Predictably, their message was that the Civil War was about States Rights and that they were honoring the brave men who fought for this noble idea.
I was thoroughly creeped out from being surround by all of these lunatics -- I was less uncomfortable when I visited the gas chambers at Dachau. I'm not kidding.
Maybe it would be unfair to label them all as racists, but who puts stickers like these on their cars?:
No one threatened me, but one guy came up to me and said, "do they know a Yankee is here?" I wasn't wearing anything to indicate that, but I obviously didn't fit in.
The most lunatic speech came from this guy:
Besides bringing up Harry Potter, he compared his plight -- a white man who is maligned by liberals because he speaks the truth of what the Civil War was really fought over -- to the Civil Rights Movement. He told the crowd that like Rosa Parks, it was time they stood up from the back of the bus and walked to the front. So I guess he must feel like he's living in an apartheid state. And there's no doubt that Rosa Parks' name was invoked because we're in Montgomery, AL, home of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and only several hundred feet away from MKL's church where the boycott was organized.
I was happy that Bill Maher focused on this event in his New Rules segment on Friday's show. My local friends weren't happy that Bill attacked all Southerns, but my response to them is that even though the Sons of Confederate Veterans do not represent the majority of Southerns, the majority is complicit by never speaking out against these Civil War revisionists. There should have been a counter protest, but there wasn't one. And while these guys obviously have a Constitutional right to assemble and say whatever they want, I don't think the State should have allowed them to hold the event on the Capitol steps given that they are slavery deniers.
All my pictures from the day:
Posts
Thanks for posting the pics and video. Looks like a total clown show... It would be almost impossible to separate the layers of stupid in that event.
ReplyDeleteWhat a sad turnout...most of the people were participants...no crowd watching...sad!
ReplyDeleteBut to be expected from the SCV's!
Thornhill: There's a bus and a plane leaving everyday to take you back where you came from. Hey, have you left yet? I'd say that ya green card has expired!
ReplyDeletePatriot1861
Its great to see the left-wing marxist loons are very interested in violating the constitutional & civil rights of southerners by wanting to interfere with & stop their events. How Un - American of them to deny the same rights to southerners that they claim for themselves. When was the last time you saw the SCV trying to stop or interfere with one of your events honoring the know communist ( see FBI file ) Martin Luther King ????
ReplyDeleteConfederates are no different from our Tea Party. The confederate flag stands for conservatism. Abraham Lincoln was 1861 version of Today Barrack Obama. They were fighting the same thing in 1861 as we are fighting today. Less government,Low Taxes,and States rights. Same thing the Tea Party is fighting today. Were is slavery today huh? Some Southern states like South Carolina has talked about secession again. Where are the slaves? There are none. I have was raised and have lived in Iowa all my life so by birth I'm a yankee. But you yankees and your damn history can kiss my a**. I have black friends including two black friends who display their confederate flags proudly. And one was even a member of the NAACP. I'm southern and a confederate by choice. Because as long as there are people like Abraham Lincoln and Barrack Obama us confederates will be here to fight when we need too. Get a damn education southern history is more accurate than the crap they teach you in school. But if you want to be ignorant then by all means you have that right. But remember someday you will stand in judgement. I sure would hate to be wrong. And my version is a lot better than yours.
ReplyDeleteDear people who think slavery was not a reason for secession:
ReplyDeleteRead Jefferson Davis' message to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America which was delivered on April 29th, 1861. He makes it crystal clear that South seceded over slavery:
[slave] labor had been so directed ... to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern slaveholding States had augmented from about 1,250,000 at the date of the adoption of the Constitution to more than 8,500,000 in 1860; and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man.
He then goes on to say:
With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North [outlawing slavery] to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. With this view the legislatures of the several States invited the people to select delegates to conventions to be held for the purpose of determining for themselves what measures were best adapted to meet so alarming a crisis in their history ... In the exercise of a right so ancient, so well established, and so necessary for self-preservation, the people of the Confederate States, in their conventions, determined that the wrongs which they had suffered and the evils with which they were menaced required that they should revoke the delegation of powers to the Federal Government which they had ratified in their several conventions. They consequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and Independent States and dissolved their connection with the other States of the Union.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_m042961.asp
Thornhill, go read every negative thing Lincoln said about blacks & his plan to re-colonize them outside of America after the Civil War & study the Black Codes of northern states that forbid blacks from living in them & about northern ports being the main ports of entry for New England shipping companies transporting slaves to America ect, ect, ect. Then get back to me on how it`s ONLY southerners who are responsible for the majority of the ill`s you want to claim has befell African / Americans. If you immbeciles knew American history as well as you think you do, you would know the north is as responsible, if not more so, for the slavetrade than the South ever was. Now go straighten out your own house before worrying about straightening out someone elses. Moron !
