffians of Paris, they would of course take good care not to practice what they had preached.

Hence, by all the horrors of their bloody revolution, they had only effected a change of masters. The white man had disappeared, and the black man, one of their own race and color, had assumed his place and his authority.”

(Liberty and Slavery, Albert Taylor Bledsoe, J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1856, pp. 229-278;  reprinted 2000 by www.confederatereprint.com)

 

Historical marker

From: Jjoed.pope@sbcglobal.net
To: hk.edgerton@gmail.com

Dear Mr. Edgerton,

Our Alamo City Guard Camp commander, Russ Lane, recently forwarded to all camp members a copy of your letter sent to the Texas legislators who co-authored the letter of condemnation to the Texas Historical Commission regarding the placement of a marker acknowledging that monies from the former Confederate Pension Fund made it possible for the Texas Supreme Court Building to be constructed.

I was so overwhelmed by your wonderful missive and the manner in which it was composed. You mentioned  so many facts that unfortunately have shown signs of erosion from many of the state of Texas history textbooks, from our elementary schools up through, and including, college level texts. The political ''correctness'' of these textbooks increasingly lend the appearance of fiction. To be certain, their mere existence has become a most serious issue in the education of our students, misinformation alone notwithstanding.

We have "educated" one generation of young Americans with questionable historical facts and I recently learned from secondary history educators that their present textbooks appear to be novels and are so slanted against our Founding Fathers, other heretofore national heroes and patriots, and simple education of our main stream America that it is frightening !.

I thank heaven someone of your stature took the time to point out the fallacies and mistruths presented by the legislators to the Historical Commission.

Thank you for standing up and being such a wonderful representative of your fellow compatriots. You are truly a beckon in the night for us all!  It will indeed be interesting to see what, if any, dialogue will spring forth from either the legislators or the Commission. Hopefully both, probably none.

With kindest regards,

Joe D. Pope

Web Reference:   H.K.'s Response To Texas Legislators

Texas Battle over Historical Marker

From: gatorstick@tampabay.rr.com
To: hk.edgerton@gmail.com

HK-

A few thoughts. A well written letter needs distribution to be effective. This letter should be distributed to every newspaper & media outlet in Texas. When distributed, it should have a brief background of the issue. Within the brief, I would suggest you position yourself as speaking for the Black Texans resting in the soil that left home & family to defend the homefolks--a group that is well documented but now the PC wish to DISCRIMINATE AGAINST by WHITEWASHING their story along with all Texas history. As such, the story of all Texans should be honestly without prejudice presented. A little research could yield a list of Black Texans' who served (pension records) and an additional marker should be installed along with this one vindicating that group of forgotten Vets. This could perk the interest by the news media as this could be positioned into a favorable racial issue that media seems to love to stir. (Abet a counter racial position than they prefer.)

I would ask the Texas division SCV to lead the way for distribution to media outlets via e-mail & calls. This could be delegated down from leadership to the camp level. I also believe Lt. Commander Barrow's book "Black Confederates" should be often referenced and offered to be distributed to interested media outlets. Also, I would also copy every Veterans group in the state too and ask them to support Texas Vets that can't speak for themselves as they hope future generations will stand & speak for them.

While this may not be the best or most advantageous positioning of the issue, like fishing, to get bites you need to utilize the right bait to perk the interest & draw strikes. Wrong bait, no fishfry. As Bedford Forrest utilized all available strategies to produce a rout of his opponents, so should we. Open public debate sure would be nice......

Just my 2 cents worth,

Happy hunting,

Phil Walters
GatorGuides.com
 

Web Reference:   H.K.'s Response To Texas Legislators

Letter to Re. Boyd Brown

From: cwipaulk@earthlink.net

Dear Representative Brown,

Cultural genocide has been waged against the Southern people since “Reconstruction”, and you seem intent on continuing the scalawag and Yankee tradition. Our brave Southern ancestors fought and died against insurmountable odds to defend their homes and families from an illegal and unconstitutional invasion. The result of that invasion was over 600,000 Americans killed, not including over 50,000 innocent Southern civilians slaughtered through Lincoln’s “total war” policy, which General Sherman was only too happy to carry out. You, sir, do a great dishonor to the memory of our brave dead in wanting to do away with a holiday that recognizes them. It is probably for political expedience to garner favor with historically challenged groups of people that you endeavor to do this. Whatever the reason, it is wrong. Rewritten history has been shoved down the throats of all Americans for many decades, but with the advent of the internet, the number of those enlightened to true history is growing exponentially. I would like to see some of our public figures jump off the “down with Southern heritage” bandwagon, and have the guts to stand up for what is true and right. I would also like to win the lottery; neither is likely to happen.

I will close with saying that you are a disgrace to the memory of our fine, brave Confederates who did all they could to repel an unnecessary, illegal invasion in defense of their beloved homeland. Since that defeat, the liberal Yankee government has taken us farther and farther off the track of where our Founders intended us to be, and we have become exactly what they did not want us to be; a large, intrusive, overbearing, liberty-snatching centralized government, of which you are a contributing member.

Jeff Paulk
Tulsa, OK
 

Union of Willing States, Not Conquered Provinces
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
Far from being united against Southern independence, the North endured military rule as Lincoln saw fit to silence criticism of his war policy against Americans by arresting newspaper editors and dissenters, including the grandson of Francis Scott Key.  Even the Supreme Court feared arrest from a president who clothed himself in powers not granted by the Constitution.
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
 
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Union of Willing States, Not Conquered Provinces:
 
“Many [Northerners]…saw the Union in more conditional terms, as an agreed-upon relationship, not one resting upon coercion or compulsion. Millions of Northern Democrats, for example, denied the validity or value of a Union held together by force.  Many felt so strongly about the invalidity of a coercive Union that they resisted and defied the Lincoln government during the Civil War in order to proclaim their views.
 
Even nationalists of an antislavery point of view could have doubts about a Union maintained by force. In 1801 when John Quincy Adams feared that Aaron Burr might break up the recently-created union he was not sure that it ought to held together by force.  “If they break us up – in God’s name, let the Union go,” he wrote.  “I love the Union as I love my wife. But if my wife should ask and insist upon a separation, she should have it though it broke my heart.”
 
Sixty years later another son of Massachusetts and an abolitionist, Wendell Phillips, used the wifely metaphor again – this time in confronting an actual breakup of the Union.  Phillips spoke after secession had taken place.  “A Union is made up of willing States, not of conquered provinces,” he said.  “There are some rights, quite perfect, yet wholly incapable of being enforced.  A husband or wife who can only keep the other partner within the bond by locking the doors and standing armed before the door had better submit to peaceable separation.”
 
