I found this whoule ba a great follow-up to my

blog...http://civilwarfactsandcurrentevents.blogspot.com/search?q=enlisted

 Why Confederate Soldiers Enlisted.


https://web.archive.org/web/20110321183207/http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/why-non-slaveholding.html

Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought

Address to the Charleston Library Society, January 25, 2011
BY GORDON RHEA

Gordon Rhea

This year initiates the commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War.  This is an occasion for serious reflection on a war that killed some 600,000 of our citizens and left many hundreds of thousands emotionally and physically scarred.  Translated into today’s terms – our country is ten times more populous than it was then -- the dead would number some 6 million, with tens of millions more wounded, maimed, and psychologically damaged.  The price was indeed catastrophic.

As a Southerner with ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, I have been intrigued with the question of why my ancestors felt compelled to leave the United States and set up their own country.  What brought the American experiment to that extreme juncture?

The short answer, of course, is Abraham Lincoln’s election as president of the United States.  What concerned Southerners most about Lincoln’s election was his opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories; Southern politicians were clear about that.  If new states could not be slave states, went the argument, then it was only a matter of time before the south’s clout in Congress would fade, abolitionists would be ascendant, and the South’s “peculiar institution” – the right to own human beings as property – would be in peril.
It is easy to understand why slave owners would be concerned about the threat, real or imagined, that Lincoln posed to slavery.  But what about those Southerners who did not own slaves?  Why would they risk their livelihoods by leaving the United States and pledging allegiance to a new nation grounded in the proposition that all men are not created equal, a nation established to preserve a type of property that they did not own?
In order to find an answer to this question, please travel back with me to the South of 1860.  Let’s put ourselves into the skin of Southerners who lived there then.  That’s what being an historian is about: putting yourself into the minds of people who lived in another time to understand things from their perspective, from their point of view.  Let’s set aside what people said and wrote later, after the dust had settled. Let’s wipe the historic slate clean and visit the South of 150 years ago through the documents that survive from that time.  What were Southerners saying to other Southerners about why they had to secede?
There is, of course, a historical backdrop that formed the foundation of experience for Southerners in 1860.  More than 4 million enslaved human beings lived in the south, and they touched every aspect of the region’s social, political, and economic life.  Slaves did not just work on plantations.  In cities such as Charleston, they cleaned the streets, toiled as bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, bakers, and laborers.  They worked as dockhands and stevedores, grew and sold produce, purchased goods and carted them back to their masters’ homes where they cooked the meals, cleaned, raised the children, and tended to the daily chores.  “Charleston looks more like a Negro country than a country settled by white people,” a visitor remarked.
Fear of a slave rebellion was palpable.  The establishment of a black republic in Haiti and the insurrections, threatened and real, of Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner stoked the fires.  John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry sent shock waves through the south.  Throughout the decades leading up to 1860, slavery was a burning national issue, and political battles raged over the admission of new states as slave or free.  Compromises were struck – the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 – but the controversy could not be laid to rest.

Secessionists rally in Savannah, Georgia. (Library of Congress)

The South felt increasingly beleaguered as the North increased its criticism of slavery.  Abolitionist societies sprang up, Northern publications demanded the immediate end of slavery, politicians waxed shrill about the immorality of human bondage, and overseas, the British parliament terminated slavery in the British West Indies.  A prominent historian accurately noted that “by the late 1850’s most white Southerners viewed themselves as prisoners in their own country, condemned by what they saw as a hysterical abolition movement.”
As Southerners became increasingly isolated, they reacted by becoming more strident in defending slavery.  The institution was not just a necessary evil: it was a positive good, a practical and moral necessity.  Controlling the slave population was a matter of concern for all Whites, whether they owned slaves or not.  Curfews governed the movement of slaves at night, and vigilante committees patrolled the roads, dispensing summary justice to wayward slaves and whites suspected of harboring abolitionist views.  Laws were passed against the dissemination of abolitionist literature, and the South increasingly resembled a police state.  A prominent Charleston lawyer described the city’s citizens as living under a “reign of terror.”

WHAT THE CHURCHES WERE SAYING

With that backdrop, let’s take our trip back in time to hear what Southerners were hearing.  What were they being told by their pastors, by their politicians, and their community leaders about slavery, Lincoln, and secession?
Churches were the center of social and intellectual life in the south.  That was where people congregated, where they learned about the world and their place in it, and where they received moral guidance.  The clergy comprised the community’s cultural leaders and educators and carried tremendous influence with slaveholders and non-slaveholders alike.  What were Southern pastors, preachers, and religious leaders telling their flock?
Southern clergy defended the morality of slavery through an elaborate scriptural defense built on the infallibility of the Bible, which they held up as the universal and objective standard for moral issues.  Religious messages from pulpit and from a growing religious press accounted in large part for the extreme, uncompromising, ideological atmosphere of the time.
As Northern opposition to slavery grew, the three major protestant churches split into northern and southern factions.  The Presbyterians divided in1837, the Methodists in 1844, and the Baptists in 1845.  The segregation of the clergy into Northern and Southern camps was profound.  It spelt an end to meaningful dialogue, leaving Southern preachers to talk to Southern audiences without contradiction.
What were their arguments?  The Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney reminded his fellow Southern clergymen that the Bible was the best way to explain slavery to the masses.  “We must go before the nation with the Bible as the text, and ‘thus sayeth the lord’ as the answer,” he wrote.  “We know that on the Bible argument the abolition party will be driven to unveil their true infidel tendencies.   The Bible being bound to stand on our side, they have to come out and array themselves against the Bible.”
Reverend Furman of South Carolina insisted that the right to hold slaves was clearly sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures.  He emphasized a practical side as well, warning that if Lincoln were elected, “every Negro in South Carolina and every other Southern state will be his own master; nay, more than that, will be the equal of every one of you.  If you are tame enough to submit, abolition preachers will be at hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters to black husbands.”
A fellow reverend from Virginia agreed that on no other subject “are [the Bible’s] instructions more explicit, or their salutary tendency and influence more thoroughly tested and corroborated by experience than on the subject of slavery.”  The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, asserted that slavery “has received the sanction of Jehova.”  As a South Carolina Presbyterian concluded: “If the scriptures do not justify slavery, I know not what they do justify.”
The Biblical argument started with Noah’s curse on Ham, the father of Canaan, which was used to demonstrate that God had ordained slavery and had expressly applied it to Blacks.  Commonly cited were passages in Leviticus that authorized the buying, selling, holding and bequeathing of slaves as property.  Methodist Samuel Dunwody from South Carolina documented that Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and Job owned slaves, arguing that “some of the most eminent of the Old Testament saints were slave holders.”  The Methodist Quarterly Review noted further that “the teachings of the new testament in regard to bodily servitude accord with the old.”  While slavery was not expressly sanctioned in the New Testament, Southern clergymen argued that the absence of condemnation signified approval.  They cited Paul’s return of a runaway slave to his master as Biblical authority for the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of runaway slaves.