ReplyDeleteBilly E. Price:
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a non-denial denial that the South seceded over slavery.
Yep, it's a non-denial denial.
ReplyDeleteThornhill, people like you are hopeless & will be the downfall of personal rights & freedoms in this Constitutional Republic, including you`re own. Too bad you are so ate up with hate ( and stupidity ) towards others that you can`t even see it
ReplyDeleteGee...a "yiddish yankee" living in the South. Who would-a thunk it? Here's a thought - why don't you try moving to a place where you'd be a bit happier and have more in common with the locals? OH! Sorry...I forgot.... schmucks like you aren't fullfilled unless they are surrounded by those they detest and who in turn detest them. Their mission in life is to make themselves and those around them as miserable as possible. You have succeeded in your mission. Now please catch the next bus north and go back to LAWWWNG AEIILAND NOO YAWK before one of your lansmen, Judah P. Benjamin, gets out of his grave and gives you a whack across your self-righteous little head.
ReplyDeleteAnother non-denial denial: "Yes we're slavery deniers, and if you don't like it, don't live here." How enlightened.
ReplyDeleteThornhill here`s you some more enlightenment google, " White Slavery in American " I wouldn`t want you to get to feeling too special & feel that " people of color " have the exclusive claim on being the only slaves to have ever been brought to the America colonies. Where`s my reparations ! ! ! ! !
ReplyDeleteThornhill must not have liked my last post as it was not allowed to be viewed.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Yanks are like this, like to talk and talk and never say anything.
You YANKs will get yours in the END. literally
Jerry Wells
RebelScot:
ReplyDeleteThe only post I have from you is above.
Hey Aaron and Billy
ReplyDeleteWithin the numerous re-enactments I have done, do and will do, the one "standing comment" from those whose ancestors (Union troops) fought against Billys and mine,our Confederates say what their Ancestors fought for:
"NOT TO FREE THE SLAVES, BUT PRESERVE THE UNION"
It's just the illiterate YANKS who have blinders on to the "CAUSES" of the War of Northern Aggression.
Perhaps they read but cannot comprehend written "TRUTH" of the events leading to that confrontation.
So sad, the Uneducated, due to Yankee teachings
for 150+ years.
And to end, "YANKRR RULE" has driven a once great country to its knees.
The Confederate forces would not have left our men behind, like the Yanks did in Viet Nam.
Jerry Wells
RebelScot:
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly does "You YANKs will get yours in the END. literally" mean?
Wow, I know a lot of people that have shirts and bumper stickers like that. Obviously, you don't know your history very well, or you would have felt right at home. Some of the strongest supporters of state' rights and liberty are from NY, NJ, ME. It knows no bounds. Sorry if someone asked if you were a yankee. Personally, I look at the heart. The person I know who is most knowledgeable concerning the War for Southern Independence is from NJ. He's simply studied a lot more than most of us have.
ReplyDeleteBrett
You may not know it, but a lot of Yankees fought for the Confederacy. A wide array of ethnic and religious groups participated in the war, and also in the Confederate government. Judah P. Benjamin held at least 3 cabinet posts and help raise finances for the CSA.
ReplyDeleteBrett
Well, Thornhill, it may come as a surprise to you as you jape and gawk at people who actually have a sense of historical identity and are proud to honor it, but people like ME put such bumper stickers on their car. I happen to have both of the stickers displayed in the photo; I"m particularly fond of the "Fighting Terrorism Since 1861" slogan. Quite witty.
ReplyDeleteNot only do I display them on my car , I also display them in the cockpit of my recent model motor yacht which proudly flies the Battle Flag, the 3rd National Flag, the Texas Flag and/or the Bonnie Blue Flag, as the mood suits me when cruising around Galveston/Houston, always to universal acclaim from onlookers.