(The Other South, Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century, Carl N. Degler, Harper & Row, 1974, page 121)
 

 

Emancipation Sentiment Ascendant in Virginia
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
The violent Nat Turner slave insurrection of August 1831 forced Southerners to confront the large black population among them, and the increasing threat of Northern abolitionists fomenting further violence.  The South had inherited the colonial slave labor system of England and later perpetuated by New England slave traders and cotton mills – and sought ways to rid their section of African bondsmen.  Had the Northern abolitionists offered practical assistance to Southerners like Governor Floyd of Virginia (below), the later war would have been averted, a million lives saved, and the Constitution left intact.
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
 
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Emancipation Sentiment Ascendant in Virginia:
 
“News of the uprising spread across the South, accompanied by the fear that the plot extended beyond Virginia’s borders. The governor of South Carolina proposed to the governors of North Carolina and Virginia that they consult on joint action to forestall such events in the future. In New Bern, North Carolina, federal troops had to be brought in to calm the fears of the people that rebellion would spread to their slaves.
 
As far away as Louisiana the governor called the legislature into session, fearful that some Virginia slaves in Louisiana would have brought ideas of insurrection with them. Some Northern newspapers reported the spread of rebellion, though in fact no other uprising occurred.  Many years later, Daniel R. Goodloe, a North Carolina antislavery man, recalled the fear generated in Oxford, North Carolina: “I was then in my seventeenth year. I volunteered and had my first military service in marching over the town and neighborhood to suppress imaginary combinations of insurgent negroes.”
 
Goodloe’s recollection was a good deal calmer than the reaction at the time, especially in Virginia. Throughout the State, but especially in the tidewater area, where the slave population was concentrated, white men anticipated violence and bloodshed, if not worse. One sympathetic Northerner then visiting Virginia wrote that Virginians “lie down to sleep with fear. They hardly venture out on nights. A lady told me, that for weeks after the tragedy, she had quivered at every blast of wind, and every blow of the shutter.  Bolts and bars were tried, but the horrid fear haunted the whole population day and night.”
 
Between August and December, when the legislature was scheduled to meet, Virginians of all classes wrestled with the question of how to prevent another Southampton. Some people thought it was only necessary only to reduce the imbalance between white and black in the east by some scheme of deportation – either of free blacks or of slaves. 
 
Governor John Floyd, on the other hand, who owned a dozen or more slaves himself, wrote in his diary in November: “Before I leave this Government I will have contrived to have a law passed gradually abolishing slavery in this State, or at all events to begin the work of prohibiting slavery on the west side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
 
Before the legislature met he drew up a plan for the gradual elimination of slavery through the purchase and the removal of free blacks. The legislature received a number of petitions from citizens asking for the end of slavery, some because of the fear of another insurrection, others taking the occasion to object to slavery in general.  One such petition from Nelson County in the piedmont region was signed by 332 names. Newspapers also seriously canvassed the possibility of emancipation. “A few months have wrought a great change in public sentiment” concerning slavery, commented one Virginian early in December, 1831.” 
 
(The Other South, Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century, Carl N. Degler, Harper & Row, 1974, pp. 14-16)
 

 

"The war"
 
From: gpthelastrebel@att.net
 
Chuck,
 
This may come as a surprise to Mr. Combs --- the war wasn't about slavery. Slavery is the reason given to justify the war crimes committed against the South.
 
George Purvis
Southern Heritage Advancement Preservation and Education (S.H.A.P.E)
http://southernheritageadvancementpreservationeducation.com/page.php?4

 

Sons of Confederate Veterans
Spartanburg, SC

 
May 9, 2012
 
The South Carolina Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans submitted a request to Gov. Nikki Haley in both 2011 and again in 2012 requesting a Gubernatorial Proclamation stating May as “Confederate History Month” in honor and commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the War of 1861 – 1865; the purpose, to bring attention and raise awareness about this important period of South Carolina’s history.
 
Unfortunately Governor Haley rejected both requests. Therefore, the Sons of Confederate Veterans approached select members of the General Assembly, and are pleased to announce that on this date, May 9, 2012, the members of the South Carolina General Assembly, both House and Senate, in separate Resolutions, voted to proclaim May, “Confederate History Month” in the State of South Carolina.
 
References
Senate Resolution – S 1513 http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess119_2011-2012/bills/1513.htm
Sponsors: Senators Verdin, Bright and Grooms
 
House Bill – 5242 http://www.scstatehouse.gov/query.php?search=DOC&searchtext=5242&category=LEGISLATION&session=119&conid=6969134&result_pos=&keyval=1195242&numrows=10
House Sponsors: Limehouse, J.R. Smith and Sottile
 
Mark A. Simpson, Commander
South Carolina Division
Sons of Confederate Veterans
SCDivCommander@gmail.com
 
 

From: <kdl@slrc-csa.org>
Date: Wed, May 9, 2012
Subject: HK Response to TX Legislators
To: HK Edgerton <hk.edgerton@gmail.com>



******************************************************************************************************

H.K. EDGERTON
90 Church Street
P.O. Box 1235
Black Mountain, NC 28711
828-273-1991
 
May 9, 2012
 
Senator Rodney Ellis
Senator Royce West
Rep. Alma Allen
Rep. Garnet Coleman
Rep. Yvonne Davis
Rep. Eric Johnson
Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon
Rep. Borris Miles
Rep. Ron Reynolds
Rep. Senfronia Thompson
Rep. Sylvester Turner
Rep. Marc Veasey
 
Re: Your May 8, 2012 letter to the Texas Historical Commission
 
Dear Senators & Representatives:
 
The press has provided me a copy of your scandalously ignorant and bigoted letter of May 8, 2012, wherein you oppose the application for a historical marker applied for by the Texas Division Sons of Confederate Veterans.
 
The marker was (and hopefully is) to tell the significant historical story of how ALL the major state office buildings came into being. A man larger than the tawdry political hacks we see in abundance today, a pioneer dedicated to the rights of ALL Texans, Governor Bill Daniel stumped the state in the early 1950’s advocating for a constitutional amendment to move the leftover funds from the Confederate Pension Fund and convert it into a State Building Fund.  The amendment provided that the first building built, the Texas Supreme Court Building, was to be dedicated to Texans who served  the Confederacy. The word was simply “Texans,” not “white Texans,” in order to honor all who served in whatever capacity. This is borne out in the archival records underpinning the historical research used in the application.
 
The measure was passed overwhelmingly and the buildings were built. The State has had the benefit of Gov. Bill’s vision for over 50 years.  Now Texas Solons – how do you tell that story without mentioning the “C” word?
 
Whether y’all like it or not, the Texas Supreme Court Building is still constitutionally dedicated to Texans who served the Confederacy, and one may argue the point, but I contend it is the largest Confederate Memorial in the world.
 
Governor Bill, who was my friend, always told me that he wanted an historical marker to tell the story of where ALL the major state office buildings came from, and in so telling it might mute any protests as to the dedication of the Supreme Court Building. Governor Bill died a few years ago, so never was able to finish his vision of an historical marker for the Supreme Court Building.
 