An antebellum church in Atlanta, Georgia. (Library of Congress)

As Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina summed up the case:  “Thus, God, as he is infinitely wise, just and holy, never could authorize the practice of a moral evil.  But god has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of his Providence, but the express provision of his word.  Therefore, slavery is not a moral evil.”  Since the Bible was the source for moral authority, the case was closed.  “Man may err,” said the southern theologian James Thornwell, “but God can never lie.”
It was a corollary that to attack slavery was to attack the Bible and the word of God.  If the Bible expressly ordained slave holding, to oppose the practice was a sin and an insult to God’s word.  As the Baptist minister and author Thornton Stringfellow noted in his influential Biblical Defense of Slavery, “men from the north” demonstrated “palpable ignorance of the divine will.”
The Southern Presbyterian of S.C observed that there was a “religious character to the present struggle.  Anti-slavery is essentially infidel.  It wars upon the Bible, on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the souls of men.”  A Georgia preacher denounced abolitionists as “diametrically opposed to the letter and spirit of the Bible, and as subversive of all sound morality, as the worst ravings of infidelity.”  The prominent South Carolina Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell did not mince his words.  “The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders.  They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other.  In one word, the world is the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.”
During the 1850’s, pro-slavery arguments from the pulpit became especially strident.  A preacher in Richmond exalted slavery as “the most blessed and beautiful form of social government known; the only one that solves the problem, how rich and poor may dwell together; a beneficent patriarchate.”  The Central Presbyterian affirmed that slavery was “a relation essential to the existence of civilized society.”  By 1860, Southern preachers felt comfortable advising their parishioners that “both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time.”
By 1860, Southern churches were denouncing the North as decadent and sinful because it had turned from God and rejected the Bible.  Since the North was sinful and degenerate, went their reasoning, the South must purify itself by seceding.  As a South Carolina preacher noted on the eve of secession, “We cannot coalesce with men whose society will eventually corrupt our own, and bring down upon us the awful doom which awaits them.”  The consequence was a pointedly religious bent to rising Southern nationalism.  As the Southern Presbyterian wrote, “It would be a glorious sight to see this Southern Confederacy of ours stepping forth amid the nations of the world animated with a Christian spirit, guided by Christian principles, administered by Christian men, and adhering faithfully to Christian precepts,” ie., the slavery of fellow human beings.
Shortly after Lincoln’s election, Presbyterian minister Benjamin Morgan Palmer, originally from Charleston, gave a sermon entitled, “The South Her Peril and Her Duty.”  He announced that the election had brought to the forefront one issue – slavery – that required him to speak out.  Slavery, he explained, was a question of morals and religion, and was now the central question in the crisis of the Union.  The South, he went on, had a “providential trust to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing.”  The South was defined by slavery, he observed.  “It has fashioned our modes of life, and determined all of our habits of thought and feeling, and molded the very type of our civilization.”  Abolition, said Palmer, was “undeniably atheistic.”  The South “defended the cause of God and religion,” and nothing “is now left but secession.”  Some 90,000 copies of a pamphlet incorporating the sermon were distributed.
Preachers were prominent at ceremonies held as troops marched off to war.  In Petersburg, Virginia for example, Methodist minister R. N. Sledd railed against Northerners, an “infidel and fanatical foe” who embodied “the barbarity of an Atilla more than the civilization of the 19th Century” and who showed “contempt for virtue and religion according to their savage purpose.”  Northerners, he warned, wanted to “undermine the authority of my Bible.  You go to contribute to the salvation of your country from such a curse,” he told the departing soldiers.  “You go to aid in the glorious enterprise of rearing in our sunny south a temple to constitutional liberty and Bible Christianity.  You go to fight for your people and for the cities of your God.”

WHAT THE POLITICIANS WERE SAYING

'The Miscegenation Ball' (Library of Congress)

What were the South’s politicians saying?  In late 1860 and early 1861, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana appointed commissioners to travel to the other slave states and persuade them to secede.  The commissioners addressed state legislatures, conventions, made public addresses, and wrote letters.  Their speeches were printed in newspapers and pamphlets.  These contemporaneous documents make fascinating reading and have recently been collected in a book by the historian Charles Dew.
William Harris, Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia, explained that Lincoln’s election had made the North more defiant than ever.  “They have demanded, and now demand equality between the white and negro races, under our constitution; equality in representation, equality in right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony,” he cautioned, adding that the new administration wanted “freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and me.”
As Harris saw things, “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.”  Lincoln and his followers, he stated, aimed to “overturn and strike down this great feature of our union and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.”  For Harris, the choice was clear.  Mississippi would “rather see the last of her race, men, women, and children, immolated in one common funeral pyre than see them subjugated to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.”  The Georgia legislature ordered the printing of a thousand copies of his speech.
Two days before South Carolina seceded, Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy, Mississippi’s commissioner to Maryland, warned that “the first act of the black republican party will be to exclude slavery from all the territories, from the District of Columbia, the arsenals and the forts, by the action of the general government.  That would be a recognition that slavery is a sin, and confine the institution to its present limits.  The moment that slavery is pronounced a moral evil – a sin – by the general government, that moment the safety of the rights of the south will be entirely gone.”
The next day, two commissioners addressed the North Carolina legislature and warned that Lincoln’s election meant “utter ruin and degradation” for the south.  “The white children now born will be compelled to flee from the land of their birth, and from the slaves their parents have toiled to acquire as an inheritance for them, or to submit to the degradation of being reduced to an equality with them, and all its attendant horrors.”
Former South Carolina Congressman John McQueen was crystal clear about where things stood when he wrote to a group of Richmond civic leaders.   Lincoln’s program was based upon the “single idea that the African is equal to the Anglo-Saxon, and with the purpose of placing our slaves on a position of equality with ourselves and our friends of every condition.  We, of South Carolina, hope soon to greet you in a Southern Confederacy, where white men shall rule our destinies, and from which we may transmit to our posterity the rights, privileges, and honor left us by our ancestors.”
Typical of the commissioner letters is that written by Stephen Hale, an Alabama commissioner, to the Governor of Kentucky, in December 1860.  Lincoln’s election, he observed, was “nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government destroys the property of the south, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.  The slave holder and non-slaveholder must ultimately share the same fate; all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life, or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting all the resources of the country.”

