South Carolina: Keep the Confederate Flag

The flag's opponents criticize it as a "symbol of slavery." 
History Lesson for the Day: Under which of these flags was slavery (unfortunately) legal for 85 years (1776-1861)? Under which flag was it legal for about 4 years (1861-1865)?

(with fewer stars than shown here)

"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

(a) Nathan Bedford Forrest (founder of the Ku Klux Klan)
(b) Abraham Lincoln
(c) Jefferson Davis (voted "Most Likely to Secede" by his high school class)
(d) Simon Legree (the villain of Uncle Tom's Cabin)
(e) Uncle Tom
(f) Robert E. Lee
(g) Ulysses S. Grant
(h) Harriet Tubman
(i) Harriet Beecher Stowe
(j) Stonewall Jackson
(k) David DuKKKe
Answer at the bottom

• Is the Confederate Flag a hate symbol? Yes, if it is being carried by people in sheets and hoods--but not if it is being carried by Confederate Army reenactors who are protesting the organization with the sheets and hoods.
• Is a cross a hate symbol? Yes, if people in sheets and hoods are burning it--but a burning cross is not a racist hate symbol if the people around it are wearing kilts (as in Clans as opposed to Klans).
• Are white sheets and hoods hate symbols? Yes, if worn by the Ku Klux Klan--but not if worn by Spaniards celebrating Easter weekend.
• Are swastikas hate symbols? Yes, if displayed by Nazis, but not if displayed by Asian Indians or Native Americans.
  

• The New York Draft Riots: many Northerners supported slavery!
  
• "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down," performed by folk singer Joan Baez
• Robert E. Lee: American Hero
• Understanding the personal dilemmas of the Civil War: The Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita
• The principal characters in these Asian Indian stories had to choose sides- just like Americans in 1861.
• Wisdom from the famous Black educator Booker T. Washington
• Thomas Sowell's comments
• Another site: Ken Revell's commentary
• Another site: Confederate reenactors (with Confederate flags) in anti-Klan rally
• "The Klan's approach was heralded by the bullhorns and whistles being used by the "Black activists" hounding them, so we formed up and prepared. When they turned the corner the "Attention!" order was issued, followed shortly by "About face!" and we turned our backs on the Klan and the "Black activists" while we kept our flags flying high." (The Confederate reenactors, by the way, behaved with far more dignity than the Black activists.)
• NAACP leader Julian Bond compares Confederacy to Nazi Germany
  