So this application was for a marker to tell the people of Texas an important story – Tell me oh noble, wise and fair legislators, how is this “glorifying the Confederacy?” How is this “rewriting history?’ How is this “maintaining the institution of African slavery?” Did your staffs’ and aides’ bother to read the application before ghost-writing your knee-jerk letter to the Texas Historical Commission?
 
Your Romper Room oversimplification of the causes of the war aside, the People of Texas, fighting to defend themselves from an illegal federal invasion was all the justification needed. The causes of the war have nothing to do with the SCV’s application, but I didn’t think your collective display of such breath-taking arrogance combined with historical ignorance and misinterpretation should go unchallenged.
 
I have been an NAACP Chapter President and I have carried a Confederate Flag 1600 miles walking to Texas from North Carolina (10th anniversary coming up in October) and I have advocated on behalf of the Confederate community and educated people of the substantial contributions of Black Southerners (slave and free) to the Confederacy. In a civil rights career spanning over 40 years, one thing I have learned is that prejudice and bigotry affects every race, class, gender and age. I note that not all the Black legislative caucus signed your smear letter, so maybe there is hope for reason to prevail.
 
If truth and fairness mean anything to you, your letter should be withdrawn and so a free, OPEN and fair debate on this application begin. Kirk D. Lyons and I throw down the gauntlet of open debate.
 
Most Sincerely,
 
 
 
H. K. Edgerton
 
PS Senator Ellis owes the honorable Attorney Kirk D. Lyons an apology for the shameful way he tried to defame and insult him and his family (his wife and my nieces and nephews) to the press. As his friend and brother I can say, if Kirk D. is a “white supremacist” (trademarked by SPLC Inc.), then so is every attorney who lives up to his oath to defend the unpopular, the poor and the despised.
 
In a spirit of good-will, I am sending Senator Ellis a copy of my brother’s documentary book of my March Across Dixie. Maybe seeing what real black people think about the Christian Cross of St. Andrew may change his mind.
 
CC: Sheri Krause
 
Members of the Texas Historical Commission
Facilities Exec: Terry Kreel

 

Poem - A Georgia Volunteer

From: jkingantiquearms@bellsouth.net

SHNV Patriots,

Poem posted below-A Georgia Volunteer. But this poem can serve as a memorial to all unknown Confederate dead. Just substitute the name of any of the other Confederate states for Georgia and the message is the same.

James W. King
Commander SCV Camp 141
Albany Georgia


A Georgia Volunteer

by Mary Ashley Townsend

Far up the lonely mountain-side
My wandering footsteps led;
The moss lay thick beneath my feet,
The pine sighed overhead.
The trace of a dismantled fort
Lay in the forest nave,
And in the shadow near my path
I saw a soldier's grave.

The bramble wrestled with the weed
Upon the lowly mound;—
The simple head-board, rudely writ,
Had rotted to the ground;
I raised it with a reverent hand,
From dust its words to clear,
But time had blotted all but these—
"A Georgia Volunteer!"

I saw the toad and scaly snake
From tangled covert start,
And hide themselves among the weeds
Above the dead man's heart;
But undisturbed, in sleep profound,
Unheeding, there he lay;
His coffin but the mountain soil,
His shroud Confederate gray.

I heard the Shenandoah roll
Along the vale below,
I saw the Alleghenies rise
Toward the realms of snow.
The "Valley Campaign" rose to mind—
Its leader's name—and then
I knew the sleeper had been one
Of Stonewall Jackson's men.

Yet whence he came, what lip shall say—
Whose tongue will ever tell
What desolated hearths and hearts
Have been because he fell?
What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair,
Her hair which he held dear?
One lock of which perchance lies with
The Georgia Volunteer!

What mother, with long watching eyes,
And white lips, cold and dumb,
Waits with appalling patience for
Her darling boy to come?
Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up
But one of many a scar,
Cut on the face of our fair land,
By gory-handed war.

What fights he fought, what wounds he wore,
Are all unknown to fame;
Remember, on his holy grave
There is not e'en a name!
That he fought well and bravely too,
And held his country dear,
We know, else he had never been
A Georgia volunteer.

He sleeps—what need to question now
If he were wrong or right?
He knows, ere this, whose cause was just
In God the Father's sight.
He wields no warlike weapons now,
Returns no foeman's thrust—
Who but a coward would revile
An honest soldier's dust?

Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of Stonewall Jackson's men.
Beneath the cedar and the pine,
In solitude austere.
Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies
A Georgia Volunteer!

 

Confederate Memorial Chapel Print Auction

Thanks to the generosity of Bill and Jackie Dennison, the Confederate War Memorial/Pelham Chapel Framed Print is back up for auction! Bill and Jackie won the auction that ended this past Friday, with a high bid of $255, and then promptly donated the print back to the Va Flaggers with the intent of it being auctioned AGAIN and more money raised toward the efforts to return the Confederate Battle Flags at the Pelham Chapel.  So...now is your SECOND chance to own this beautiful print, AND support the Va Flaggers! Bidding started at $10 and is open now!

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p4340.l2565&rt=nc&item=251055082392

As of this email, the high bid is $56.  Bidding ends Saturday, at 8:00 p.m., so register your bid now!

RETURN the flags!
RESTORE the honor!

Susan Hathaway
Va Flaggers
vaflagger@comcast.net

 

Unionism and Secession in the South

From: bernhard1848@att.net

To hold that African slavery was central to the South’s move to independence is far too simplistic and superficial; one could say at best that the political partnership and compromises of two vastly different people and regions  begun during the Revolution had fully unraveled after 80-some years.  The constant agitation of violent slave insurrection in the South by abolitionists led to Southern secession, supported eventually by staunch Southern Unionists; the secession of the South caused the North to invade and conquer the South.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

******************************************************************************************************

Unionism and Secession in the South:

One further caveat in thinking about Southern Unionism. Virtually all historians, including this one, are agreed today on the centrality of slavery in explaining the road to secession. Yet if we would understand the nature of Southern Unionism we cannot stop there in accounting for the abandonment of Unionist by sufficient Southerners to create the Confederacy. Human motivation and loyalties are more complex than that.  A concern about the future of slavery was more often in the background than in the forefront of Southerners’ thinking about the Union.

Certainly it is difficult to show a clear causal line between direct involvement with slavery and attitudes toward secession.  For one thing, too many unconditional Unionists….were slaveholders. For such persons the ownership of slaves was not sufficient reason for supporting secession. For another, most of the Southerners who made up the Confederacy were not directly connected with slavery at all.  The majority of white Southerners, after all, did not own a single slave.  Their concern for the institution of slavery could at best have been only an indirect motive for supporting secession and later the Confederacy.

It makes much more sense to see slavery as a shaper of Southern civilization and values than as an interest.  The anxiety about the future of slavery was there because the future of the South was intimately tied up with the institution.  But the role of slavery in moving individual Southerners from Unionism to secession was neither simple nor obvious. Precisely at what point an individual Southerner decided that he or she could no longer support the Union when it came into conflict with region depended upon many things, not only upon his or her immediate relationship to slavery.”

