SCV California

Today's Civil War "History" More Revisionism Than Fact

2011-06-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

by Mark Behrend

I received a flier recently on the expected media attacks on Confederate heritage, I'd like to briefly share an argument I've found very useful in convincing critics that today's "politically correct" version of "Civil War" history is more revisionism than fact.

Rather than defending the Confederacy directly, I stress that the events of 150 years ago must be seen in the context of their own times, and that the moral failings of the South are more than equalled by the failings and hypocrisy of the North. To make these points, I simply state 10 facts. You're probably well aware of all of them, but the average American finds most of them astonishing:

1) Neither secession nor war would have occurred over slavery alone. As many of Lincoln's pronouncements make clear, the ONLY issue for the Union was union itself. For the South, slavery was well down a list of grievances that included the National Banking Act, a growing loss of influence in Congress, and the subsequent federal economic and trade policies that increasingly favored Northern industries over Southern agriculture. In a nutshell, the issue was whether states that freely enter a federation have the right to freely leave it, when it doesn't work out. As the next three points bear out, the North blundered into war by mistakenly believing slavery was the bigger issue for the South.

2) During the lull between secession and war, Congress passed a constitutional amendment, guaranteeing the South the right to maintain slavery in perpetuity. The amendment, of course, was never ratified, due to the outbreak of war.

3) After hostilities began, Congress made a similarly ignorant attempt to reverse events, with a resolution declaring that the war aims of the North did not include the alteration or abolition of any Southern institution -- obviously meaning slavery.

4) If the South's main concern was slavery, why did neither of the above end the conflict and restore the Union?

5) If Lincoln and the Union had gone to war to free the slaves, it would have had a hard time explaining why it financed the war partly from the proceeds of real estate worked by slaves, and why officers from slave states were allowed to bring up to 3 slaves onto Union military posts as personal servants.

6) Slavery was a pivotal issue for no more than 4 states (Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina), and arguably for only the first two. Four others (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) only seceded AFTER the outbreak of hostilities, and then only to keep their sons from being forced to fight fellow Southerners. Since Virginia would bear the war's greatest costs (a geographical certainty its leaders were aware of from the beginning), this clearly demonstrates that the intangible of "Southern identity" was of infinitely greater concern to the South than slavery.

7) American attitudes and policies on race in 1860 bore no resemblance to today's, and differed widely across both North and South. For example, Lincoln openly expressed doubts that blacks and whites could ever live together amicably... During the war, New Yorkers rioted against conscription, targeting blacks... A third of blacks in Louisiana were already free before the war, with a thriving black professional and artistic class in New Orleans -- a cultural treasure that was destroyed by war and Reconstruction... In neighboring Arkansas, on the other hand, it was not legallly possible to be black and free... A generation before the war, a bill to abolish slavery in Virginia came within 3 votes of becoming law... At least 7 Union states (Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana) had deeply divided loyalties during the war, with the first 5 of them still practicing slavery until AFTER the war... One of the biggest slaveholding families in the country, North or South, was a black family in New Orleans, which owned 500 slaves.

8) Blacks fought for both the Union AND the Confederacy. Though their numbers were far greater in the Union Army, they were paid at only half the rate of white troops. Blacks and whites in the Confederate forces, however, were paid equally.

9) Both North and South had a policy of taking no black prisoners on their own soil. Both sides summarily executed black soldiers caught on their territory.

10) Though our schools treat the Emancipation Proclamation as if it were Lincoln's intent from the beginning, he sat on it until well after the midpoint of the war. It was finally issued at the insistence of U.S. Grant, who believed it would remotivate an army and a nation that were losing their will to fight. And, in the ultimate act of hypocrisy, it applied only to Southern states. Apparently, slavery was a moral abomination in the South, but not the North.

As for celebrating our Confederate heritage, I cite 4 points ALL Americans should be proud of: We had the first ironclad warship, the first submarine, the first use of aircraft in wartime, and some of the finest military commanders in American history -- my favorites being Forrest, Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, and Lee (in that order!).

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery
Sculpted by Moses J. Ezekiel

Confederate Memorial, Arlington Cemetery

Dedicated 1914; Sculpture by Sir Moses Ezekiel, former Sergeant of Cadets, Virginia Military Institute, who is himself buried at the base of this monument.

Inscription:
NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD, NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK, NOT LURED BY AMBITION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY, BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO DUTY AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT, THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL, SACRIFICED ALL, DARED ALL, AND DIED

See also jameswebb.com, Speech at the Confederate Memorial, 1990.

Moses J. Ezekiel was one of the VMI cadets who were called into action to plug a hole in the Confederate center at the Battle of New Market, and to repulse a Union Army advance. Though young (17 to 21 years of age) and untested in battle, the VMI cadets prevailed, charging the Union cannon and sending the Yankees into retreat. Ten of the cadets were killed outright or later died of wounds from the battle; fifty-seven were wounded. Although Ezekiel later became a world-renowned sculptor, he chose to be identified on his tombstone simply as:

Sgt. Moses J. Ezekiel

Moses J. Ezekiel
Sergeant of Company C
Battalion of Cadets
of the
Virginia Military Institute

Ezekiel once wrote: "The VMI, where every stone and blade of grass is dear to me, and the name of the cadet of the VMI, the proudest and most honored title I can ever possess."

A detailed description of his life and works can be found here.

Virginia never had a finer son. May he rest in peace.

The Myth of Abraham Lincoln: Should Confederate Descendants Celebrate It?

2011-02-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

Compatriot Greg Clemmer has written that Mr. Lincoln's birthday is celebrated by a number of historical organizations, including one that is Confederate. Mr. Clemmer suggests that some of us may want to show up at the Lincoln Memorial to take part in such an occasion.

I speak only for myself, but I say, count me out.

Old Confederate Vets Display Battle Flag: Can You Identify the Flag?

2011-02-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

We received this photograph of two old Confederate veterans holding a battle flag. Can you identify the flag as to regiment?

Note that the vet on the left appears to be wearing a cavalry jacket (see examples here). This jacket resembles those worn by the First Virginia Cavalry (see illustration). However, the flag in the photo is clearly labeled "Georgia."

Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2011 4:05 PM
Subject: olde Confederate veterans and flag

All y'all,

I found this image on Facebook from my friend across the water, Tomasz Chylinski, of Poland.

So the question is, has anyone ever seen a flag like this? Note the crest with "G5" written in it. If so, what can be said about it? Also, note the apparent age of the two men and their slim physique and upright posture, compared to the modern American veterans. My guess as to where they are would be one of the early Gettysburg reunions. Were other battlefield reunions regularly held? I seem to recall there were only two Gettysburg reunions of note, the 50th and the 75th.

Mainly, I wanted to share this image with my Southern brethern.

Sincerely,

Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.

SCV Camp 1599

James Patton Anderson

West Palm Beach, Fla.

Gregg Clemmer Responds to Northern Apologist James Loewen

2011-01-26T22:38:00.000-08:00

Compatriots~
After reading recent posts across the South and Midwest, some of you will find this latest Examiner article rather timely. This is a direct response to the provocative, agenda driven James Loewen, local Washington, D.C. author of Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me, The Truth About Columbus, and Social Science in the Classroom.

Thanks for passing it along to your readers...and any others you feel moved to share it with.