Henry Benning (Library of Congress)

What Southerner, Hale asked, “can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not distant future associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality?”  Abolition would surely mean that “the two races would be continually pressing together,” and “amalgamation or the extermination of the one or the other would be inevitable.”  Secession, argued Hale, was the only means by which the “heaven ordained superiority of the white over the black race” could be sustained.  The abolition of slavery would either plunge the South into a race war or so stain the blood of the white race that it would be contaminated for all time.”  Could southern men “submit to such degradation and ruin,” he asked, and responded to his own question, “God forbid that they should.”
Congressman Curry, another of Alabama’s commissioner’s, similarly warned his fellow Alabamans that “the subjugation of the south to an abolition dynasty would result in a saturnalia of blood.”  Emancipation meant “the abhorrent degradation of social and political equality, the probability of a war of extermination between the races or the necessity of flying the country to avoid the association.”  Typical also was the message from Henry Benning of Georgia – later one of General Lee’s most talented brigade commanders – to the Virginia legislature.  “If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished,” he predicted.  “By the time the north shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.  Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that?  It is not a supposable case.” 
What did Benning predict would happen?  “War will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth.  We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination.  We will be completely exterminated,” he announced, “and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa or Saint Domingo.”
“Join the north and what will become of you” he asked.  “They will hate you and your institutions as much as they do now, and treat you accordingly.  Suppose they elevate Charles Sumner to the presidency?  Suppose they elevate Frederick Douglas, your escaped slave, to the presidency?  What would be your position in such an event?  I say give me pestilence and famine sooner than that.”
In sum, the commissioners described one apocalyptic vision after another – emancipation, race war, miscegenation.  The collapse of white supremacy would be so cataclysmic that no self-respecting Southerner could fail to rally to the secessionist cause, they argued.  Secession was necessary to preserve the purity and survival of the white race.  This was the unvarnished, near universal message of southern political leaders to their constituencies.

WHAT COMMUNITY LEADERS WERE SAYING

Southerners heard the identical message from their community leaders.  In the fall of 1860, John Townsend, owner of a cotton plantation on Edisto Island, authored a pamphlet delineating the consequences of Lincoln’s elevation to presidency.  The abolition of slavery would be inevitable, he warned, which would mean “the annihilation and end of all Negro labor (agricultural especially) over the whole South.  It means a loss to the planters of the South of, at least, FOUR BILLION dollars, by having this labor taken from them; and a loss, in addition, of FIVE BILLION dollars more, in lands, mills, machinery, and other great interests, which will be rendered valueless by the want of slave labor to cultivate the lands, and the loss of the crops which give to those interests life and prosperity.”

Slaves work in Sea Islands, South Carolina. (Library of Congress)

More to the point, he noted, abolition meant “the turning loose upon society, without the salutary restraints to which they are now accustomed, more than four millions of a very poor and ignorant population, to ramble in idleness over the country until their wants should drive most of them, first to petty thefts, and afterwards to the bolder crimes of robbery and murder.”  The planter and his family would “not only to be reduced to poverty and want, by the robbery of his property, but to complete the refinement of the indignity, they are to be degraded to the level of an inferior race, be jostled by them in their paths, and intruded upon, and insulted over by rude and vulgar upstarts. Who can describe the loathsomeness of such an intercourse;—the constrained intercourse between refinement reduced to poverty, and swaggering vulgarity suddenly elevated to a position which it is not prepared for?”
Non-slaveholders, he predicted, were also in danger.  “It will be to the non-slaveholder, equally with the largest slaveholder, the obliteration of caste and the deprivation of important privileges,” he cautioned.  “The color of the white man is now, in the South, a title of nobility in his relations as to the negro,” he reminded his readers.  “In the Southern slaveholding States, where menial and degrading offices are turned over to be per formed exclusively by the Negro slave, the status and color of the black race becomes the badge of inferiority, and the poorest non-slaveholder may rejoice with the richest of his brethren of the white race, in the distinction of his color.  He may be poor, it is true; but there is no point upon which he is so justly proud and sensitive as his privilege of caste; and there is nothing which he would resent with more fierce indignation than the attempt of the Abolitionist to emancipate the slaves and elevate the Negroes to an equality with himself and his family.”

About Gordon Rhea

Gordon Rhea is one of the foremost authorities on Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign, and is the author of The Battle of the Wilderness: May 5-6, 1864, To The North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864 and Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864, among others.  Rhea has given scores of lectures and sits on the board of directors at the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia and North and South magazine.

Rhea graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University with a B.A. in History, and received his Masters from Harvard University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.  Rhea went into law –earning his degree from Stanford University -- and was a Federal Attorney for a number of years.

Rhea currently works with the firm of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook and Brickman, who pursue environmental justice.  He is a major supporter of the Civil War Trust.

Slavery was the cause for the war....maybe...maybe not.