(The Other South, Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century, Carl N. Degler, Harper & Row, 1974, page 122)

 

10th Alabama marker

From: csa54thala@aol.com

Compatriots,

The stone for the marker and the bench for the 10th Alabama marker at Bristow Station was delivered safely yesterday morning. Commander Frank Leatherwood and NEC Brigade Commander Dan Williams left on Monday morning and pulled in to the park around 9 am on Tuesday. They are now on their way back home.

Frank had an ancestor in the 10th Alabama and volunteered to drive the truck to Virginia. Dan followed behind in his vehicle to help defray the cost and drive them home.

The 10th Alabama Committee wishes to extend our thanks to both of them for their help in this project. The dedication service for the completed marker will be on September 22nd. More details to follow. We are looking at a chartered bus and hotel package so Alabamians will be able to make the trip. I will release details as they become available, hopefully by the Reunion.

Jimmy Hill
Chairman
10th Alabama Project

 

Confederate emancipation

From: rodbren@sbcglobal.net

Chuck,

I think this information is interesting.

The final session of the Confederate Congress adjourned on March 18, 1865. That month, one of its final acts was the passage of a law allowing for the emancipation and military induction of any slave willing to fight for the Confederacy. This measure had originally been proposed by Judah P. Benjamin a year earlier but met stiff opposition until the final months of the war, when it was endorsed by Robert E. Lee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_Confederate_States

I continue to try figuring out the ins and outs of that war. My conclusion is that neither side was innocent, but I'd still have to wear gray in 1861 even if the slavery language in documents and quotes is an issue for me. I hope that's worth something. Yes, that's my final answer.

Sincerely,

Rodney Combs
Noble, OK

 

“Last Cavalry Charge in North Carolina”

In late April 1865, Ordnance Sgt. William Hezekiah Mitchell (Company F., 1st Tennessee Cavalry, “Maury Braves”) was detailed to take a scouting party of three men to ascertain the movements of Sherman’s advancing army. The command had not learned of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s capitulation to Sherman and went as ordered.   They had reached a creek about 3 miles from Chapel Hill and headed off in the direction it was supposed that Northern troops were marching.

A company of enemy cavalry approached and using a bluffing strategy, the four Tennesseans raised a rebel yell and made a furious charge that sent them in retreat.  In chasing the bluecoats, the four came upon a home they had just plundered and the owners provided them with the direction of Sherman’s movements.

Returning to their command to report this intelligence, they were ordered with their entire squadron to ride to the creek and hold it against the Northern advance.  Upon arrival at the ford, they found Northern infantry already in force and a barrier erected across the creek. A volley from the enemy knocked down Col. Baxter Smith’s horse, and the command fell back to Sugar Creek Church near Charlotte.  There they stacked arms on 2 May, and left for Tennessee after being paroled on 3May 1865 – thus ending nearly four years of war which began with their enlistments at Ashford Hall in Maury County, Tennessee on 5 July, 1861.”

Mitchell and his unit were paid in Mexican 8 Reales from the Confederate Treasury by General Johnston, an image of which appears below.

(Compiled from veterans recollections by Jill Garret, historian of Maury County, TN; courtesy Baker A. Mitchell)

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial Commission"

 

Emancipation Sentiment in South Carolina, Circa 1845

From: bernhard1848@att.net

Emancipation sentiment was ascendant in the South after 1783 though Northern inventions like the cotton gin and mills hungry for raw cotton perpetuated the existence of slave labor on Southern plantations.  Fearful of slave revolts as the black population grew, and shaken by the Nat Turner massacre of women and children, Southerners erected anti-emancipation laws to control slave populations. The constant agitation of slave revolt by abolitionist fanatics culminating in John Brown’s crime in Virginia, was an effective means to end even voluntary emancipation in the South. Peaceful emancipation initiatives from the North would have had a better effect and avoided war.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

******************************************************************************************************

Emancipation Sentiment in South Carolina, Circa 1845

“In 1840 there came up to the Court of Appeals the noted Carmille case.  A slaveowner, Carmille, had died leaving a will which with reference to his slaves provided that they should be set free if possible…or conveyed in trust to certain trustees who would allow them to hire their time, paying only a nominal sum to the trustees.

This was unquestionably in conflict with the policy of the [South Carolina] statutes on the subject of emancipation. [A] court held that the will of the testator was not contrary to the principles of the act of 1820 and was not in violation of the State’s policy toward the Negro, and that the will ought to be carried out.

The decision…aroused the sentiment of the legislature and caused the passage of the sweeping act of 1841.  The act of 1841 was intended apparently to close every avenue of approach to emancipation. These laws are not always of course to be taken as a final indication of public sentiment. There was evidently a large class of persons who honestly desired to see a less severe policy pursued. Their views cannot be better expressed than in the clear and rugged style of Justice O’Neall.  In 1845 he said:

“I think its policy [i.e., of the legislature against emancipation] so questionable that it ought to be repealed. A law, evaded as it is, and against which public sentiment, within and without the State, is so much arrayed, ought not to stand.  It is better by far, that a wise and prudent system of emancipation, like that of 1800, should exist, rather than that unlicensed emancipation according to private arrangement should take place.

What is there in the policy of South Carolina to forbid emancipation by an owner, of a faithful, honest, good slave? Have we anything to fear from such a liberal and humane course?

Until fanaticism and folly drove us from that position of the law our State had uniformly favored emancipation by owners, of their slave property, with such limitations and guards as rendered the free Negro not a dangerous, but a useful member of the community, however humble he may be.  It is time we should return to it and say to all at home and abroad, we have nothing to fear from occasional emancipation.”

(Control of Slaves in South Carolina, H.M. Henry, PhD Dissertation Vanderbilt University, 1914, pp. 173-174)

 

It has been a very busy couple of weeks for the Virginia Flaggers!

On Wednesday, April 18th, the Va Flaggers joined the Edmund Ruffin Fireaters, SCV, at the 64th Annual Shad Planking in Wakefield, Virginia.  10 Flaggers carried flags in a VERY Confederate friendly environment! We talked to HUNDREDS of folks about the Va Flaggers and what we have been doing in the Commonwealth, gave out flyers and cards, and spoke with political candidates who were on hand, EXCEPT for George Allen, whose posse made sure he stayed a safe distance from us and our flags!

We were asked over and over again to pose for pictures with our flags and support was overwhelming! Kind of nice to spend an afternoon with so many people saluting, smiling, and whistling Dixie!

After the photo of Grayson and Trevor and their Confederate flags made the press last year, signs were posted to keep flags and flaggers away from the stage, but it did not stop us from working the crowd, and a great time was had by all.