Individuals can also subscribe to get these articles when they are published. It's Free! Just click on the Subscribe button at the top of the article.

Gregg Clemmer

www.examiner.com/civil-war-heritage-in-washington-dc/the-lincoln-memorial-revelations-on-the-cause-and-purpose-of-the-civil-war

Can You Identify This Uniform? (Probably from 19th Century)

2011-01-26T10:40:00.000-08:00

From: Jim Gray [mailto:jamesmgray@bigpond.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 6:10 AM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: CAN ANYONE IDENTIFY THIS UNIFORM

I have had a descendant of an American Civil War veteran contact me today and she sent me a lot of information; including this photograph that was found among her ggrandfathers belongings. It appears to be some kind of military uniform, but I don't recognize it. Can anyone identify it?

Her ancestor, Alfred Dawson, participated in the war, but she does not know on which side. The family recalls him forever telling stories regarding his exploits during the war. She remembers a number of buttons he once had that he kept from the period, along with a sword; which leads me to believe he may have been in the cavalry.

If you can provide any information I would sure appreciate it. I am awaiting information from another of her descendants who is 84 years old and actually remembers the veteran when she was a small child.

James Gray, Cmdr.
SCV Camp 2160
Australia

Registration for California Division Convention

2011-01-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

Sons of Confederate Veterans
California Division 2011 Convention/Reunion
MARCH 11-13, 2011
Miramar Inn
Marine Corps Air Station, San Diego
Bldg. 2515 Bauer Rd., San Diego, CA 92145
Phone: (858) 271-7111 x 275
Fax: (858) 695-7371
Email: geronacm@usmc-mccs.org

Please send completed registration form and convention fees no later than February 20, 2011 to:
Roy Adair
334 J Ave
Coronado, CA 92118

Questions: Email: CICTater@yahoo.com (619) 977-3185
Special Deluxe Room Rate: $85.00 per night
Please specify Group code: CAMP 302-SCV

Attendees are responsible for making their own room reservations. There are only 18 rooms available. February 20, 2011 is the final date for making a reservation. After that date or when all rooms are taken, you will have to book elsewhere. Please contact Roy Adair for assistance should this happen.

CONVENTION REGISTRATION
Member Name:______________________________
For access to MCAS Miramar for convention/banquet/hotel, we will need your type of vehicle make/model and plate #. You will need to provide your license, registration and proof of insurance at the gate to enter the base.
Camp #________________
Vehicle make/model/license plate #________________________
Address:_____________________________________________________________________________
Contact phone #______________________________
Guest Name:_________________________________Guest Name:_________________________________
Guest Name:_________________________________Guest Name:________________________________

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION (includes Saturday night banquet and Saturday lunch)
SCV Members $55 each
Guests $45 each
Total Enclosed $_________
Please make check payable to “SCV CAMP 302” and write “2011 Convention” on the memo line.
Please register for the conference as soon as possible so we can get a meal count. Banquet will be buffet style.
Remember, room reservations and registration must be made before February 20, 2011!
This year’s convention is held on a military base. Time is of the essence, these are hard set deadlines. If you do not have a DOD ID card, you may stay on the base as a hotel guest, and your hotel reservations will be your pass to get on/off the base.

INFO on Upcoming California Division Convention

2011-01-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

To All - In order to help you plan a little better for the upcoming Division Convention, the following information is provided (please forward this information to all members within your organizations):

1. Arrival and check-in will take place at a "hospitality suite" located in the Miramar Inn at MCAS Miramar between the hours of 3:00 and 10:00 PM. During this period, we will also have a BBQ set up to provide hot dogs, hamburgers and liquid refreshment, all of which is included in the price of the convention registration.

2. If you are flying to San Diego or taking Amtrak, you will need to give me your flight or train information so that one of us will be there waiting to pick you up. If you are taking Amtrak, please arrive at SOLANA BEACH, not downtown San Diego as SOLANA BEACH is much closer to MCAS MIRAMAR than the downtown San Diego station.

2. On Saturday and Sunday morning, a free Continental Breakfast is available at the Miramar Inn for hotel guests. If folks prefer a full restaurant style breakfast at their own expense, they may go down Elrod Road to Anderson Ave (the road that leads from the hotel on base to the golf course) straight to the golf course and eat at the great new restaurant next door to the proshop.

3. The Division business meeting will take place at the Officer's Club between 9:00 AM and Noon. Coffee, tea and ice water will be provided at no cost. The appropriate attire for the meeting is "Business Casual" (polo shirt and slacks or better.) Individuals making Camp Reports will be limited to five minutes maximum. We will be conducting an election of Division Officers, so come prepared.

4. Following the business meeting, we will return to the Miramar Inn for a lunch of sandwiches and refreshments after which we will carpool to Mount Soledad. This is the famous peak in San Diego upon which stands the famous war memorial cross. Surrounding the base of this cross are hundreds of engraved marble plaques honoring American military veterans going all the way back to the War Between the States. Camp 302 has placed a memorial plaque on this site honoring a Confederate veteran who is buried in a nearby cemetery. From this hilltop, there is also a magnificent view of all of San Diego County and the adjacent Pacific Ocean. We will hold a small ceremony while there and then return to MCAS Miramar, arriving around 4:00 PM.

5. We will all gather at the Officer's Club between 5:30 and 6:00 PM. There will be a no-host bar available. Appropriate attire for the Banquet is Coat and Tie or Period Dress. The Banquet will commence at 6:00 PM with the posting of the colors, including those of the Camps, so be sure to remember to bring your Camp flag and stand. Following dinner, we will have as guest speaker, retired Chief Petty Officer Stuart Hedley, who was aboard the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor during the attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 and who will share his memories of that "day of infamy" with us.

6. Check-out will take place at your leisure on Sunday morning. For those of you who are not in a hurry to get back home, we are offering guided tours, at no cost, aboard the USS Midway museum, which is in downtown San Diego (transportation will be provided if needed) or at the Flying Leatherneck Aviation museum at MCAS Miramar. If you elect to go to the Midway, you can plan on being there until around 2:00 PM or so. Also, if you would like to visit the Midway, there is a limited number of free passes, so it's first-come-first-served. If you want to see the Flying Leatherneck museum at MCAS Miramar, you could easily be on your way home by noon and there is no limit on guests.

7. REMEMBER - The deadline for hotel and convention reservations is February 20. A Convention Registration Form is attached. It is highly unlikely that we will be able to get you in after that date, so don't wait! If you have any questions at all, please contact me by e-mail at

or by phone at (619) 435-5235.

University Researcher Seeks Info on Confederate Memorials in California

2011-01-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

Dear sir or madam,

My name is Jonathan Scott; I am months away from completing my BA in History from Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. My senior thesis, which I am to begin work on shortly, is to grapple with the broad-strokes question of commemoration. I am interested in pursuing a topic relating to the commemoration of the Confederacy in states that did not secede from the Union, and as California was a Union state as far distanced from the South as one can get in the lower 48, I thought I might inquire if you are aware of any pertinent sites in your state that I can investigate further.

I am looking for (potentially) a monument to the Confederate dead or the Lost Cause (of the type that dot every courthouse square here in GA), a Confederate cemetery, or possibly a town that celebrates Confederate Memorial Day, or perhaps a town that offically celebrates any aspect of the CSA - Lee/Jackson birthdays, etc. My quest to find information of this nature the internet continually brought me back to the California SCV Chapter page, and I hope that you do not take umbrage to my approaching you with this query.