I also display pin versions of the flags on my suit coats, blazers and overcoat such I wear on regular business trips to Europe and the Far East - always flying via private jet and 1st Class commercial, of course.
I display the stickers and pins in honor of my Southern ancestors; unlike most Southerners, mine did in fact own slaves. My daughter is descended from Texas slaveowners on my side and Louisiana slaveowners on her mothers side. I make no apology for this and express no remorse and it was NOT the reason they seceded and fought the war.
My g-g-g grandmother moved to the Texas frontier from Mississippi as a widow with 8 children. I was named after her eldest son, who enlisted in the Confederate Army aged 18 and served thru the duration of the war, including 9 months over a harsh winter in the brutal Point Lookout prison camp. He had to walk back to Texas after. After the war, the slaves remained with the family, such was their loyalty and treatment. My namesake g-g- grandfather had a grandson who is commonly called the greatest Governor Texas ever had and was considered as a possible running mate for Ike in 1956.
My point in this rambling background description is that your pig ignorant, bigoted insults deriding Southerners as backwoods bumpkins and imbeciles look pretty foolish when confronted by the reality of real flesh and blood proud Southrons.
My people, along with millions of other Southerners carved out of a howling wilderness a prosperous, Christian civilization that stretched from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and they did it in just over 100 years. (What were your people doing at the time?) I’m not going to disavow them and dishonor their memory to propitiate the sick, twisted mind of short pants Marxists like you and your ilk.
If you'll check mapquest, you'll see that the interstate highway system runs northbound as well as Southbound and if you check wikipedia, you'll see that illegitimacy rates are much higher in certain northern cities than in Montgomery; I suggest you take advantage of it and perhaps relocate their where you'll no doubt find kinship with your kind.
I guess the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas–Nebraska Act and Compromise of 1850 all happened in a vacuum.
ReplyDeleteI guess the Nullification crisis brought about by the Tariff of Abominations never happened. I guess there wasn't a huge push for higher tariffs in the North in the wake of the Panic of 1857. I also guess high tariffs was not in the party platform of the Republicans for the 1860 election and that Lincoln did not in fact tell an audience in Pennsylvania that no issues-none-was more important to him. I guess the North did not use its congressional majority to apportion itself 80% of all government revenues for internal improvements. I guess a high tariff would not have caused Southerners - the primary exporters and importers as cotton was commonly traded for manufactured goods to pay an even larger share of all tariffs when they were already paying the vast majority of it. I furthermore guess that jacking up tariff rates would not have lined the pockets of Notheastern business interests as they were free to raise their prices once their European competitors had been priced out of the market due to those tariffs....while Southerners paid more for their manufactured goods and served as a captive market. I guess hitting British and French sales that hard wouldn't have left them less money with which to purchase Southern cotton...even though that's exactly what it did when the Tariff of Abominations was in effect. I guess the Morrill tariff was not signed into law 2 days before Lincoln took office and that Lincoln in his inaugural address did not express his support for the Corwin Amendment which would have barred the federal government from ever banning slavery. Since the whole thing was....you know....about slavery and all.
ReplyDeleteNah. I've actually studied the history for myself instead of just regurgitating the government's propaganda that it was all about a cause they themselves didn't see fit to declare as the cause until two years into the war.
"My daughter is descended from Texas slaveowners on my side and Louisiana slaveowners on her mothers side. I make no apology for this and express no remorse"
ReplyDeleteRMS...you are a pathetic excuse for a human being. Its funny that you call someone else bigoted after making this claim in the same post. I'm so glad I do not live in the south.
But Anonymous, his family was nice to their slaves, so it's not so bad. Right?
ReplyDeleteHungaryGator:
ReplyDeleteTariff of 1828/Nullification Crisis and other Southern objections about taxation doesn't somehow negate the fact that the South threatened to secede every time the North tried to curtail slavery in new territories and states.
why did the South care about the territories? They needed the votes in Congress to protect their economic interests.
ReplyDeleteYou disagree?
OK, then please explain to me....if the territories were so important to them why they all believed secession....a remedy that meant they had to give up any claims to the territories....was the solution for them? Suddenly once they are out, once they cannot be plundered by the Northern majority in Congress, the territories don't seem to matter to them anymore. They're happy to give up any claims to the territories in order to be independent.