The following was submitted as a guest column to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader and to a few South Carolina papers. Permission is granted to reproduce this page's contents provided that no changes are made and that proper credit is given. "Rally opposes Confederate flag" (Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 1/18/00) could prompt a Yankee like me to start whistling "Dixie." The NAACP's opposition to South Carolina's display of this flag— for which the Democratic presidential contenders have criticized John McCain and George Bush Jr. for not joining— is a phony, politically-correct, feel-good issue that smacks of historical revisionism. First, the Confederate flag does not symbolize a struggle to preserve slavery, because the Civil War was not about slavery. It was caused by economic differences between the industrialized North and the agrarian South. The South exported cotton to England's Lancashire mills, and wanted to import manufactured products from English factories. Northern factory owners supported, and got, protectionist tariffs on English goods. The South saw these tariffs (taxes) as ruinous, and there were still living Americans who could remember another war that had started partly because of taxes. There was friction between Northern abolitionists and Southern slave owners, but very few Southerners owned slaves; they were expensive. Many Confederate soldiers had to march barefoot because they had no boots. A man who couldn't afford boots obviously couldn't afford a slave, nor would he have been willing to fight for a system which, if anything, impoverished him during peacetime. "Whites were hurt by the system as well as blacks. Few free men could prosper alongside a mass of subservient and virtually uncompensated labor." (Colton and Palmer, "A History of the Modern World," 4th ed., p. 588). Few Northerners were willing to go to war to free the slaves. Even Abraham Lincoln would have tolerated slavery as the price of preserving the United States. Only after war broke out did Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Some Southerners may even have been abolitionists. It is doubtful that the Underground Railroad could have functioned had all Southerners been vigilant in reporting runaway slaves. The same Southerners who looked the other way while slaves escaped could well have fought under the Confederate flag. Second, the Confederate flag's opponents are 100 percent correct that a certain hate group misuses it as a white supremacist symbol. The same white supremacists misuse the Christian cross as a symbol when they burn it. This does not make the cross a hate symbol. (Even a burning cross is not a hate symbol if those around it are wearing kilts instead of sheets and hoods. The Ku Klux Klan apparently adopted the Scottish custom of using a flaming cross as a beacon to rally the clan— that's clan with a "c.") Third, the NAACP's Kwesei Mfune is no Martin Luther King. He has no trouble paraphrasing the aforementioned white supremacists' party line on "Blacks and violence" when he wants to sue gun manufacturers for violence in Black neighborhoods. My personal opinion is that Mfune's actions are self-serving demagoguery to unite his followers. Anyone who has read George Orwell's "Animal Farm" will understand how this works. Finally, an editorial in another paper called the Confederate flag a symbol of "treason." This is true only under the definition of traitors as "the losing side in a civil war."  Had we lost the Revolutionary War, we, and especially our Founding Fathers, would have been the "traitors." This does not mean I would have preferred the division of the United States, which would have been the result of a Southern victory. It does mean that Southerners have a right to be proud of their ancestors who fought, suffered, and sacrificed for what they saw as their country. North and South can and should be proud of the heroes who fought on both sides, because they were all Americans. I therefore hope South Carolina will not give in to the politically correct demagogues and historical revisionists on this issue. William A. Levinson

The New York Draft Riots: many Northerners opposed emancipation
Not all Southerners supported slavery and not all Northerners opposed it. Many Northerners did not want the slaves freed because they would then compete with white laborers in Northern states. (Again, the principal causes of the war were economic as opposed to slavery.)

The New York City Draft Riots of 1863: An excerpt from In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 by Leslie M. Harris
"From the time of Lincoln's election in 1860, the Democratic Party had warned New York's Irish and German residents to prepare for the emancipation of slaves and the resultant labor competition when southern blacks would supposedly flee north. To these New Yorkers, the Emancipation Proclamation was confirmation of their worst fears."

"Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863" By Albon P. Man, Jr  (reprinted from the "Journal of Negro History," Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, October 1951, pp 375-405)
"The New York draft riots of July, 1863, had their origin largely in a fear of black labor competition which possessed the city's, Irish unskilled workers. Upon emancipation, they believed, great numbers of Negroes would cross the Mason-Dixon line, underbid them in the Northern labor market and deprive them of jobs. ...But the New York draft disturbances remain the bloodiest race riots of American history. Police figures on deaths among the white rioters ranged from 1,200 to 1,500, and it is impossible to know how many bodies of Negro victims of the lynch mobs were borne away by the waters on either side of Manhattan Island. (3) Significantly, the Negro population of the metropolis dropped 20% between 1860 and 1865, declining from 12,472 to 9,945.(4) "

The Causes and Effects of the New York Draft Riots of 1863 by Alex Blankfein
"Native New Yorkers believed that the Irish immigrants were stealing all the good jobs by willing to work for less money than their native-counterparts. In turn the Irish worried that African-Americans (who because of racism and job scarcity were willing to work for lower wages) would steal jobs away from the Irish. Both the natives and Irish believed that African-Americans represented a threat to their job security. Yet despite the inherit racism in this belief, this accusation, held by Natives and Irish, was not entirely unfounded. For example, in the early years of the Civil War, employers hired African-Americans to replace striking workers in disputes at the Staten Island Ferry, the Custom House, and the docks of New York City. In 1862, the labor tensions almost reached the breaking point when two to three thousand white workers from South Brooklyn threatened to burn two tobacco factories unless several hundred black women and children left the plants. When the factories refused, the mob started to light fires before they were chased away by the arrival of the police."