My favorite story of the afternoon...all of the Sherriff's deputies working the event were black. When I arrived, I had a conversation with four of them working the parking lot/gate. They had asked me why I was carrying the flag, and I explained about the Va Flaggers, my ancestors, and my desire to honor them. On the way out, one of the officers smiled, saluted, and told me to "keep on keeping on".  When the others looked at him, he said.."Hey, I support whatever that lady does!" Several men were walking near me and were incredulous when they overheard the encounter.  They mentioned that they couldn't believe he just said that. I just smiled and said..."happens to me all the time..." ;)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following night, Thursday, April 19th, found the Flaggers back at the VMFA.  11 Va Flaggers were on hand to stand in protest of the removal of Confederate Battle flags from the Confederate War Memorial and in honor of our ancestors and our flags.  The weather was good, and while traffic was light, good conversations were held and the colors were advanced for all passers-by to see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just two days later, Saturday, April 21st, and we are back at the VMFA!  A BEAUTIFUL day on the Boulevard, as 19 Va Flaggers gathered to forward the colors and protest the VMFA. A few of us posed in front of the Confederate Memorial Chapel, just minutes before security caught us on the grounds and came out to chase us off.

Traffic was very heavy and at many points during the afternoon, we were engaged in more than one conversation at a time, and most were VERY positive.  We were fortunate to capture a few of these on video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3qCYBfi6Sw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaVBkruysEk

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wednesday afternoon, April 25th found 14 FLAGGERS on the Boulevard!  Early on, the sidewalks were packed with Garden Week attendees and these ladies were almost all very supportive and vowed to "march right in there and give the museum a piece of their minds". LOTS of good convos!

Later, Jimmy Jones and Frank Anthony Yates tried to recapture Camp Grayson. They were eventually repelled by a couple of very unhappy museum guards, and the city cops were called to the scene. They, however we're repelled when Tripp Lewis and Jimmy Jones posed for pics in front of the squad cars.

In the meantime, Jimmy Creech showed off his new and improved flag display, had many occasions to use the dixie horn, and fixed some mean BLT's for the hard working Flaggers. Fresh pork rinds from NC topped off the evening. Thanks to EVERYONE who came out to forward the colors!!!!

We  were able to get video of the Museum Security removing the Flaggers and another of a conversation at the Chapel...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0UFz_3pabQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adai5z8OiJI

Our NEXT flagging at the VMFA will be tomorrow afternoon, Thursday, May 3rd from 4:00 - Dusk.  Please join us as we continue our campaign to return the Battle Flags to the Confederate War Memorial/Pelham Chapel.  If you cannot be there, please call (804) 340-1400 and tell them to PUT THE FLAGS BACK ON THE CHAPEL!

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, May 5th:  A day to honor and remember New Kent County
Confederate Soldiers and Sailors 10: a.m. - 4:00 p.m. at New Kent County Courthouse.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jEl2zo4eZRM/T55_bGX733I/AAAAAAAAAI0/lVOsA_KzFsA/s1600/NewKentFLYER.jpg

May 20th: 2:00 p.m. Riverview Cemetery Confederate Memorial Program - Va
Flagger Elizabeth Wilson has spent years researching those buried here to determine if any were Confederate Veterans.  Each one that has been verified is marked with a flag on this day and a memorial service is held.  This has been a labor of love and dedication and we want to show Elizabeth our FULL support for her outstanding efforts!  She is looking for a color guard for this event.

May 28th:  10:00 a.m. - Confederate Memorial Service at the Confederate War Memorial/Pelham Chapel.

June 2nd:  Jefferson Davis Memorial Service, Hollywood Cemetery.  The Virginia Flaggers will be presenting a wreath in this service and we want ALL VA FLAGGERS to be present at this important event.  FOLLOWING the service, we are calling on ALL Flaggers, and all Confederates to gather at the VMFA for a MASS FLAGGING for the rest of the day.  More details to follow...

June 9th: 147th Consecutive Annual..."9th of June" Ceremony at Blandford Church Confederate Memorial Shrine, Petersburg, Virginia.  Blandford Cemetery, Crater Road, Petersburg, Virginia.  Time is 5:00 PM. Free.

June 30:  Point Lookout Confederate Cemetery Pilgrimage.
http://www.plpow.com/DOPL_2012pilgrimage.pdf

September 15:   9th Annual Richard "Dick" Poplar Day at 11:30 a.m.
Memorial Hill, Blandford Cemetery, Petersburg, Virginia

Look for more details on these and many other Confederate events planned in the coming months!

More info. can also be found on our public FaceBook page, "Confederate Flaggers:  Stand, Fight, and Never Back Down".
http://www.facebook.com/groups/ConfederataeFlaggers/

Follow me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/#!/VaFlagger

RETURN the flags!
RESTORE the honor!

Susan Hathaway
Va Flaggers
vaflagger@comcast.net

 

Chase's Gross Misunderstanding of Loyalty

From: bernhard1848@att.net

Salmon P. Chase’s ignorance of the Constitution was profound, and like a monarch saw subjects in the States, not free citizens as the Framer’s intended. Only States themselves can establish the privilege of suffrage, not the agent created by the States. That same Constitution holds that treason can only be committed against a State, by waging war against it or adhering to its enemies, which is precisely what Chase and his revolutionary cohorts were engaged in.  Secession was a valid act, the same valid act which 13 colonies committed against England.

His real objective was loyal voters in the defeated South to vote Republican, and using them to perpetually hold the South in subjection to his rule. The radical Republican method of firm pacification of the South involved the Union League terrorist organization which taught the freedmen to hate their white neighbors and keep them from the polls, all to assure the ascendancy of Republican hegemony.  Had there been no Union League, there would have been no Ku Klux Klan.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

******************************************************************************************************

Chase’s Gross Misunderstanding of Loyalty

“Salmon P. Chase….emerged as an early advocate of self-determination as the best solution to disorder in the South.  Throughout the war, Chase argued that the federal government’s policy toward the rebellious South should be based on the principle that “the loyal citizens of a State constitute a State.” He defined as loyal those “who desire the suppression of the rebellion, and consent to the means which the government found necessary for its suppression.”

Loyal citizens included virtually all of the black population together with those whites who accepted emancipation and Negro suffrage.  Chase thought it was vital that the federal government make “no distinctions between colored and white loyalists,” and he attributed the shortcomings of Lincoln’s efforts in Louisiana, where Chase believed “the old secession element is rapidly gaining the ascendancy,” to the exclusion of blacks from the ballot.

Chase believed that universal suffrage, incorporating the principle of equal suffrage for blacks, would provide the foundation necessary for universal amnesty and for the final reconciliation of North and South.  Touring the South in May 1865, Chase wrote to Secretary of War Stanton that “universal suffrage is essential to thorough pacification.”  Most important, he believed, “the white population will acquiesce in this policy without serious opposition if it is clearly announced, & firmly but kindly pursued.”

Like all reformers, Chase accepted the necessity of a period of military reconstruction and, indeed, insisted as chief justice that “military rule must be supreme” until civil order and civil law could be fully and safely restored.  Similarly….Chase stood with most reformers in opposing [Gerrit] Smith’s dictum that the rebels loyalty to the de facto Confederate government could not be distinguished morally from unionist loyalty to the federal government. “If the rebels waging war against the government are not traitors, Chase responded, “secession was a valid act; and our war was one of conquest.”