All that being said...do you have information on any such Confederate commemoration in your state?

Thank you in advance, and I look forward to your correspondence.

Many kind regards,

~Jonathan Scott

3068 Wexford Walk Dr.

Smyrna, GA 30080

scottie2024@gmail.com

Ship's Log Newsletter for January 2011: Camp 1770

2011-01-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

..
Ship's Log Vol 3 No 3 Jan 2011 - Read, Download or Print It Here

California Monuments to Confederates: Guidance Requested from Vern Padgett

2011-01-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

Gents, Steve Smith has asked me to coordinate an examination of division funding for heritage projects.

Our division has funds available which could fund these projects.

In discussions over the past year or two, the consensus seems to be that we should donate to the SCV Museum Fund at Elmwood, and place the rest into California heritage, with grave marking a priority.

Some of you have already invested many of your camp dollars into lasting monuments to Confederate Heritage. I’m thinking of the Confederate Monument at Santa Ana/Fairhaven Cemetery, provided by Camp 1770 Orange County , the work done by our Sacramento Camp 1627 in Colma and elsewhere, and the Fresno Camp 1804 effort towards the placing of lasting stone monuments.

My camp, 1208 Los Angeles , has ordered a composite Iron Cross, which I should receive today, from Gaffney , South Carolina , where they are manufactured. These are made from the same material as bowling balls, and thus require no painting over the years, and retain their appearance indefinitely, or so says Robert Little, adjutant of the Gaffney SC Camp, whose camp has placed 35 of them. They cost $25 each, plus shipping. I will bring one to the Reunion at Miramar in March. I propose that division fund the purchase of any number of these for our 12 California Camps to place.

At our last Division Reunion, in Lebec, Chuck Norred described stone monuments in place in Arizona , and suggested that they should be placed from one end of California to the other.

I call on Farrell Cooley, Chuck Norred and Lou Olker in particular to provide guidance, as their camps have already placed stone monuments honoring our Confederate heroes.

R/S,

Vern Padgett

Former SCV Historian-in-Chief Rebuts E.J. Dionne, Seeks Member Advice

2011-01-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon~

Ben Sewell, the SCV executive director at Elm Springs, suggested I contact you. As an author and historian, I have been somewhat perplexed that little attention seems to be focused on commemorating the civil war sesquicentennial.

Desiring to expand the public’s awareness on the war and its causes, tactics, consequences, etc., I recently approached the folks at Examiner.com with a few ideas. They seized on my proposal and welcomed me into their fold.

I am not agenda driven and definitely have a free hand in what I will explore, research, and post, but I do mean to get out to the readers a thorough telling of the times. That's already rankled a few up here in the local Washington, DC area. But that's the idea!

My latest post, in taking on the Washington Post's D. J. Dionne's inaccuracies, has brought some interesting email in the last several days. Folks are noticing. Click or copy/paste the following if you wish to read a bit more!

www.examiner.com/civil-war-heritage-in-washington-dc/the-kansas-irony-jayhawk-abolitionists-have-their-say

That said, I'm wondering how I might get this and future posts out to the broader SCV audience. When I posed this to Ben, he suggested I contact all SCV Division commanders. I already mail the latest link to about 230 recipients in and around Maryland. A second, much smaller group in Kentucky receives the link also. Anyone can subscribe (it's free). If you have a division mailing list, perhaps we could link.

I would value your thoughts and suggestions.

All the best,

Gregg Clemmer

SCV Historian-in-Chief, 1998-2000

22 Native Dancer Ct

North Potomac, MD 20878

301-963-0141

Author:

Valor in Gray: The Recipients of the Confederate Medal of Honor

Old Alleghany: The Life and Wars of General Ed Johnson

(winner of the 2005 Douglas Southall Freeman Book Prize)

A Note from Bonnie Blue Publishing

2011-01-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Southrons,

If we don't argue our history well for the next fifteen years as we commemorate the Sesquicentennial of our War for Independence, and the Reconstruction decade afterward, here is how our Confederate ancestors will be recorded in history:

"The fact was that these folks were the terrorists and traitors of their day."

That quotation was in the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier November 1, 2010, just three days ago, in an article titled "The Boycott," and it was spoken by NAACP Vice President, Nelson B. Rivers, III.

WE were correct in that conflict from start to finish, and Mr. Rivers is dead wrong.

The most powerful arguments are ours. We are the heirs of the Founding Fathers. Our ancestors fought for the principles of the Founding Fathers. We can not allow NAACP fraud to triumph.

On www.BonnieBluePublishing.com there are numerous DVDs and DVD collections on Southern History from some of the finest scholars in the country such as Dr. Clyde Wilson. I have a three-DVD set, The War Between the States and Reconstruction, by Dr. Wilson, that is second to none. It is powerful and full of irrefutable fact and argument. It is thoroughly enjoyable and when you finish watching, you will be loaded for bear.

Get the three-DVD set, The War Between the States and Reconstruction, and receive, free, as a Christmas Special, the two-DVD set, Mixed Up with All the Rebel Horde, Why Black Southerners Fought for the South in the War Between the States, by Professor Edward C. Smith. Professor Smith gives one of the most dynamic talks on any topic you will ever hear. You will rave about his talk.

These DVDs are perfect for camp, unit and chapter meetings, and they are excellent Christmas gifts or donations to libraries and schools.

The Sesquicentennial is here, now, and will be going on for a long time. Do not look for NAACP ignorance and hate to go away.

We need to prepare, and fight this fight from the beginning to the end.

Magna est veritas et praevalebit!

(Great is truth and it will prevail!)

Gene Kizer

www.BonnieBluePublishing.com

P.O. Box 13012

Charleston, South Carolina 29422-3012

Lee and Jackson to be Celebrated in Orange, January 16, 2011

2011-01-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone:

God Bless our camp, our mission, our members and our DUTY! Our camp has historically celebrated General Lee and General Jackson's B.day in Jan., and this year is no different. We always have a good turnout and a very productive meeting. This year we'll be blessed with a guest speaker; Mike Climo of the Inland Empire Camp and he will speak to us about the CSS Hunley.

Meeting Date: Sunday, Jan. 16th, 2011

Meeting Time: 1:00pm after Church

Meeting Place: Johnny Reb's Restaurant in Orange on the patio.

RSVP: e.mail me... (at rebwaylon "at" sbcglobal.net). I want to notify the restuarant of how many we expect.

JOIN US for a great afternoon with good company, good food, an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to remember history, and last but not least, "do our duty."

Deo Vindice,

Farrell

Happy New Year Too!!!

Happy New Year from California Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans

2010-12-31T21:28:00.001-08:00

California Division Has a New "Real Son" Member

2010-12-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 5:13 PM

From Lou Olker, Sacramento:

Compatriots!

Our Camp and Division now have a Real Son again!

Yesterday Loye Ann and I drove to Carmichael and presented Daniel Hester Varnum his Real Son Certificate and Medal; his Life Member Certificate, pin, and a number of bumper stickers and goodies.

At 93 he is very much alert, though he must use a walker. He and his wife and daughter were tickled to death to receive the honor, and he is now an honor to us all.