If it really was "all about slavery", if they really felt that slavery would die without expansion (it was dying anyway by the way-just look around the world at that time), then why on earth do they secede? Why do they not come back even when the Corwin Amendment was offered?
HungaryGator:
ReplyDeleteThe South's economic interests and slavery intersected.
As I've already said, even Jefferson Davis noted in his message to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America (April 29th, 1861) that outlawing slavery would severely damage the South's economy because it was dependent on slavery, and that's was one of the major factors for seceding.
I suppose you think that it was coincidence that the states with the largest number of plantations pushed hardest for secession.
If you read The Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, they make it very clear that they're upset that non-slave states are not following federal laws about slavery:
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection."
The whole freaking document is about slavery.
Heck, there were even purely racial motivations. From the Texas Deceleration of Causes:
"In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law."
and Thornhill if you read the Address of Robert Barnwell Rhett which South Carolina attached to its declaration of causes you will see"
ReplyDelete"The Southern States, now stand exactly in the same position towards the Northern States, that the Colonies did towards Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British parliament. "The General Welfare," is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation, this "General Welfare" requires. Thus, the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government; and the people of the Southern State, are compelled to meet the very despotism, their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776.
And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures."
There is another evil, in the condition of the Southern toward the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear toward Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them, were expended among them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of the British Government, the taxes collected from them, would have been expended in other parts of the British Empire. They were fully aware of the effect of such a policy in impoverishing the people from whom taxes are collected, and in enriching those who receive the benefit of their expenditure."
The whole freaking thing is about economics.
Toombs also goes into the economic causes extensively in Georgia's declaration. He furthermore says that the protectionists have built a political coalition with the abolitionists....ie a pure Northern sectional party. Then interestingly we have this from some of the Northern papers:
"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation North American Review (Boston October 1862)
On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."
Notice that each....Toombs and the Northern Newspapers accuses the other side of using the slavery/abolition issue as a mask for their own region's economic interests. There is quite a bit of evidence to show that they are both right about that.
"...the great Southern solution to racial harmony was to enslave a race?"
ReplyDeleteWe didn't enslave them Thornhill; yankee slave traders did that and sold most (ca. 94%) of the unfortunates who survived the Middle Passage into brutal captivity on Caribbean or Brazilian plantations where it was cheaper to work them to death and send for another boatload of replacements, which yankees were glad to accommodate.
Of the ca. 6% who were sold into Colonial America, the practice instead was to civilize and Christianize them, encourage marriage and families. That's why 500 - 600,000 in the 17th/18th century grew to 4 million by 1860.
It takes a particularly severe cognitive dissonance to demonize Southern slaveholders while ignoring the greedy, cruel yankees who grew fat and wealthy in the brutal slave trade.
Oh, I see. Because they were already enslaved, you had no choice but to keep them as slaves.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of the time my friend gave me a TV as a birthday gift. He told me if I didn't like the TV I couldn't return it because he had stolen it. At first I was uncomfortable accepting a stolen TV as a gift, but hey, I wasn't the one who stole it, so I kept it.
HungaryGator:
ReplyDeleteThe difference between you and me is that I recognize that the Civil War occurred because of economic policy that hurt them -- many related directly or indirectly to slavery, some not related to slavery.
You've created this alternate reality where the South's Agricultural driven economy which was fueled by slave labor would not have been effected if slavery was abolished.
"Because they were already enslaved, you had no choice but to keep them as slaves."
ReplyDeleteOnce again Thornhill, you miss the point, which is not the propriety of slaveholding (which if anachronictic, is morally and legally permissible when practiced according to biblical standards) but rather why we Southerners utterly reject any criticism from hypocritical yankee slave traders regarding our history of domestic slavery and why we peremptorily throw it right back in your face with the disdain & contempt it deserves.
And as far as hanging onto something acquired through dubious means, I don't see any northeastern family fortunes built on the Triangle Trade being refunded back to the victims nor do I see any institutions funded by slave trading profits such as Brown University talking about forfeiting their endowment. When they do, get back to me.
Thornhill,
ReplyDeleteof course abolishing slavery (like the South should have done sooner) would have had an effect....however I see no reason why paying workers wages for their labor would have prevented the cotton industry from still being quite lucrative. The sectional economic issues...agricultural/exporting South vs industrializing/protectionist North would have been the same whether slavery existed or not.