(Morality and Utility in American Antislavery Reform, Louis S. Gerteis, UNC Press, 1987, pp. 198-199)

 

Jefferson Davis Pleads for Peace

From: bernhard1848@att.net

On January 10, 1861, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi challenged his fellow United States Senators of the North to exhibit sufficient leadership to avert a coming war.  They would not, nor did
President-elect Lincoln who avoided any talk of legislative compromise with the South in order to hold the disparate factions of his purely-sectional party together – party over country.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

******************************************************************************************************

Jefferson Davis Pleads for Peace:

“Senator [Jefferson] Davis would speak for the South. He was still Senator, still its spokesman. Mississippi had not yet officially notified him of her action yesterday.

“Events, with a current hurrying on as it progresses, have borne me past the point where it would be useful for me to argue the question of rights.

What, Senators, today is the condition of the country? From every quarter of it comes the wailing cry of patriotism pleading for the preservation of the great inheritance we derived from our fathers. Tears are now trickling down the stern face of man; and those who have bled for the flag of their country, and are willing now to die for it, stand powerless before the plea that the [Republican] party about to come into power laid down a platform, and that come what will, though ruin stare us in the face, consistency must be adhered to, even though the Government be lost.

Why should not the garrison at Fort Sumter be withdrawn, if it would ease the tension and save bloodshed? And as for the flag:

Is there any point of pride which prevents us from withdrawing that garrison? I have heard it said by a gallant gentleman that the great objection was an unwillingness to lower the flag. To lower the flag!

Can there, then, be a point of pride so sacred a soil as this, where the blood of the fathers cries to Heaven against civil war? Can there be a point of pride against laying upon the sacred soil today the flag for which our fathers died? My pride, Senators, is different.

My pride is that the flag shall not set between contending brother; and that, when it shall no longer be the common flag of the country, it shall be folded up and laid away like a vesture no longer used; that it shall be kept as a scared memento of the past, to which each of us can make a pilgrimage, and remember the glorious days in which we were born.

I have striven to avert that catastrophe which now impends over the country, unsuccessfully, and I regret it. If you desire at this last moment to avert civil war, so be it; it is better so.

If you will not have it thus; if the pride of power, if in contempt of reason and reliance on force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be inaugurated the like of which men have not seen.

Is there wisdom, is there patriotism in the land? If so, easy must be the solution to the question. If not, then Mississippi’s gallant sons will stand like a wall of fire around their State….”

(Congress and the Civil War, Edward Boykin, McBride Company, 1955, pp. 269-271)

 

Your stance against the Confederate Battle Flag

From: cliftonpalmermclendon@yahoo.com
To: goodsells@tahlequah.k12.ok.us

"However, the school district superintendent, Dr. Shannon Goodsell, said the flag has brought racism and bigotry to the school and it will not be tolerated."

BIGOTRY: Obstinate and unreasoning attachment to one’s own belief and opinions with intolerance of beliefs opposed to them [from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.; 1981)]

You are showing obstinate attachment to your own beliefs with openly-avowed intolerance of an opposing belief.

The bigotry, therefore, is on your part.

Clifton Palmer McLendon
Gilmer, Texas
 

Flag

From: athyriot@hotmail.com
To: goodsells@tahlequah.k12.ok.us

Good Morning:

It would seem to me that, in a State where the United States dumped all the Native Americans it didn't want (Trail of Tears, "Battle" of Sand Creek, campaigns against the Comanche, campaigns against Chief Joseph), the bigoted flag would be the United States'.

But what do I know; I'm just married to an American Indian (her name preference) and I'm the former editor of The Native American Journal.

JOHN C. WHATLEY AB BMS JD LLM MTh
Former Editor, The Native American Journal

 

From: Pop Aaron
Date: Wed, May 2, 2012
Subject: [Dixie's Living Historians] Flag Rally, Ringgold Georgia, 2008
To: Dixie's Living Historians

Flag Rally, Ringgold Georgia, 2008

The New Confederate Partisans a Southern group that could have been something. Like most efforts, it failed. NO one wanted to put forth an effort.

Over 3,000 invites were E-mailed, all Georgia SCV, notice posted in ALL local news papers, 0ver 200 phone calls and a 7 month notice was given many times.... The expense was over $300 out of my pocket. We had less than 40 folk show up.

Brother Hamp drove all the way from Texas.... Brother Bazz Childers (rest his soul) all the way from Kentucky, Chuck Demastus (SHNV) Mississippi..... Faithful Brother's/Friends and Southron warriors.

http://popaaron.multiply.com/video/item/1/Flag_Rally_Ringgolg_Georgia%3EFlag%20Rally,%20Ringgolg%20Georgia

 

From: Michael Noe <seabear65@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012
Subject: RE: Mr. Edgerton
To: hk.edgerton@gmail.com

HK.
 
Thank you for the kind response. We have gleaned much from your southern heritage website.
 
You rightly described the "economic institution of slavery". Before the British turned to Africa for slaves they committed atrocities against the Irish, Scotch and street youth of England.
 
Google White slavery and you will see that in America and throughout the British colonies poor whites were rounded up, beaten, killed, shackeled together in the belly of ships, raped, and bred like cattle, and auctioned off to work for the "gentry".
 
During the overlap of white and black slavery. Black slaves commanded on average 10 times more and were considered superior to "red necks" & "white trash" by the wealthy owners.
 
Some of my family were of Scotch-Irish descent. Many in NC and the southern state at the time of the War remembered the white slavery and had no affinity for the "economic institution" of slavery and were not rascist then or now.
 
Many family stories from mine and my wife's of beloved black friends and family going back to the civil war and beyond. Including Ma Rose who like the ficitional mammy in "Gone with the Wind" ran the household and had no affinity for her "yankee liberators". She raised my wife's great grandmother and uncle as her own two children when their died in childbirth with her last child.
 
Ma Rose hated yankees for burning her home and livelihood to the ground on the VA/NC border during the War forcing them to flee to the NC coast with the clothes on their back.
 
My first memory of racism and the "N" word was traveling through Ohio at the age of 6 and later as a social worker intern in Philadelphia in the late 1980s.
 
I had to explain the reality of racism to young black teen males in a youth meeting. The city of "brotherly love" was and is quite segregated racically. and for these young men crossing the wrong street would literally get them beaten or killed by Italian or Irish gangs. As a white male looking an innocent young mans tear filled eyes and try to answer him "why Mr. Mike do they hate me and want to hurt me?" brought me to tears as well.
 
I learned recently that segregation was the official policy of the Federal government post Civil war in the south and the reality in the North to this day.
 
What America lost was a lot of important history and culture as revisionist historians painted a greatly skewed picture of the South and it's predominant protestant Christian values.
 
We appreciate your courage and that of Terry Lee's.

God bless,
 
Mike Noe & Family.