His father (according to records in Florida) served in the 1st Alabama Infantry Regiment.

Deo Vindice!

Lou Olker, CDR Camp 1627, Sacramento

Northern Apologist Meme in Place to Advance the Northern Myth

2010-12-28T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Northern myth of the Civil War is that the Yankees fought to free the slaves, end racism, create social justice and equality for all, while the evil Southerners fought to preserve and extend slavery throughout the United States. It is utterly false, and easily disproved in debate. However, that doesn't mean Yankee fans will shirk their chosen duty to invent new rationales and arguments to preserve and extend the Northern myth.

I wrote earlier about Bob Sutton's new propaganda line, about how the South allegedly admitted the war was about slavery at the beginning, then later changed the argument to something more palatable in order to win support from Europe. Sutton is the chief historian(?) of the National Park Service. In my rebuttal, I proved that Sutton's argument was a complete reversal of actual history -- it was Lincoln who disingenuously "changed" the reason for the war in order to dissuade British recognition of the Confederacy. (See that post here.)

Now we have leftist columnist E.J. Dionne taking up the Sutton argument in his article "Let's Not Spin the Civil War." Of course, Dionne's real message is "Let's Spin the Civil War in Favor of the North, Like We've Been Doing for 145 years." Dionne's Washington Post article was reprinted at RealClearPolitics (read it here) where it has received potent criticism from Southern defenders.

During the 150th anniversary of the War for Southern Independence, we have a rare opportunity to refute the Northern myth of history and defend the South. An effective way to do that is to perceive the Northern arguments and have rebuttals researched and ready to launch at a moment's notice. If you want to be in on that and up on the latest developments, visit this site often.

Confederate Message in a Bottle Decoded After 147 Years

2010-12-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

A Confederate message to General John C Pemberton, commander of Vicksburg, was finally decoded this week, 147 years after it was written. It has been in the Museum of the Confederacy for many years, but never translated until this week.

The message was written in a cipher, which was easily decoded by a modern CIA codebreaker.

The full message reads: "Gen'l Pemberton: You can expect no help from this side of the river. Let Gen'l Johnston know, if possible, when you can attack the same point on the enemy's lines. Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion. I have sent some caps (explosive devices). I subjoin a despatch (sic) from General Johnston."

The message was contained in a small glass vial along with a minie ball and closed with a cork. The minie ball was to allow the vial to sink if it became necessary to throw it into a river to avoid interception.

Read the news article here.

Merry Christmas from the California Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans

2010-12-24T14:52:00.000-08:00

Edwin Booth's Body to be Dug Up, DNA Tested

2010-12-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

Edwin Booth

John Wilkes Booth

There are lots of stories, rumors and myths surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Much of the myths center around John Wilkes Booth. Did he really die in that barn? Did he escape to live out his life span? Did he become a song and dance man on Vaudeville? Okay, I just made that last one up, but you get the idea.

Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's brother, is to be exhumed so his DNA can be compared to that of another long-dead corpse that is buried in Baltimore. Researchers want to prove that the Baltimore man is indeed John Wilkes Booth, putting an end to the rumors once and for all.

It seems to me a rather frivolous reason for disturbing the dead, but that's just me.

Read it all here.

150 Years Ago Today: South Carolina Seceded From the Union

2010-12-20T18:14:00.000-08:00

South Carolina Sovereignty Flag

The Sesquicentennial has officially begun. 150 years ago today South Carolina seceded from the Union.

Paul Rahe discusses the secession of South Carolina from the Union on December 20, 1860, 150 years ago today. Rahe, a misinformed Northern apologist recycles old lies and myths about the "illegality" of secession, at this link.

Rahe claims that, since the Constitution doesn't specifically state that secession is Constitutional, then it is not allowed. Nonsense. Since the Constitution doesn't state that secession is prohibited, then it is not prohibited. Rahe has it exactly backwards. Our rights and powers are not limited to those specifically stated and enumerated.

Rahe then claims, unbelievably, that the Articles of Confederation (which existed before the Constitution was formed) stated plainly that the Confederation would exist "in perpetuity." Really? Is that why it was ended and cancelled? Implied in Rae's reasoning is that our current Constitution is illegal because we are still legally governed by the Articles of Confederation, which were "perpetual"!

In reality, those words "in perpetuity" only meant there was no automatic expiration date -- many corporations and other organizations have that same term in their organizing documents, but it is not to be taken literally.

Then there is the unfortunate (unfortunate for Rae) the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And those powers include the right of secession, recognized by every state when the Constitution was formed, and by key founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, and taught as a right at West Point before the War for Southern Independence.

Update: Great minds think alike. Robert Stacy McCain also rebutted Paul Rahe at this link.

History Channel's Bias?

2010-12-18T11:23:00.000-08:00

I was shopping at Costco in Gilroy yesterday, and found their DVD aisle. In it were DVD's of the History Channel's presentations on the Civil War. One of them was about the leaders in that war. The Jefferson Davis segment was titled "The Traitor President Jefferson Davis."

Jefferson Davis, a traitor? Horse puckey!

Can You Identify This 19th Century Uniform?

2010-12-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Compatriot Gray of Camp 2160 in Australia has a photo of a uniform that he wants to identify. He is not sure if it is a CSA uniform -- some unusual uniforms were worn by units on both sides of the war, e.g. the Zouaves. If you can identify this uniform, please leave a message in the comments section of this post.

Compatriot Gray writes:

IDENTIFY THIS UNIFORM

In researching a new Confederate veteran, with the help of a descendant, I acquired several photos from her family album. The one shown here we are not sure about, but he looks like her ancestor at an earlier age.

Can you tell me anything about the uniform he is wearing?

James Gray
Commander
SCV Camp 2160
Australia

Update: I googled British army uniforms and the uniform appears to be British, circa 1870. I found some photos of British soldiers wearing very similar hats and a photo of some British reenactors wearing a similar type of uniform. See these photos below the fold. Hat tip Ken Koch of California Division, who identified the uniform as British.

Update 2: The uniform jacket has been identified as a fur-lined "hussar's pelisse." See photos below the fold for a color photo example. The uniform is definitely British.

...

British Soldier, 19th Century

Reenactors, British Soldiers

...

A Hussar's Pelisse (British fur-trimmed uniform jacket)

The uniform jacket in the photo provided by James Gray has been identified as a "hussar's pelisse," which were often fur-lined. Google research shows these jackets varied substantially among regiments and time periods, but were most often red or dark blue.

View the Georgia SCV Ads Banned by the History Channel (Videos)

2010-12-16T10:50:00.001-08:00

I located the Georgia Divison ads that the History Channel refused to run. They are below. Watch them all -- they are only 60 seconds each.

The Truth of Slavery In America:

The Morrill Tariff:

Economic Reasons for the War:

Sesquicentennial Celebration:

Religious Differences Between North and South:

The Corwin Amendment:

The John Brown Raid:

The Election of Abraham Lincoln:

The Toomb's Speech:

South Carolina Secedes:

Regional Differences:

Political Differences:

Al Benson Explains the History Channel Bias Against the Sons of Confederate Veterans

2010-12-16T10:44:00.000-08:00

Al Benson Jr. is a longtime friend and fellow activist for Southern heritage. He has a blog called "Anti-Establishment History" and has an interesting post this morning on the History Channel controversy. It's called The SCV and the Politically Correct "History" Channel.