I do not nor have I ever denied that slavery was a major issue. I do think it pure propaganda however to say that it was the only issue and/or to deny the role of the Northern states in establishing and profiting from it. Unfortunately everybody bears a healthy dose of the blame for that wretched system.
Another major difference aside form slavery and economics was two competing visions of the Constitution and the nature of the relationship between states and the federal government. The South adopted much more of the Jeffersonian vision of decentralized power whereas the North adopted much more of the Hamiltonian vision of a highly centralized state in which government was to have close ties to industry.
Again, secession and the war (2 different things) came about for a variety of reasons. The statists/centralizers of today however wish to bury all of that and claim the moral high ground for themselves by merely chanting "slavery slavery slavery!!!" and of course labeling anybody who disagrees with their support of centralized power as being "racist" so as to shut down all debate or discussion. Its absurd.
"...I see no reason why paying workers wages for their labor would have prevented the cotton industry from still being quite lucrative."
ReplyDeleteThat may well be true, but try convincing a plantation owner that their net revenue wouldn't decline if they suddenly had to pay their slaves a salary.
"...I see no reason why paying workers wages for their labor would have prevented the cotton industry from still being quite lucrative."
ReplyDeleteUnskilled agricultural labor in the mid 19th century earned low cash wages wherever they worked in America. The compensation provide to slaves in the South, inclusive of housing, food, clothing, medical care as well as lifetime care for the very young and the very old were approximately equivalent to what they could have earned as cash compensated free laborers.
The most detailed analysis, presented by award winning economists in "Time on the Cross" shows compensation-in-kind "paid" to slaves was within ca. 10% of cash compensation for similar freeman labor. In many cases slaves enjoyed a better diet than most freemen and they had more living space than the average tenement dweller in large northern cities at the time.
Slavery wasn't about economic exploitation for cheap labor; it certainly wasn't particularly cheap. Slavery was about social control of a group of people too alien and rustic to be readily assimilable into free white society without causing upheaval and chaos.
They could have done what industrialists in the North were doing at the time.....pay subsistence wages, while making employees work 14 hour days 6 days per week with no health or safety standards, providing no health care and no pensions. If somebody is too old or young or sick to work...tough for them. They can live on the street.
ReplyDeleteRead Dickens some time. See "Gangs of New York" which was a very accurate portrayal of working and living conditions at the time. Things weren't so rosy for those on the bottom of the social order in the North at the time either.....and as I said, take away slavery and have the former slaves working for wages, the differences between the economies and the economic interests of the North and South would have still remained. In a country with a taxation system that allowed one to benefit at the expense of the other, conflict was inevitable.
What they could have done is irrelevant. Nobody likes when the government may force them to change what they believe is a successful business model. Today people hire lobbyists; back then they seceded.
ReplyDeleteExcept that is not why they seceded. The government offered them the Corwin Amendment which would have protected that business model forever.
ReplyDeleteDavis was already sworn by the time Congress passed Corwin. The Confederates had no reason to put the brakes on things then, especially considering that they would then have to wait to see if the Amendment was ratified. They would have given up their momentum -- they would have blinked. And they knew better -- if they adopted a wait and see approach to ratification, northern states would have seen that as a sign of weakness in their resolve.
ReplyDeleteThe Amendment had already been ratified by 3 states. Had protection of slavery been the issue they could have given an indication as to their willingness to come back in were it passed by enough others....which with Lincoln's and the Republican Party's support it certainly would have been. They gave no such indication.
ReplyDeleteThey could have given an indication that they were willing to come back in if enough states ratified it---3 states already had---with Lincoln's and the Republican Party's support it surely would have passed. They would then even have had access to the territories they gave up by seceding. They never gave any indication that they were willing to come back even with passage of the Corwin Amendment. What other key piece of legislation was passed in the meantime? Oh that's right...the Morrill Tariff.
ReplyDelete"Slavery wasn't about economic exploitation for cheap labor; it certainly wasn't particularly cheap. Slavery was about social control of a group of people too alien and rustic to be readily assimilable into free white society without causing upheaval and chaos"
ReplyDeleteRMS
This is so insanely racist and retarded, I can't believe people like you still exist in our country.