Yes and No. How is that for an answer? The cause is not singular in nature but revolves around slavery. Therefore to simply say slavery was the cause is not proper but to consider it a catullus is

 correct. Freedom to expand slavery, representation in congress, taxation, Fugitive slave act are all factors. A friend of mine stated that “whenever I teach about the causes of the Civil War I make sure to emphasize the three components to any historical phenomenon: structure, agency and contingency. Structure gets at the underlying social, economic, political and cultural differences between North and South (and within each section). That gives background as to why the animosity may have been there. Slavery was obviously central to those differences as just about every single political argument of the day centered on the continued role of slavery in American life. But precisely what people argued about slavery is just as important and often unclear in the general public today. When people today think of the phrase - "the Civil War was about slavery" - they imagine that Yankees were coming down with the intention of freeing the slaves first and foremost. (While that was true for a very small minority of abolitionist Yankee soldiers, nearly all were in the fight to preserve the Union and then saw the destruction of slavery as the best means to preserve the Union forever).
Not surprisingly, many people (rightly) reject this purely moralistic account. Which leads to "agency" - or the individual, conscious decisions of myriad people, famous and not, who reacted to the growing sectional tensions in their own ways with the limited information that they had. Soldier diaries offer very conflicted accounts of motives, etc. Moments of moral clarity were rare in the Civil War, just as in war today. Survival was key. Finally there is contingency - the seemingly random convergence of events that made the war take the shape it did. So, the question I often pose is not "what caused the Civil War"?

The question is: Why did the Civil War unfold when it did, where it did, and the way it did? At the end of the day, it really comes down to power - not just governmental power but a basic ideological struggle over who can control which other people and under what legal terms. As for slavery - it carried metaphoric weight for both sides too. It was one thing to describe the enslavement of African Americans, whom few white Northerners (and Southerners) cared much about. But the political debate was characterized by claims to the enslavement of white people - not as literal chattel slaves but as submissive underlings to conspiratorial forces based far away. For Americans living along the slave-free line - the Ohio River Valley, for example - the political debate was a profile in arrogance and intemperate extremism on both sides. But for leaders of the planter and industrial classes, this was a debate over the very nature of the republic, and over whose social order was "national" and whose was "local."

When the Republicans figured out that they could take control of the national government without fielding a single candidate in the South, the planter class saw the writing on the wall and realized that their world would be pressured and contained in much the same way communism was contained (however imperfectly) between 1947 and 1991. Both systems needed to expand or die. With Lincoln's victory it was clear that only one of the two systems would expand. And so the planter class jumped ship in a moment of crisis and created a new Confederate republic that banned non-slave states from joining”.
Northerners felt their states rights were violated in the 1850s by the Fugitive Slave Act. The Abelman v. Booth case out of Wisconsin shows how Wisconsin tried to nullify Federal law, citing the state's Personal Liberty Laws. What changed in 1860 was the slaveholders were no longer in near-total control of the Federal government as they had been since 1790. The Dred Scott-era "Slavery National" doctrine threatened to become Republican "Freedom National" doctrine under Republican rule. That would mean a "cordon of freedom" around the slaveholding South, and foreign policy in the hands of anti-slavery men. States rights were never under threat by the North in 1861. But Southern power and control over Federal policy WAS under threat.
Ask yourself: If it was about "states' rights" and slavery was just secondary in importance why on earth did the supposed "states' rights" fanatics in the south not ask but DEMAND that the federal government lean on the northern states and make sure they upheld the Fugitive Slave Act even when the individual northern states passed their own state laws prohibiting enforcement of it? Wouldn't someone so concerned about "states' rights" above all else want the northern states to be free to make their own laws prohibiting a federal law they disagreed with rather than trying to get the big bad evil federal government to squish this "states' rights" impulse of these northern states? Kinda' hoists the whole "states' rights" nonsense on its own petard doesn't it?
We can easily see that when states' rights and slavery coincided it was fine but when slavery and states' rights were in contention with one another, such as with the Fugitive Slave Act, we can see quite clearly which was the more important, REAL issue motivating the secessionists and which was the lip-service cover story that sounds good on paper. Somehow magically remove the slavery issue and you don't have a Civil War, sorry, that's just the truth of it.
 Read THE CONFEDERATE AND NEO-CONFEDERATE READER, where, in their own words, Confederates say exactly why they seceded. They don't complain about the power of the federal government for a moment. On the contrary, South Carolina, for example, complains about New Hampshire, because it lets blacks vote. Now, who votes in America was a state matter until the Voting Rights Amendment, passed two eras later during Reconstruction. Nevertheless, SC, extrapolating from the horrendous DRED SCOTT decision, decrees that since "blacks have no rights whites need respect," therefore New Hampshire has no business letting blacks vote. So much for states' rights! All the secession documents read like this, all against states' rights, all against the rights of residents of territories to forbid slavery even if a huge majority would do so, all in favor of federal power to enforce slavery.

Another  error concerns "civil war." Everyone, N and S, called it "The Civil War" at the time, or "The War of the Rebellion," hence "rebel." No one called it "The War Between the States." Dictionaries define "civil war" as "a war within a country." There is no requirement that both sides be trying to take over the entirety. This fiction was invented by neo-Confederate rhetors around 1890, and we include an example in THE CONFEDERATE AND NEO-CONFEDERATE READER.

The antidote to historical distortion is to read the original documents, when these exist, and in this instance, they do