Follow the link to read it.

Recommended Site: Southern Heritage News & Views, by Chuck Demastus

2010-12-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

There is a great site and email list for those wishing to keep abreast of current developments in Southern heritage. It is Southern Heritage News & Views (SHNV), by Chuck Demastus. I have added this site to our links in the left sidebar. You can request to be placed on SHNV's email list and receive breaking news on an ongoing basis.

This morning SHNV has an article by an SCV Commander of a Georgia Camp, entitled "Terrorists and Socialists Caused Southern Secession," by James W. King of Camp 141 in Albany, Georgia. Follow the link to read it.

"Composite Crosses" for Grave Sites Available

2010-12-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

An SCV camp in South Carolina is selling iron crosses for Confederate grave sites, except that these iron crosses are not made of iron. They look great and are a lot cheaper.

The Adjutant of Camp 125 writes:

A link for the Composite Crosses of Honor our Camp is using instead of those made out of aluminum or steel. See http://www.moseswoodcamp.org/ironcrosses.htm.

The Composite Cross is a similar material to a bowling ball, and the foundry in Gaffney uses this same material for many outdoor and machinery parts. The Crosses are a finished product in color black, and do not have to be primed or painted, as we had to do with the many steel or aluminum Crosses we have installed throughout Cherokee County in South Carolina.

I remember last year or earlier this year a Camp West of the Mississippi had stated they were paying about $75-100 for each Cross. We are selling the Composite Crosses for $25 plus Shipping to any SCV Camp. Do you think there could be any interest out West for a Composite Cross?

Robert Little
Adjutant Camp Moses Wood #125
Gaffney, SC

Contact Robert Little (click on his name above) if interested in purchasing these inexpensive crosses for your camp.

A Message from the Chaplain, Army of Trans-Mississippi

2010-12-15T07:46:00.001-08:00

Five Confederate Soldiers

Enemies!

The enemies of Christ are hard at work to remove any and all Christian influence from our country, which was founded on Christian principles and a reliance on Jesus Christ.

School children are being taught that George Washington crossed the Delaware and chopped down a cherry tree, but not that he was a Christian. They are not being told what he had to say about God, Jesus Christ, or the Bible. This is not only true of George Washington, but of nearly all of the founders and early leaders of our country. Most were Christians who put their trust and faith in God. We know that, because they said so. However, this is not being taught to our children even though it's true. And, why? Because it isn't politically correct and some non-Christian might claim to be offended.

For generations we've been taught that Abraham Lincoln was a great man who saved the country and freed the slaves. Scores of people, misled by erroneous teaching, have visited his statue in Washington, D.C. to pay homage to his image as if he were some god in a Greek temple. Of course, we know him to have been a tyrant who's inflated ego, poor judgment, and illegal acts caused the death of over six hundred thousand American men and immeasurable suffering.

At the same time, honorable, Christian men like Robert E. Lee, T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and all of our Confederate generals, who fought to save the country and it's constitution, have been vilified and called traitors. Our brave and noble Confederate forefathers are being called a "racist army." Our proud Southern heritage is being mocked and our legacy shamed by those whose only interest is self promotion. They pick fights and find fault in what is true and right in order to increase the audience of their radio or television programs, or add to the readership of their newspaper columns or websites. They criticize and attack what is honorable and true, while they have no honor and care nothing for truth.

Southern states who asked their young men to leave their homes and families to go to war to defend it against a terrorist invasion, and now refuse to honor their sacrifice because it isn't politically correct are a disgrace. Southerners who have bought in to the Union lies and will not seek or accept the truth even when it's presented to them, because of what someone might think, are a shame and unworthy of their own heritage.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has been given the "defense of the Confederate soldier's good name," and "the guardianship of his history." As such we may get mad and upset at these self-serving hypocritical bigots that attack our noble Southern heritage and brave Confederate forefathers, but I firmly believe God is for us, and the Bible tells us in Romans 8:31, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

Bro. Len Patterson, Th.D.
Chaplain, Army of Trans-Mississippi

Bob Sutton of the National Park Service: Biased and Wrong on History

2010-12-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a lot of ignorant and wild statements are being made. There are the usual suspects: the mainstream media; the NAACP and Yankee biased historians like Bob Sutton, head of the National Park Service. This was apparent in an AP news story that appeared yesterday.

First, nonsense from the NAACP:

"It's almost like celebrating the Holocaust," said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "Our rights were taken away and we were treated as less than human beings. To relive that in a celebratory way I don't think is right."

Apparently Simelton is unaware that blacks' "rights" were taken away by other blacks in Africa, who first made them slaves; then sold them to Yankee slave traders who sold them to the South (and for every one sold to the South, the Yankees sold 19 more to Cuba, Brazil and the West Indies). Celebrating secession and the formation of the Confederate States of America is NOT the same thing as celebrating slavery -- any more than celebrating the 4th of July is celebrating slavery (as most of the Founding Fathers were slave owners or traders).

Second, some common sense from a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans:

Mark Simpson, commander of the South Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, acknowledged that an event such as the Dec. 20 Secession Gala in Charleston is seen by some Americans as politically incorrect. But "to us it's part of our nature and our culture and our heritage."

"Slavery was a very big issue. Anyone who denies that has his head in a hole somewhere," said Simpson, a Spartanburg businessman who counts 32 ancestors who fought for the South. "But slavery was not the single nor primary cause, and that's where the line gets drawn."

Simpson said the primary cause was states' rights — the purported right of states to nullify federal laws and freely leave the Union they voluntarily joined.

Simpson is absolutely correct. Slavery had a strong influence on the Southern states decision to secede, because they felt they had no other choice (that will be covered more fully in a later post). The abolitionists demanded immediate and uncompensated emancipation and supported terrorism against the South, which would have devastated both the slave owner and the slave. But it wasn't slavery that started the Civil War, it was Lincoln's invasion of the Southern states. No invasion, no war -- and by his own statements (discussed later herein), he invaded to enforce the Union, not to free the slaves.

Now some simpleton nonsense from the head historian of the National Park Service:

"Slavery was the principal cause of the Civil War, period," said Bob Sutton, chief historian for the National Park Service. "Yes, politics was important. Yes, economics were important. Yes, social issues were important. But when you get to the core of why all these things were important, it was slavery."

Sutton is highly biased. The principal cause of the Civil War was the Northern invasion of the South, PERIOD. The North had NO MORALLY RESPONSIBLE plan to end slavery, no plan for emancipation, no plan to assimilate former slaves into Northern society. Without such a plan, the Northern pretense at virtue falls flat on its face.

Sutton continues to embarrass himself with these remarks:

A few weeks before the first shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens called slavery "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."

But as the war progressed, the Confederate government shifted its rationale to states' rights because Davis knew neither England nor other third powers would support the South in a war to preserve slavery, Sutton said.

Sutton has reversed history here! It was the exact opposite of what he pretends to be true: Lincoln at first stated categorically that the war was NOT about slavery; he even continued enforcing the fugitive slave law. He wrote to the governor of South Carolina, insisting that the abolition of slavery was not his aim! Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley the following denial:.

If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.

It was Lincoln who later changed the "reason" for the war, in order to dissuade the British from recognizing the Confederate government, not the opposite, as Sutton dishonestly suggests.