 

On Wed, May 2, 2012, Randy Williams wrote:

Confederate Youth Day 26 May 2012
Young men from 12 to 20 are invited.

Tired of being told you should be ashamed of your Southern forefathers.
Tired of being brow-beaten by the bloody shirt of slavery propaganda.
Tired of politically correct lies from the liberal media.
Tired of sneers of arrogant self-righteous Yankees.

Come and join us for a good dose of truth.
Learn why the South was right.
Learn to be proud of your Confederate ancestors.

At Grace Baptist Church just past Lenoir Community College on Hwy 58 S.
Kinston, NC

No tuition or fees, just come willing to learn and willing to act like a gentleman. Door prizes drawn at the end of the classes.

Begins at 9 AM
Classes till 11AM
Dinner on you own
Tour of the CSS Ram Neuse II at 1PM

Sponsored by the Pettigrew Partisans, Sons of Confederate Veterans

Registration is not necessary, but is appreciated.
Contact tarpon12yak@yahoo.com for more information.

Name ___________________________________ age_________

Phone / e-mail _________________________________________

******************************************************************************************************

From: HK Edgerton <hk.edgerton@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 2, 2012
Subject: Re: [Southern Heritage Preservation Group] Confederate Youth Day 26 May 2012

God bless you all. Please visit some of your Black Ministers, and invite some Black children, and their parents to this venture. It is a good thing.

Your brother,
HK

 

From: Al Benson Jr.
Date: Wed, May 2, 2012
Subject: [Southern Heritage, Fight for it Or Lose it!] One of the best ways to help to preserve our...
To: "Southern Heritage, Fight for it Or Lose it!"

Al Benson Jr.
May 2

One of the best ways to help to preserve our Southern heritage and history is to remove your kids from the public school system. Southern heritage and history has no greater adversary than the public school system which is part and parcel of "reconstruction" both yesterday and today.

 

Confederate ancestors defended homeland

Letter to the Editor
By TBO.COM | Staff
Published: April 28, 2012

More than one million Southern men served in the Confederate military from 1861 to 1865. Nearly 300,000 died during the war. Florida, which sent more of her sons per capita into the Confederate army and navy than any other state, remembers its heroes each April 26. By Florida state law this date is the legal holiday of Confederate Memorial Day.

The focus of Confederate Memorial Day should be entirely upon those Confederate soldiers and sailors who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

For a moment, consider who the average Confederate was. He was a poor agrarian — a farmer, a miller or a logger. He likely had never been outside of his home county. He was either a teenager or a young man in his early 20s. He was a Christian and part of a large family. He had no military training. And he was not a slave owner.

These otherwise peaceable men went to war, almost all of them voluntarily, because in their heart of hearts their sense of duty demanded it. In their very real world of 1861, loyalty was first and foremost to one's kin and native state. The Southern man reacted to Lincoln's invasion of his sovereign homeland. It was that simple.

Confederate soldiers are recognized by the United States government as full-fledged military combatants with legal standing. Congress has made it so. Laws have been enacted requiring Confederate soldiers to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery and that provide for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to furnish military-style headstones for unmarked Confederate graves.

A conservative estimate is that more than 80 million present-day Americans are direct descendents of a Confederate soldier or sailor. Our Confederate heritage is a fact. We can disavow it, we can ignore it, or, as Confederate Memorial Day compels, we can proudly embrace it.

MICHAEL S. HERRING
Tampa

 

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Brother Jamie, Always on guard!

PoP,

Here is a long due Report from Reidsville.Weather for Reidsville today was RAIN! HA HA ...I had another great time in Reidsville today playing in the rain and having a good ole time at the Monument Circle. I made some new friends and had a few interesting things happen in the circle. I got to the circle just before sunrise and it looked like it was going to be a nice cool spring day. OH WAS I WRONG! Big storms came trough around 11 this morning and OH YEAH, I got wet... But hey, so what, a good shower is refreshing while flagging! I also was asked to be added into a boxing promo video as a fighter shadow boxed in the circle with me as his background. The things that happen in that Monument Circle. I also met a new Northern friend with a Southern heart as he gave me shelter in his hotdog stand as the storms got fierce. He says although he is from the North he supports the efforts we are making in Reidsville and that the Monument should have never been taken down. He gave me a free lunch and we had a great conversation about Southern history. The sun finally came out around two o'clock and my good friends came out to see me some more. When five rolled around it was time to pack up and head to a meeting with the HPAC officers to help plan our next steps. It was a great day and Im looking forward to the next visit.

Jamie Funkhouser
Apr 26

 

Thursday, April 26, 2012

By All Means Celebrate Confederate Memorial Day

There was no greater mind in the 19th century than the British philosopher and historian, Lord Acton. Acton, famous for the quote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” was not only a great mind, but a great spirit. He rejected tyranny however “patriotic” and refused the spoils of war however enticing. Acton watched closely as the crisis built up between the old Union and the states of the South in America. He was aware of the various economic, political and moral issues—including slavery—but nonetheless, cast his lot with the South. After the war, he wrote the following to General Robert E. Lee:

"I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy...Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

Acton saw in the South’s struggle for independence, not an attempt to save slavery or even an effort to throw off the economic yoke of the North with its American System of crony capitalism which has become so familiar to us today. Rather, he saw an effort to hold fast to the Founding Principles upon which the original Union was established and which had long since been abandoned by the ever increasing statism and centralization embraced by the North. Acton saw States’ rights as “the only availing check” on that statism and centralization. Today see the ultimate victory of the Union in the overwhelming power of Washington, D. C. Acton believed that the Confederacy was fighting for more than its own liberty, progress and civilization; it was fighting for all mankind. Indeed, in another place, he states that had the Confederacy been victorious, it would have “blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom…” As Lord Acton was contemporary to the struggle, it would be ludicrous to suggest the he had been duped, elevating the cause of the South into something greater than it was.

Yet, today no such vision of that struggle or definition of that cause is even permitted to be entertained. We are told that the South fought for slavery and tyranny and that her heroes were wicked or corrupt or lacking in sufficient wit to understand the nature of the cause for which they fought. The Grand Bargain—which for so many years allowed Americans on both sides to embrace the heroes in Blue and Gray—has been repudiated and now, all things Confederate are held in contempt. Southern heritage and history including her symbols, monuments and heroes are pronounced as unfit for anything but the ash heap of history. Yet, one of the greatest minds of the time, Lord Acton, clearly thought otherwise. Furthermore, most of what people are told about the South and its cause are myths, mistakes, half-truths and outright lies. Efforts to disseminate the truth and well documented facts are shouted down by the politically correct revisionists of academia, government and the media. No attempt is made to disprove the facts. Rather the truth is simply kept from the people. Another great mind of the 18th century, the Scottish poet Robert Burns had this to say about those who feared to advance the truth:

Here's freedom to him who would speak,
Here's freedom to him who would write,
For there's none ever feared that the truth should be heard,
Except he who the truth would indict.