Another  error concerns "civil war." Everyone, N and S, called it "The Civil War" at the time, or "The War of the Rebellion," hence "rebel." No one called it "The War Between the States." Dictionaries define "civil war" as "a war within a country." There is no requirement that both sides be trying to take over the entirety. This fiction was invented by neo-Confederate rhetors around 1890, and we include an example in THE CONFEDERATE AND NEO-CONFEDERATE READER.
The antidote to historical distortion is to read the original documents, when these exist, and in this instance, they do
It has been said that slavery was the ultimate catalyst, but the immediate cause of war was the Republican Party's determination to break the hold that the slavery sympathizers had on the US Federal Government through the Democratic Party by holding fast that no new territory would be slave-owning which the slave-owners realized was the writing on the wall. With more and more free labor states admitted to the Union, the day would ultimately come that the slave-owners power in Washington would be ineffective to protect their interests. The Radical Republicans (and Lincoln even though he seemed more "moderate") and secessionists both knew this. The South seceded when it did after John Brown's Raid and Lincoln's Election because they knew their way of life was of determinate but unknown days inside the Union.
My friend also stated “ I'm reading through Jim Oakes's "Freedom National" and he makes it clearer than ever that the Republicans were so ideologically committed to the eventual elimination of slavery that the choice befalling slaveholders was either gradual strangulation or a quick and violent death. The planters took a chance that a military victory would prevent both. They would gain independence, expand into Latin America, and preserve slavery in perpetuity. It wasn't to be, obviously, thanks in large part to the the slaves themselves who tested the Union army's commitment to the fugitive slave law in the war's earliest months. But the planters were hardly mistaken in their understanding of the "Black Republicans'" ultimate goal”.  Not surprisingly, many people (rightly) reject this purely moralistic account. Which leads to "agency" - or the individual, conscious decisions of myriad people, famous and not, who reacted to the growing sectional tensions in their own ways with the limited information that they had. Soldier diaries offer very conflicted accounts of motives, etc. Moments of moral clarity were rare in the Civil War, just as in war today. Survival was key. Finally there is contingency - the seemingly random convergence of events that made the war take the shape it did. So, the question I often pose is not "what caused the Civil War"?
The question is: Why did the Civil War unfold when it did, where it did, and the way it did? At the end of the day, it really comes down to power - not just governmental power but a basic ideological struggle over who can control which other people and under what legal terms. As for slavery - it carried metaphoric weight for both sides too. It was one thing to describe the enslavement of African Americans, whom few white Northerners (and Southerners) cared much about. But the political debate was characterized by claims to the enslavement of white people - not as literal chattel slaves but as submissive underlings to conspiratorial forces based far away. For Americans living along the slave-free line - the Ohio River Valley, for example - the political debate was a profile in arrogance and intemperate extremism on both sides. But for leaders of the planter and industrial classes, this was a debate over the very nature of the republic, and over whose social order was "national" and whose was "local."

When the Republicans figured out that they could take control of the national government without fielding a single candidate in the South, the planter class saw the writing on the wall and realized that their world would be pressured and contained in much the same way communism was contained (however imperfectly) between 1947 and 1991. Both systems needed to expand or die. With Lincoln's victory it was clear that only one of the two systems would expand. And so the planter class jumped ship in a moment of crisis and created a new Confederate republic that banned non-slave states from joining”.
Northerners felt their states rights were violated in the 1850s by the Fugitive Slave Act. The Abelman v. Booth case out of Wisconsin shows how Wisconsin tried to nullify Federal law, citing the state's Personal Liberty Laws. What changed in 1860 was the slaveholders were no longer in near-total control of the Federal government as they had been since 1790. The Dred Scott-era "Slavery National" doctrine threatened to become Republican "Freedom National" doctrine under Republican rule. That would mean a "cordon of freedom" around the slaveholding South, and foreign policy in the hands of anti-slavery men. States rights were never under threat by the North in 1861. But Southern power and control over Federal policy WAS under threat.
Ask yourself: If it was about "states' rights" and slavery was just secondary in importance why on earth did the supposed "states' rights" fanatics in the south not ask but DEMAND that the federal government lean on the northern states and make sure they upheld the Fugitive Slave Act even when the individual northern states passed their own state laws prohibiting enforcement of it? Wouldn't someone so concerned about "states' rights" above all else want the northern states to be free to make their own laws prohibiting a federal law they disagreed with rather than trying to get the big bad evil federal government to squish this "states' rights" impulse of these northern states? Kinda' hoists the whole "states' rights" nonsense on its own petard doesn't it?
We can easily see that when states' rights and slavery coincided it was fine but when slavery and states' rights were in contention with one another, such as with the Fugitive Slave Act, we can see quite clearly which was the more important, REAL issue motivating the secessionists and which was the lip-service cover story that sounds good on paper. Somehow magically remove the slavery issue and you don't have a Civil War, sorry, that's just the truth of it.
 Read THE CONFEDERATE AND NEO-CONFEDERATE READER, where, in their own words, Confederates say exactly why they seceded. They don't complain about the power of the federal government for a moment. On the contrary, South Carolina, for example, complains about New Hampshire, because it lets blacks vote. Now, who votes in America was a state matter until the Voting Rights Amendment, passed two eras later during Reconstruction. Nevertheless, SC, extrapolating from the horrendous DRED SCOTT decision, decrees that since "blacks have no rights whites need respect," therefore New Hampshire has no business letting blacks vote. So much for states' rights! All the secession documents read like this, all against states' rights, all against the rights of residents of territories to forbid slavery even if a huge majority would do so, all in favor of federal power to enforce slavery.

Another  error concerns "civil war." Everyone, N and S, called it "The Civil War" at the time, or "The War of the Rebellion," hence "rebel." No one called it "The War Between the States." Dictionaries define "civil war" as "a war within a country." There is no requirement that both sides be trying to take over the entirety. This fiction was invented by neo-Confederate rhetors around 1890, and we include an example in THE CONFEDERATE AND NEO-CONFEDERATE READER.

The antidote to historical distortion is to read the original documents, when these exist, and in this instance, they do