Read the whole sordid piece at this link.

Video: Confederate Generals Who Died in the War

2010-12-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

Ship's Log Newsletter for November/December 2010

2010-12-04T21:17:00.000-08:00

Ship's Log Vol 3 No 2 Nov Dec 2010
Click on "Read More" to display the newsletter. Use the scroll bar on the right to scroll through the newsletter.

History Channel Discrimination Against Sons of Confederate Veterans

2010-12-03T21:39:00.000-08:00

Georgia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans

Dec. 3, 2010

SOUTHERN HERITAGE CALL TO ACTION!

HISTORY CHANNEL DISCRIMINATION

Friends & Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans,

As many of you have already heard by now, the 60-second history segments commemorating the Sesqicentennial of the War which have been produced for the Georgia Division of the SCV have been pulled from the air by the History Channel in Georgia. This decision was made by Nancy R. Alpert, one of the many vice-presidents at A&E Television Networks, the parent company of the History Channel. You can read her reasons in the press release sent out by the Georgia Division HERE.

The Georgia Division is still running the segments on three other national network channels in Georgia, in addition to the other radio and television stations involved in the statewide campaign, as part of the commemoration of the Sesquicentennial. None of the other networks or stations have expressed any concern at all, and many have commented on the quality of content and presentation of the segments. Many of the 60-second segments may be viewed on the Georgia Division website at www.GeorgiaSCV.org.

Since our press release was sent out several days ago, we have been inundated by members and friends of the SCV who are interested in taking action. As we have seen in other instances, if we allow this anti-Southern discrimination to go unchecked without response, it will only encourage others to do the same.

What we need you to do:

1. Forward this email to every individual and list that you know.

2. Make two phone calls every day, from now until we send out a call to stop; it will take five minutes or less. If this is unsuccessful, we may send contact information for advertisers at the History Channel so that you can ask them to cancel their advertising; but please do not do that at this point.

* Call Mr. Berning, vice-president of national sales at A&E by dialing

212-210-1400, select prompt "1" then enter 2376464 #, then # again.

When you reach the secretary, please say something similar to the following (we recommend using your own words): "Hi, my name is ___ ; and I would like to file a complaint with Mr. Berning. I would like to protest A&E and the History Channel's decision to pull the history segments paid for by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Atlanta which commemorate the Southern veterans who died in the War Between the States. It is discrimination against Southerners. I would like to ask for the reinstatement of the segments and the removal of Nancy Alpert who made the decision."

If the secretary attempts to transfer you, it is our recommendation that you insist on finishing your statement to her and ask her to convey the message to Mr. Berning since he is in charge of sales for A&E.

* Call A&E's Atlanta sales office using the same script, minus Mr. Berning's name. The direct number is 404.816.8880.

3. If you are not already receiving the press releases from us, please sign up to receive them so that we will be able to keep you up to date on the progress of this issue and the Sesquicentennial. Click HERE to receive the press releases and updates.

With your help, we can make a signficant impact for the cause of our Southern heritage!

Sincerely,

Ray McBerry

PR Officer, Georgia Division

Sons of Confederate Veterans

Ray McBerry Enterprises is the public relations firm for the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Why The Civil War Was Not About Slavery

2010-12-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

By Donald W. Livingston, Professor of Philosophy, Emory University

Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
President, Abbeville Institute

Reprinted With Permission

Donald W. Livingston

American historians up to the 1960s tended to treat the War Between the States as a tragic or as a bungling affair. The moral challenge posed by slavery was seen as an aspect of why war broke out, but one overshadowed by deep and long standing constitutional, economic, and political conflicts. Today, however, historians, inspired by Marxist-style analysis, preach the one-dimensional doctrine that the conflict at its core was a moral struggle over slavery. The South was willing to destroy the Union in order to protect slavery and expand it. The North fought to eliminate slavery by preserving the Union. A recent historian, for instance, writes “It is an astonishing anomaly that … for one hundred years historians and commentators attempted to exorcise slavery as relevant or to downplay it as incidental to the conflict. Recent scholarship has at last acknowledged that the participants, after all, knew what they were contending about. Slavery, its expansion or limitation, its abolition or perpetuation was what the war was all about.”¹

Another historian writes “that Southerners seceded over one thing and fought over one thing, slavery.” A recent biographer of Robert E. Lee says of Lee “He was a leader in the Southern rebellion, in which so many fought so nobly for such a bad cause.”²

Robert Penn Warren, a Pulitzer Prize poet and novelist, witnessed the birth of this new style of writing history in the early 1960s, and wrote a devastating critique of it in The Legacy of the Civil War. Through the myth of a holy crusade to abolish slavery, Americans had illegitimately acquired what he called a great “treasury of virtue.” Even historians who know the myth is a distortion have generally not written history in a way to criticize it. The National Park Service has ordered every Civil War battlefield park in the nation exhibit the theme that the war was “about slavery.” This was the theme of Ken Burns’ TV series on the Civil War in which Lee was presented as “a traitor.” The series was very popular and prompted the conservative columnist George Will to gush that it was a demonstration of what television is for. The myth has been taught for generations in public schools and colleges. References to it are frequently heard in political speeches, commemoration speeches of all kinds, the media, in film, and in sermons from mainline churches. People in Argentina, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow and Australia who know next to nothing about American history know that the Civil War was “about slavery.” The upcoming sesquicentennial year commemorating the beginning of the War to Prevent Southern Independence promises to be a long, extended speech explaining how the war was “about slavery.” The myth, however, is not true. What is essentially wrong with it is not that it obsessively focuses on slavery while omitting facts contrary to the myth (though it does that), but that it reads a moral meaning into the conflict over slavery that did not exist. It leads us to believe that the North’s “antislavery” was a correct response to the moral challenge, whereas the South was “pro-slavery” and reprehensibly turned its back on the moral challenge. In what follows we shall see that what Warren called America’s great “treasury of virtue” is filled with fool’s gold that morally corrupts all who exploit it.

The first thing to appreciate is slavery was, from the very first, a national enormity, an American sin for which every section of the Union bore some responsibility. This, however, is not how we have been trained to think. We think of slavery as an alien and “un-American” practice confined to the South in the 19th century. But an honest look at American history reveals a quite different picture. Slavery was woven into the economic, political, and cultural fabric of the Northern states from the beginning. The first African slaves were brought to New England in 1638 in exchange for enslaved Indians. Boston began importing slaves from Africa in 1644. For 164 years New Englanders sold slaves throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The Puritans who settled in New England were part of a larger group, the rest of whom settled in the West Indies and began sugar planting which required an especially brutal form of labor with a high mortality rate. New England slave traders supplied the demand for labor and formed marriages and other alliances with their Puritan kinsmen in the West Indies. By the end of the Revolution, slavery had been a respected institution in New England for around 140 years. One out of four families in Connecticut owned slaves. And there were slave plantations in the region. One out of fourteen people in Rhode Island was a slave, and around 50 percent of ministers owned slaves.³