Yes, the Civil War had the very desirable byproduct of ending slavery. The above excerpts show, however, that Billy Yank was not always an emancipating angel nor was Johnny Reb automatically a whip-wielding Simon Legree devil.

Lyrics to "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down"

Performed by folk singer Joan Baez. Ms. Baez was (and is), in fact, active in promoting civil rights and tolerance for all Americans. The song is about a typical working class family that supports the Confederacy during the war, and about its desolation and suffering during the war's last days. (Note: this statement does not imply Ms. Baez' support of, or opposition to, South Carolina's display of the Confederate flag.)

Robert E. Lee: American Hero

"When the Civil War began, Robert E. Lee was only a colonel, but he was held in such respect that he was offered command of the entire Union Army."

"However, when his state, Virginia, seceded from the Union, Lee searched his soul and found he had a serious problem. He did not believe in slavery. [emphasis is mine] ... After pacing his room during a sleepless night, Lee came to a decision. 'I cannot draw my sword against my friends and neighbors,' he decided." ...

"Robert E. Lee was a man of impeccable integrity. His men loved, honored, and followed him during the war and afterward. Though he fought against the United States, Americans honor Robert E. Lee today."

Maj. General William A. Cohen (ret.) The Stuff of Heroes

Understanding the Personal Dilemmas of the Civil War: The Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita

Anyone who wants to understand the terrible choice that confronted Robert E. Lee (and thousands of other people at the outbreak of the Civil War) should read The Mahabharata, or watch the motion picture version (Peter Brooks). Before the Battle of Kurukshetra (India's Armageddon), everybody has to choose sides; everybody is doing what he thinks is right. The hero Arjuna does not want to fight his cousins and teachers, but it is his duty (Dharma, right Way) to do this. Krishna helps him overcome his doubts by teaching him the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of the Lord.

Another character, Karna, is actually the eldest of the Pandava brothers (the Pandavas and the Kauravas were the warring factions). However, when he came to the two families as a stranger who didn't know his real father (the sun god Surya), the Pandavas rejected him, but the Kauravas accepted him and gave him a fief or kingdom. He swore friendship to the head of the Kaurava family, the evil prince Duryodhana (the only real "bad guy" in the story- well, his brother Dusashana wasn't very nice either). When the war began, Krishna told Karna who he really was. Karna now had to choose between:

1. Fighting his brothers, and probably dying (he had a premonition that he would do so)
2. Declaring his parentage, in which case:
• The Kauravas would surrender. Karna was an almost invincible warrior and, with both him and Arjuna on the Pandava side, the Kaurava cause would have been hopeless.
• The war (which, according to the story, left ten survivors out of millions of combatants) would be avoided.
• Since Karna was the oldest Pandava brother, he would be King.

Just as Robert E. Lee turned down a full generalship to do what he considered his duty, Karna chose to fight on the side to which he had sworn friendship. As he half-expected, he was killed when he fought his brother Arjuna.

Wisdom from the famous Black educator, Booker T. Washington

"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs
and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

Kwesei Mfune, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakahn- I think he's talking about YOU.

Comments by columnist Thomas Sowell

From "Blacks have better things to do than demonstrate against rebel flag, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 1/21/2000

"Personally, as a black man, I am not thrilled at the sight of a Confederate flag. On the other hand, I am not thrilled at the sight of professional wrestling or Alan Alda, but I don't demand that they be banned." ...

"Unfortunately, it has become very fashionable, and even lucrative, to encourage various groups to feel victimized and to go scavaging through history for grievances." [emphasis is mine]

NAACP leader Julian Bond compares Southerners to Nazis

The NAACP under Kwesei Mfume has been a useful idiot for white supremacists (see http://www.stentorian.com/2ndamend/leaflets/naacp.html for more) and Julian Bond is continuing this tradition.

"The GOP's 'idea of equal rights,' Mr. Bond told a MoveOn.org rally last month, 'is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.'"

As I recall, the Democrats were the majority party in the South prior to and during the Civil War...

The Stentorian