Another  error concerns "civil war." Everyone, N and S, called it "The Civil War" at the time, or "The War of the Rebellion," hence "rebel." No one called it "The War Between the States." Dictionaries define "civil war" as "a war within a country." There is no requirement that both sides be trying to take over the entirety. This fiction was invented by neo-Confederate rhetors around 1890, and we include an example in THE CONFEDERATE AND NEO-CONFEDERATE READER.
The antidote to historical distortion is to read the original documents, when these exist, and in this instance, they do
It has been said that slavery was the ultimate catalyst, but the immediate cause of war was the Republican Party's determination to break the hold that the slavery sympathizers had on the US Federal Government through the Democratic Party by holding fast that no new territory would be slave-owning which the slave-owners realized was the writing on the wall. With more and more free labor states admitted to the Union, the day would ultimately come that the slave-owners power in Washington would be ineffective to protect their interests. The Radical Republicans (and Lincoln even though he seemed more "moderate") and secessionists both knew this. The South seceded when it did after John Brown's Raid and Lincoln's Election because they knew their way of life was of determinate but unknown days inside the Union.
My friend also stated “ I'm reading through Jim Oakes's "Freedom National" and he makes it clearer than ever that the Republicans were so ideologically committed to the eventual elimination of slavery that the choice befalling slaveholders was either gradual strangulation or a quick and violent death. The planters took a chance that a military victory would prevent both. They would gain independence, expand into Latin America, and preserve slavery in perpetuity. It wasn't to be, obviously, thanks in large part to the the slaves themselves who tested the Union army's commitment to the fugitive slave law in the war's earliest months. But the planters were hardly mistaken in their understanding of the "Black Republicans'" ultimate goal”.  The question is: Why did the Civil War unfold when it did, where it did, and the way it did? At the end of the day, it really comes down to power - not just governmental power but a basic ideological struggle over who can control which other people and under what legal terms. As for slavery - it carried metaphoric weight for both sides too. It was one thing to describe the enslavement of African Americans, whom few white Northerners (and Southerners) cared much about. But the political debate was characterized by claims to the enslavement of white people - not as literal chattel slaves but as submissive underlings to conspiratorial forces based far away. For Americans living along the slave-free line - the Ohio River Valley, for example - the political debate was a profile in arrogance and intemperate extremism on both sides. But for leaders of the planter and industrial classes, this was a debate over the very nature of the republic, and over whose social order was "national" and whose was "local."
When the Republicans figured out that they could take control of the national government without fielding a single candidate in the South, the planter class saw the writing on the wall and realized that their world would be pressured and contained in much the same way communism was contained (however imperfectly) between 1947 and 1991. Both systems needed to expand or die. With Lincoln's victory it was clear that only one of the two systems would expand. And so the planter class jumped ship in a moment of crisis and created a new Confederate republic that banned non-slave states from joining”.
Northerners felt their states rights were violated in the 1850s by the Fugitive Slave Act. The Abelman v. Booth case out of Wisconsin shows how Wisconsin tried to nullify Federal law, citing the state's Personal Liberty Laws. What changed in 1860 was the slaveholders were no longer in near-total control of the Federal government as they had been since 1790. The Dred Scott-era "Slavery National" doctrine threatened to become Republican "Freedom National" doctrine under Republican rule. That would mean a "cordon of freedom" around the slaveholding South, and foreign policy in the hands of anti-slavery men. States rights were never under threat by the North in 1861. But Southern power and control over Federal policy WAS under threat.

Was the Confederate Government a Federalist or anti federalist government?

So I am reading a 125 year old history book and I find the idea of Federalist vs anti-federalists interesting. Federalists wanted a centralized government where as anti wanted much less. We became a Federalist government with such a Constitution BUT the Confederacy wanted a anti-Federalist government (less centralist) BUT...adopted the SAME Constitution as the US for a few minor items. Davis during his administration also committed to a Centralized or Federalist government. 

So was the Confederacy and it's government a contradiction to its beliefs?

 A federalist government is a government system in which power is distributed between numerous regional (state/provinces) governments and a central, national government in rough balance (although the central government may be stronger or weaker, overall, than the regional governments). 

A federal system of government is used by the USA, as well as numerous Latin American countries, Canada, Australia, and Germany. 

Federalism can lead to considerable variety in laws and standards between regional governments. For example, in the USA, most criminal laws are set by the states, along with their punishments. Medical use of marijuana is legal in some states, but not others. Oregon allows physician-assisted suicide, while a doctor doing the same thing in Utah would go to jail. In Texas, a murderer can be executed (and Texas executed 18 people in 2008), but in Michigan, the death penalty is not used. 

So with that......how did the Confederate Government claim to be non-centralized but yet follow suit with the above? Is it not a contradiction?

The Confederacy's preamble more-or-less deleted any reference to collective interests, presumably because it ostensibly intended to be a country focused more on state independence than any sort of grander, national goal. The CSA does not promise to form a "perfect union" nor does it aspire to provide for the "common defense" or promote the "general welfare."

It does, however, explicitly evoke God. So there would be no court challenges about the Pledge of Allegiance in alternate CSA-won-the-Civl-War-world.

also to further show that the CS was a Federalist and more Union government than they claimed, refer to the CS Constitution.

The CSA adds a disclaimer that the state legislatures are bound by the federal constitution when creating rules for elections to the Senate and House. This evokes Section 2(1) of the Confederate constitution, which demands that states only grant voting rights to citizens.

The CSA also takes away the Congress' power to alter the time of chosing Senators, as the CSA constitution already sets out a specific timeframe for appointments in Section 3(1).

In the CSA constitution Section 8 has an official title: "Congress shall have power", where as in the original it's much less organized.

The Confederates didn't mention "providing for the common defense" in their constitution's preamble, but they do here. "General welfare" is still omitted, however.

Lastly, the CSA essentially bans trade protectionism by saying that tariffs cannot be imposed on foreign goods for the sole purpose of protecting local industry. It also bans "bounties" from the Treasury, which at the time was the term used to describe government subsidies distributed to offset the costs of managing certain uncompetitive industries.

Southerners had often been prevented from buying cheaper foreign goods because of such Yankee projectionist measures.

The first of two new Confederate clauses that try to impose certain standards of fiscal responsibility on the legislative branch.

The CSA Congress can only appropriate cash:

in response to a specific request from the executive branchto pay for its own expensesto pay for the national debt and other financial "claims" against the national governmentThe document also demands that the Confederate Congress establish a tribunal to "investigate" the validity of such claims made against the CSA.

Frankly, the overall, the CSA constitution and government is Federalized and does not radically alter the federal system that was set up under the United States constitution.

It is thus very debatable as to whether the CSA was a significantly more pro-"states' rights" country (as supporters claim) in any meaningful sense. At least three states rights are explicitly taken away- the freedom of states to grant voting rights to non-citizens, the freedom of states to outlaw slavery within their borders, and the freedom of states to trade freely with each other.