For those who would reject the right of Southerners to celebrate their great and noble heritage, I say that you are among those whom the poet rightly condemns. You fear that the truth would be heard because it is you and your position that the truth would indict.

Valerie Protopapas
Huntington Station NY

 

From: Georgia Flagger <cobbslegionscv@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 27, 2012
Subject: [FlagFight] Confederate Memorial Day, Heard County [4 Attachments]
To: Georgia Division <GASCV-Discussion@yahoogroups.com>, flagfight@yahoogroups.com

[Attachment(s) from Georgia Flagger included below]

April 26th, is, since 1874, and according not only to Georgia Statute, but also by official proclamation, known as Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia.

The proclamations come from Centralhatchee, Ephesus, Franklin and Heard County, and are perpetual.

To mark the occasion, Billy Bearden traveled to Yellow Dirt Cemetery inside Georgia Power's Plant Wansley to visit the soldiers, and check on the Confederate Battle Flags placed on the veteran's graves for the 2nd time back in October 2011.

After taking about 15 pictures and being satisfied all is ok with the graves and decorations thereon, he made his way down to Franklin town square.

In the middle of the square is a large Gazebo. In 'front' of this is multiple panels of engraved bricks with veterans names and a plaque designating the walls as the Heard County Veterans Park.

Arriving at 1pm, in Confederate uniform and carrying a 4x4 Army of Northern Virginia Battle Flag, he began walking around the gazebo inside the circle.  Keep in mind that the old Heard County Rangers Sons of Confederate Veterans camp folded back in 2007-2008, and the only Confederate presence is the small but respectable Confederate Marker on the 'back side' of the gazebo.

It seems that the citizenry, based on his limited time there, are starving for something Confederate. He met with and spoke to four women, and all took pictures. Two said they had heard from their Mother they had "someone in their family who fought for our side,  in Georgia, uh, they wore gray!"

One woman stopped her car in the road and took a picture and yelled thanks. The other said she was a proud southern woman and related her experience at a recent reenactment.

Two young boys of about 10 years of age spent a few minutes with him, one saying he was from Ireland, and Bearden mentioned General Cleburne. The other said he was related to some General whose name was Covington, which is what the city west of Atlanta is named for. Bearden told him he didn't think that General Covington was a Confederate, but that the TV show "In The Heat Of The Night" was filmed there.

Dozens of horn honks and appreciative waves were the theme of the day vehicle-wise. A lot os men came by and talked and left educated. One man walked up and shook his hand and thanked him for being there.
 
Billy Bearden is a Georgia and Virginia Flagger and a member of
Haralson Invincibles #673
Sons of Confederate Veterans

From: Lunelle Siegel <siegels1@mindspring.com>
Date: Sat, Apr 28, 2012
Subject: Okalahoma School Board calls flag bigoted and racist! PLEASE WRITE A LETTER
To: Lunelle Siegel <siegels1@mindspring.com>

Take a minute to read up on this and write a letter.
 
http://www.fox23.com/mostpopular/story/Teen-gets-suspended-after-flying-the-Confederate/z4roBIZ7gU2SiOAi8ehYyA.cspx
 
Here's who to send it to: goodsells@tahlequah.k12.ok.us (Dr. Shannon Goodsell http://www.tahlequah.k12.ok.us/boe/boardofeducation.htm)
 
Here's my letter:
 
I was offended by the press reports of your statement regarding the student at Tahelquah.
 
Could you please explain what you mean that the student projected racism and bigotry by flying the Army of Tennessee Flag?
 
Perhaps you are unaware that flag is an honored symbol of American Veterans, many from the state of Oklahoma that offered their lives blood for the defense of their homes and families.
 
Your statement only caters and encourages those who seek to convert the beloved flag of our our grandfathers and great grandfathers into a racially divisive one.  Shame on you!
 
Lunelle Siegel
Tampa, Florida

 

From: Billy Bearden
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012
To: "Southern Heritage, Fight for it Or Lose it!"

UDC SERVICES THAT DESERVE A SECOND LOOK...

Well, to start this off, recall that Ga Gov Roy Barnes removed the 1956 Ga State Flag, and that the Ga Div UDC awarded him their Jefferson Davis Medal, PLUS invited Barnes to be guest speaker at a Confederate Memorial Day service in Marietta a few years ago...

The Confederate cemetery in Richmond Virginia known as Hollywood has thousands of US flags placed on Confederate Graves by a Richmond Chapter of UDC.

The North Carolina Division UDC is being sued over their collusion with the government to remove a Confederate Statue illegally by citizens who desire to see it replaced in it's original location.

The National UDC has stated they refuse to assist in any efforts to restore 2 Confederate Battleflags on a Confederate Memorial Chapel in Virginia, and went so far as to refuse to allow the Va Flaggers to stand on, or walk across their property. When a group of Flaggers (including children, UDC members, and a uniformed SCV Color Guard) stepped up on the edge of their property to take a photo, UDC officials actually called the police!

So as I was reading 2 stories today about Confederate Memorial Services hosted by the UDC here in Georgia, I see the same mentality mentioned above

http://daltondailycitizen.com/local/x157475237/Durden-Memorial-Day-started-in-Georgia
It is not the fact that the AoT Battleflag is upside down, but that the flags marking the graves are being removed after the service, which leads to the obvious question, WHY?

That is small compared to this
http://chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2012-04-29/confederate-cause-remembered-sunday-west-view-cemetery

As with Gov Barnes, they had a very special guest speaker at their service, Former Augusta Mayor Bob Young, again the question is WHY?!?!?!?!?

For those not familiar with Young, read:
http://georgiaheritagecouncil.org/site2/commentary/bearden-young-flagged-riverwalk.phtml

http://georgiaheritagecouncil.org/site2/commentary/bearden-2ndNatl-hypocrisy082806.phtml

 

Observing Confederate history

April 22, 2012

Tomorrow is an official state holiday -- Confederate Memorial Day -- and April is designated Confederate History Month in Alabama.

The large opposition by the Northern people to Lincoln’s tax war was a tremendous asset to the Confederate states.

Nearly half – 45 percent -- of all Northerners supported a voluntary union for the United States, as established by the Founding Fathers, and opposed Lincoln’s new compulsory union to collect taxes from Southerners for Lincoln’s Wall Street partners.

Even in Franklin County, N.Y., on the border of Canada, District Attorney W. A. Dart wrote to Lincoln’s Secretary of State on Sept. 23, 1861: “In several of the towns nearly as many persons could be enlisted for the Southern Confederacy as could be for the United States.”

These Northern Confederates almost defeated Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 with their political platform to end the war immediately and sign a peace treaty with the Confederate States.

Their presidential candidate, George McClellan, received 45 percent of the Northern vote and, if Southern votes were allowed, Lincoln would have been handily defeated.

Whereupon today, the Confederate States and United States would be voluntary unions of sovereign, independent states instead of a compulsory union of colonies of the federal government.
 
Roger K. Broxton, president
Confederate Heritage Fund
Andalusia