The dark story of New England’s involvement in the practice of slavery has been hidden from general public perception until recently, when three New England journalists published Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery (New York: Random House, 2005). They express their utter shock in discovering New Englanders approved the slave trade and the practice of slavery in their States. They ask “How could we not know this?” And the answer is “Northerners have pushed much of their early history into the deepest shadows of repression … Slavery has long been identified in the national consciousness as a Southern institution.” The time to bury that myth is overdue. Slavery is the story of America, all of America. The nation’s wealth, from the very beginning, depended upon the exploitation of black people on three continents. Slavery, they continue, was a “national phenomenon. The North shared in the wealth it created, and in the oppression it required.” What is truly astonishing, however, is it took so long for these New England journalists to discover facts in their own backyard that were not difficult to uncover.⁴

Nor are they entirely emancipated from Warren’s “treasury of virtue,” for their book is titled Complicity. It is misleading, however, to say the North was complicit in American slavery. It was foundational. The slave trade began and was carried out mainly by New England States for more than a century and a half. The wealth piled up by New England and New York was generated by servicing slave economies throughout the Western Hemisphere. The purchase of slaves and land in the South and elsewhere was financed by Northern banks; slave-produced staples were transported in Northern ships and insured by Northern companies. The global industrial revolution was based on textile manufacturing which generated an insatiable demand for cotton throughout the world. It is no exaggeration to say the New York City of 1860 was built on slave produced cotton. So was the New England textile industry. Some 75 to 90 percent of federal revenue came from the Southern export trade. The federal government was funded from the first up to 1860 by slave labor.

Slavery, then, was a national enormity integral to the entire economic and political structure of the United States from the beginning. Its elimination, therefore, morally demanded a national solution where all would share, to some degree, in the sacrifices and costs necessary to remove it. From our perspective, the morally right thing would have been a nationally funded program to emancipate slaves, compensate slave owners for their loss, and integrate the African population into American society as social and political equals. Yet, throughout the entire antebellum period, no national political party of any importance ever proposed emancipation, much less compensation and integration. The South could not have seceded and fought to reject a morally responsible solution urged by the North because no such program was ever proposed or even contemplated.

Why not? There were two reasons. First, there was no national program because there was no nation in the modern sense of the term. America was an inchoate federation of States, not a centralized nation-state on the model of Britain or France. Everyone understood that slavery was a domestic institution governed entirely by the laws of each State. Congress simply had no constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in the States. Nor did Congress want that power. On March 3, 1861, Congress passed an amendment to the Constitution making it impossible ever to amend the Constitution to give Congress power over slavery in the States. Lincoln approved the amendment in his first Inaugural Address.

Since Congress had no power over slavery, and did not want such power, the only way to abolish slavery would be through individual state action or by an amendment to the Constitution. No such amendment was ever proposed during the antebellum period, or even seriously contemplated. One reason is that Northerners were not at all willing to help pay for emancipation. They viewed slavery as entirely the South’s responsibility, willfully ignoring their own foundational and continuing participation in an economy and political order to which slavery was integral. But there was more to the North’s lack of interest in emancipation than a refusal to compensate slave owners. If slaves were freed nationally, they would be part of a national American society, but as we shall see, Northerners absolutely refused to integrate free Africans into their States.

If no national political party put forth an emancipation plank during the entire antebellum period, how did the myth ever arise that the war was a great moral struggle between those wanting to protect slavery and those wanting to abolish it? The myth is possible because of the confused and confusing way many Americans think about morality. We can best appreciate this by exploring the logic of the myth.

Most all antebellum Americans believed two propositions. The first proposition is that slavery abstractly considered (that is independent of posi tive law, circumstance, and custom) is a violation of natural law. This was as true of Southerners as Northern ers. Lincoln makes this clear in one of his debates with Douglas: “Before pro ceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it.”⁵

Why not? Because Southerners, like most Americans, thought that slavery abstractly considered is a violation of natural law.

The second proposition held by most Americans and especially by Northerners is the African population was never to be part of the American polity. These two propositions are not contradictory, but they exist together in tension. If slavery, abstractly consid ered, is a violation of natural law, then slaves in America should be freed. But if America is a white European polity to which Africans are never to belong, then, even if freed, they would be in a permanently servile position without the protections of the master who had, if nothing else, an economic interest in the welfare of the slave.

The moral tension between the two propositions is that between the God-given natural right of freedom and the manmade political right to be a citizen of a certain country. Even if it is true that all men have a God given natural right to freedom, it does not follow that all men have a political right to be citizens of the United States, or citizens of Israel which is a Jewish state, or of Pakistan which is an Islamic state. Whether an alien African population brought over by force and bound by force should be citizens of the United States is a ques tion to be decided by those with the authority to grant political rights, and this will require nice judgments about their traditions and cultural identity (what makes them a people), and what barriers those erect, if any, to assimilat ing the alien population into their pol ity. Americans were white European Protestants with an ethic of individu alism, a Protestant work ethic, and an ideology of progress. The African pop ulation was only two generations from tribal existence, uneducated, with no European past, and with only an ab stract racial identity based on common bondage. It is doubtful one could find a parallel in history of two peoples less likely for social and political integra tion than these two.

So the American response to the moral challenge of slavery had to be filtered through these two beliefs: that slavery in the abstract is wrong and the African population is never to be integrated into the social and political fabric of America. Given the tension generated by these two propositions, a conditional justification for slavery could be given. Although natural law teaches that slavery is wrong, it also teaches when confronted with a choice of policy, one should always choose what does the most good and the least harm. Thus Thomas Aquinas taught al though prostitution is a sin and harms society, making it illegal could pro duce more harm than good. He judged the natural law teaching on prostitu tion is it should be legally tolerated but contained.

Likewise, if freed blacks were not to enjoy social and political rights and were to live as pariahs, which would push them into vagabondage and crime, then arguably emancipation in some cases would do more harm than good. If so, then slavery as a way of manag ing what was perceived to be an alien African population until some better arrangement could be found would be justified as a matter of prudence by the same natural law that declares all men have an inalienable right to freedom. This was an awkward position to be in, but it was how most antebellum Americans, North and South, thought of their condition. And, unhappily, they never moved beyond it in confronting the moral challenge of slavery.

Consider Lincoln’s remarks in a debate with Stephen Douglas, Septem ber 18, 1858:

“I will say then that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bring ing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … there is a physical dif ference between the white and black races which I believe will forever for bid 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, and I as much as any other men am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”⁶

In the manner of St. Thomas, Lincoln did not object to slavery as long as it was confined to the South. He laid out the possibilities confronting Americans: “What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as un derlings? Is it quite certain this betters their condition? What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not then, make them equals.” Lincoln confessed he could not think of an ac ceptable solution to the moral problem of slavery: “If all earthly power were given to me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution.”⁷

Why was this supposedly greatest of all American statesmen stumped? Why did he not propose a nationally funded emancipation? He himself was caught in the grip of the tension be tween the two propositions just men tioned above, between natural rights and political rights. Consider another passage where Lincoln fully embraces the conflict between natural rights and political rights at the expense of natural rights: “Negroes have natural rights … as other men have, although they can not enjoy them here, and Taney once said the Declaration of Independence was broad enough for all men. But though it does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments or social position, yet no sane man will attempt to deny the African upon his own soil has all the natural rights that instrument vouch safes to all mankind.”⁸

The only solu tion Lincoln ever offered to the moral challenge of slavery was deportation of free blacks back to Africa — to their “own soil.”