States only gain four minor rights under the Confederate system- the power to enter into treaties with other states to regulate waterways, the power to tax foreign and domestic ships that use their waterways, the power to impeach federally-appointed state officials, and the power to distribute "bills of credit." When people champion the cause of reclaiming state power from the feds, are matters like these at the tops of their lists of priorities?

The Provisional Army of the Confederate States.

The Army of the Confederate States of America was established by the Provisional Congress in March 1861 but NEVER really came into existence. There was never an officially recognized Federal centralized government Confederate Army. Even so a rank structure for the regular Army was established (as per the CS Army Regulations of 1863) differing from that of the Provisional Army in the event a Federal Army was organized.

 So what do I mean by this you ask.

The Army that fought the war was the volunteer or Provisional Army and NOT the Federal Confederate Army. Under Congressional Acts President Davis assumed control of all military operations and received state forces and 1000,000 volunteers for a one years term of service (same time as Lincolns call to the states for 75,000 but for a lesser term)

By May of 61 the Confederate Congress then voted to extend such terms for the duration of the war. With many exceptions and desertions making this a Rich mans war and poor mans fight.

A month before the Civil War broke out, the Confederate government took steps to raise 3 district armies. In time, 2 of these-militia enlisted for 12 months service and volunteers recruited for the duration of the conflict-became inextricable entwine, organizationally and administratively. Although only the militia was originally designated by the term, both forces became known as the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. The act of 6 mar. 1861 that organized these forces also provided for the establishment of the Army of the Confederate States of America, a counterpart to the U.S. Regular Army.

At the outset, Confederate officials projected this Regular force to number about 10,000 officers and men, a figure that President Jefferson Davis later cited as proof that "the wish and policy" of his government "was peace." Early legislation called for this force to consist of a corps of engineers, 1 regiment of cavalry, 6 regiments of infantry, a corps of artillery (which would also handle ordinance duties) and 4 staff bureaus: the adjutant and inspector general's, the quartermaster general's, the commissary general's, and the medical departments. Later laws increased the number of cavalry and infantry regiments, one of the foot units being designated a Zouave outfit, as well as the size of the engineer corps and each staff bureau. No officer above the rank of brigadier general would be assigned to the combat arms, while each staff department was to be headed by a colonel.

The chief value of this force was as an administrative arm into which former U.S. Army officers were accepted just before the shooting started. Intended as a peacetime establishment, it lost much of its utility once it became evident that militia and volunteers would carry the bulk of the South's combat burden and when new laws permitted Regular officers to hold the rank in the Provisional Army as well. When money appropriated for the raising, organizing, and equipping of Regular units was diverted to the Provisional, the recruiting of Regulars declined sharply. In consequence, that army attained a fraction of its intended size. Although the Official Records mention numerous Regular units (1 battery, 12 cavalry and 7 infantry regiments, and various independent companies of line and support troops), other sources indicate that only 750 officers and 1,000 enlisted men served in the Confederate Regular Army and that only 5 companies remained in existence through most of the war.

Because of its political philosophy, the Confederacy could not easily form an effective field army. Confederate officials, though supporting state sovereignty, believed the new nation required a military establishment controlled by the central government to ensure organizational stability and facilitate recruitment, supply , and training. Even before the war broke out, they sought a small army of about 10,000, roughly equivalent to the Regular Army of the U.S. (previously mentioned), to be raised, maintained, and employed by the authorities in Richmond. Soon, however, it became clear that war would come before so complex a force could be formed.

Officially, the troops composing the Provisional Army of the Confederate states were made available to the government by consent of the southern governors, who retained authority over the raising, organizing, and maintaining of units, including the appointment of their officers. But in May 1861 President Jefferson Davis was granted the authority to accept volunteer units without state consent, to appoint their field officers, and to form and staff brigades and larger formations. Additional legislation, increasing the central government's authority over the army, lengthened enlistment terms to cover the duration of the war, implemented conscription, and organized government bureaus that effectively transferred unit recruiting and organization from the state capitals to Richmond.

In April 62 The Confederate Congress conscripted men from the ages 18 thru 35. These making it the first time men were drafted directly into the Provisional Army. Confederate territory was organized into departments and generally given names by the locations they originated.

In effect, this army, designed to be an interim expedient became the virtually the sole Confederate fighting force.

Source: Some  taken from "The Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War." “ The Encyclopedia of the Confederacy” “My personal synopious and research”

http://www.worldcat.org/title/regulations-for-the-army-of-the-confederate-states-1863-with-a-full-index-by-authority-of-the-war-department/oclc/3746360

Absolute Proof the Civil War Was About Slavery

https://www.facebook.com/notes/american-civil-war-the-war-between-the-states-the-real-truth/absolute-proof-the-civil-war-was-about-slavery/629548950421024

Absolute Proof the Civil War Was About Slavery

November 11, 2013 at 10:11am

AUTHOR: CURTIS F NOVEMBER 3, 2013 7:12 PM

 

 

 

There are still debates amongst Liberals and Conservatives over whether the Civil War was about slavery. The answer is found within secession documents. – Photo by Murky1 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

There are various things that conservatives and liberals disagree over, and for some insane reason, whether or not the Civil War was about slavery is one of them. Sure, the war ended with the abolition of slavery, but many individuals still claim that the entire war was over states’ rights as opposed to the tradition of owning another human being.

Sadly, this isn’t a random extremist ideology that is pervasive only amongst the most racist of individuals. The Pew Research Center actually found that 48% of Americans believed that the Civil War was about state’s rights, and only 38% thought it was over slavery. Even more alarming is the fact that young people are the ones driving these numbers. A full 60% of those surveyed under 30 felt the war had nothing to do with owning slaves.

Historical Revisionists Deny Slavery As Cause Of Civil War.

Unfortunately for those who want to rewrite history, America was pretty good at record keeping, and this holds true even in the South during their “we wanna be our own country” phase. Revisionists and those they have tricked into believing untruths can argue all they want, but the states that seceded from the Union were very clear on why they did so. This might make that whole yearly Confederate History Month seem a bit more racist. (a BIT? – ed)

In reality, there were four states in the Confederacy who decided to write their own declarations of why they were seceding from the Union. Surely the racists of today would go back in time and tell them not to do this. After all, why leave a paper trail of racism? Oh well, too bad. Here you go!

South Carolina Was Very Clear On The Matter.

 

South Carolina pretty much destroyed the idea that the Civil War was over states’ rights in its declaration. The state said that several northern states “have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them.” They were very upset about this because these states’ laws often allowed slaves to stay as freemen if within their territories. Okay, so the Civil War was about states’ rights, unless that state didn’t agree with the institution of slavery? Right.

On top of this, the declaration seems to get pretty mad over the fact that the North labeled slavery as “sinful,” and they even went on to say that the North had “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.” That’s right! No teaching Africans to read or look at pictures! Because they might want freedom then.

Mississippi Was Proud Of The War Being Over Slavery.

But oh, Mississippi. They’re a little bit off hinge nowadays, but back in the day, they were straight forward with their beliefs. Their declaration literally says that they’re leaving the Union because their “position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”

It’s a bit long to post the whole declaration here, but seriously, go read it. They literally say that slaves are necessary because only Africans can handle the type of heat experienced through work in the South.

Georgia Upset That Its Slaves Could Run North To Freedom.

Ah, and the good old Peach State: Georgia. They wrote a lengthy declaration and actually cited numerous sources (something unheard of in the conservative party of today), but it all broke down to “leave our slaves alone!” One reason Georgia left is because a provision in “the Constitution [that] requires them [Northern states] to surrender fugitives from labor.”

Georgia, not one to not go all out, also said “Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals [runaway slaves] who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us.” That’s right: runaway slaves were criminals and Georgia was mad that the North wasn’t returning them. In fact, go ahead and read Georgia’s declaration as well. It’s a bit longer, but there’s literally not three sentences that go by without mentioning slavery as a cause for secession.

Texas Truly Did Do It Bigger.

Of course, we all know that they do it bigger in Texas. The Lone Star State actually mentioned slavery in its declaration a full 21 times. In fact, they pretty much went all in on their anti-African sentiment.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

You read that right: it’s their right to own slaves. On top of this, Africans had no part in founding America, and the only way they’d put up with those Africans being there was if they were slaves. But hey, let’s not stop there!

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator.

You read it here first, folks: slavery is great for those who are free and those in shackles, and hey, this has to be true because God said so. Tsk, tsk. Texas, Texas, Texas. First Bush and now this? Oh, okay, that was backwards. Bush is a bit more understandable now.

Oh? That’s not enough for you?

Okay, okay. So maybe the entire Confederacy didn’t engage in the Civil War in an attempt to keep slavery around. After all, only the four states above had declarations saying that their secession was due to slavery, and there were 11 states in the Confederacy. So maybe it was just those four states that fought for slavery, right? Unfortunately for the revisionists, the vice president of the nonexistent Confederate States of America said:

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution [...] The general opinion of the men of that day [Revolutionary Period] was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution [slavery] would be evanescent and pass away [...] Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

You didn’t read that wrong.  That is the Vice President of the Confederacy stating point blank that theonly cause for secession was the institution of slavery.

So there you have it. Revisionists can clamor all day about how the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. Unfortunately, the founders of the Confederacy and triggers to the Civil War simply don’t agree with them. They can enjoy their Confederate History Month, but if they claim that the War Between the States was over anything other than slavery, maybe they should read their treasonous “founding fathers’” words first.

More Trouble for the Virginia Flaggers … Tripp Lewis Runs Afoul of the SCV | Crossroads

More Trouble for the Virginia Flaggers … Tripp Lewis Runs Afoul of the SCV | Crossroads

More Trouble for the Virginia Flaggers … Tripp Lewis Runs Afoul of the SCV

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Brooks D. Simpson

Oops … he did it again.

Tripp Lewis proudly shows how to carry a flag the Tripp way.

Tripp Lewis of the Virginia Flaggers seems to have run afoul of the Virginia Division of the SCV. It’s only a matter of time before all the details are aired for all to see and consider.
It’s once more a busy time for the Virginia Flaggers. After all, it is election day in Virginia, and several Flaggers have made their choice known.

Apparently the I-95 project isn’t apolitical. It’s not just about heritage and honoring soldiers.

Finally, there’s been more coverage in Richmond about the recent theft at the I-95 flagpole site. It is especially gratifying to learn that Grayson Jennings says that he would do nothing to knock over a crane used to exhibit the United States flag, even if he has trouble saying the words “United States.
”
“You wouldn’t see any of us going down to downtown Richmond trying to knock the crane over with that American flag.”
My understanding is that the CBF being flown at I-95 was left untouched, so I’m not sure what Mr. Jennings’ point might be. But that’s what happens when Susan Hathaway’s no longer your spokesperson: the message gets muddled.
UPDATE: As several people have now noted (pride of place goes to Corey Meyer), the Confederate flag in the video is not the same flag that went up on September 28. I wonder what happened to the original flag.
Kevin Levin wonders why no one stopped what should have been a noisy robbery.

Civil War Memory

Reflections of a History Educator & Historian

Menu

Skip to content

• Bio
• Blog
  • Links
  • Civil War Memory Library
• Resume
• Buy the Book
  • New Book Project
  • Media
• Speaking
  • Upcoming Talks
• Contact Me
• RSS

Tripp Lewis Runs Afoul of Sons of Confederate Veterans

Leave a reply

By now many of you have learned that Virginia Flagger Tripp Lewis is being charged for “conduct unbecoming” by the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. No word on the specifics of the charge, but I suspect more will be revealed in the near future. It goes without saying that this is not the kind of publicity that the Flaggers are looking for, but as we’ve seen this kind of news has become business as usual.
My curiosity is piqued given the reputation of the Edmund Ruffin Camp. So, are there other examples of charges brought against members by the Virginia Division or by any division in the SCV? What kinds of actions are we talking about? I am clearly not privy to the internal workings of the SCV so I wonder if those of you who are might fill us in with a bit more information about this organization’s disciplinary system. Are the charges brought against Lewis unusual?

And for those of you who need a quick reminder re: Tripp Lewis’s antics, click here.