The only place where the African population was accepted as part of soci ety was in the South. There blacks were integrated into society through the family, i.e.; the plantation household. Southerners had come to think that the native soil of blacks was Virginia and Georgia, not Africa. There was subordination in the Old South but not segregation. Slaves attended the same church as their masters. Only ten per cent of Southerners even owned slaves, and half of those owned fewer than five. A third owned one or two. Half the owners worked in the fields with their slaves; ate with them; lived on the same property with them, and some times in the same house. Slave owners traveled in public transport with their servants. This social intimacy, as we will see, was extremely distasteful to Northerners who worked to remove themselves as far as possible from the African population with a determina tion that has been erased from general historical memory.

This was especially true of New England. Early in the 19th century New England Federalists worked out the first nativist racial ideology. New Englanders thought themselves to be a superior race because descended from pure Anglo-Saxon Puritan stock. There was some truth in this. There had been hardly any immigration into New Eng land from 1620 to the 1820s. For two centuries the original Puritan stock had intermarried to form a strong re gional identity. They thought the blood of the rest of the Union was diluted by foreign peoples who did not have a title to be the “true Americans.” Particularly disgusting was the South with its mixture of French, Spanish, Ab original and even African blood. The defeat of John Adams and the election of Thomas Jefferson as president was a racial trauma for New Englanders. They referred to him contemptuously as the first “Negro president.” Jefferson had lived with Africans for so long that to New Englanders he had become Af rican. His election meant that inferior and racially compromised Southern ers would come to dominate the Union, and his purchase of the Louisiana terri tory, which more than doubled the size of the Union, confirmed their worst fears. They saw it as a plot by Virginia to dominate the Union which would turn it into a mongrel nation instead of one controlled by a morally superior, white Anglo-Saxon New England.

The story of New England racism is another narrative that has been sup pressed by our popular national his tory. But a window has been opened in this self-imposed ignorance by Joanne Pope Melish in her book Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780-1860. She asks how did New Englanders view the emancipation of their native blacks and the prospect of integrating them into New England society? She points out state laws did not emancipate slaves outright, but rather freed those born after a certain date and upon achieving a certain age, usually eighteen for fe males and twenty-one for males. This was a form of compensated emancipation which allowed the slaveholder — not only to use the labor of the slave — but to sell him or her before the day of emancipation.

What about those who remained? During the transition period from slavery to emancipation, slaves were not educated with the end in view of integration into New England society. Instead they were treated as slaves and continued to exist in a servile condi tion after emancipation. They were tightly segregated into shantytowns at the edge of townships. These were often raided and burned. In some cas es corpses were dug up and removed from the township. Melish estimates that from one-fifth to one-third of all violence done to blacks and abolition ists in the North was done by New Englanders.⁹

When after emancipation, the so cial pathologies of the black community did not improve, rather than shoulder part of the responsibility (failure to ed ucate and integrate), New Englanders developed a theory of racial inferiority to explain the lag. Indeed, the first sci entific theories arguing blacks were not members of the same species as whites were developed in the North. Josiah Nott was from one of Connecticut’s oldest families and a brilliant scientist. He saw that insects spread yellow fe ver and anticipated Darwin’s theory of evolution. He collaborated with the distinguished Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz on a massive treatise The Types of Mankind, which argued blacks and whites are not of the same species in the same way that whites are distinct from monkeys.

Since Agassiz and Nott were among the most respected scientists of their day, it is worth observing the moral implications of their theory. In a letter describing an encounter with blacks, Agassiz wrote “Seeing their black faces with their fat lips and their grimacing teeth, the wool on their heads, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large, curved fingernails, and above all the livid color of their palms, I could not turn my eyes from their face in order to tell them to keep their distance.”¹⁰ Josiah Nott jokingly described his theory that blacks were of a different species as niggerology.¹¹ It was widely believed in the North that, if freed, blacks, could not compete with the white man and would eventually die out. Jefferson Davis expressed shock in hearing Northern senators speak of the extermination of blacks as a matter of course. Even New England’s great moralist Ralph Waldo Emerson shared this view: “the dark man, the black man declines … It will happen by & by, that the black man will only be destined for museums like the Dodo.”

The system of racial segregation leading to the gradual elimination of New England’s indigenous African population was mirrored everywhere in the North and West. The 1820 constitution of Missouri prohibited free blacks from entering the State. The Constitution of Oregon ratified in 1857 excluded free blacks and mulattos: “No free Negro, or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of adoption of this constitution, shall ever come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free Negroes and mulattos … and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbour them therein.” The Oregon constitution passed by a margin of 8 to 1. Its language prohibiting free blacks from entering the state was almost identical to that of the earlier constitutions of Illinois and Indiana. Every Midwestern state — Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota — as well as those in the Far West, California, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico — at one time or another passed measures to exclude free blacks from the state. Eugene Berwanger, who has carefully studied racial attitudes in the Western states, said “79.5 percent of the people of Illinois, Indiana, Oregon and Kansas voted to exclude the free Negro simply because of their prejudice.”¹² Those blacks already in the state before exclusion laws were passed were subject to severe restrictions. In Lincoln’s state of Illinois, blacks were not citizens of the state, could not vote, could not sit on juries, could not use the courts to testify against white people, and the state refused to educate their children. And if this were not enough, their very movement was tightly restricted. The revised 1833 statutes of Illinois declared: “If any person or per sons shall permit or suffer any … servant or persons of colour, to the number of three or more, to assemble in his, her, or their out-house, yard, or shed, for the purpose of dancing or reveling, either by night or by day, the person or persons so offending shall forfeit and pay a fine of twenty dollars.” And free blacks guilty of such assemblies were “to be whipped, not exceeding thirty nine stripes on his or her back.” Cases abound of slaves escaping to free Northern states and being treated so badly that they would surrender themselves to authorities and request return to their master. Lincoln fully supported these shameful black codes and never once raised his voice against them during his political career in the state legislature.

These exclusion laws were successful and restricted the free black population of the Midwestern states to an average of around one percent. But even this minute number was considered too much. Serious efforts were made to colonize blacks abroad. Societies appeared with such names as “Ohio in Africa” and “Indiana in Africa.” The Ohio plan was to remove 600 free blacks a year out of the state until free of the entire black population. A delegate to the Illinois constitutional convention in 1847 said “I am in favor of removing [Negroes] not only from this state, but from all the States. Lincoln introduced a bill in the Illinois legislature to remove blacks from the state. J. C. Hall, leader of the colonization society in Iowa, said in a 1857 meeting Africans had never been part of the civilized world and could not compete with whites: “As long as they remain, they must be outcasts and inferiors. They can have no aspirations except as the objects of an unwelcome, hesitating and noisy charity.”

Colonization of blacks out of the country was the favored solution in the North to the problem of slavery. The various colonization societies read like a who’s who of American leaders: Madison, Marshall, Hamilton, Webster, Lincoln. But no one pushed the project harder than Lincoln. In debates with Douglas he had urged state and federal governments to fund programs of colo nization. The same appeal was made in two state of the Union addresses and in the preliminary emancipation procla mation. In 1862 he introduced a consti tutional amendment to buy and deport slaves. He sent the State Department out to arrange treatises with European colonial powers to secure land for Ne gro colonization. He explored possi bilities in Haiti, Liberia, New Granada, Ecuador, St. Croix, Surinam, British Guiana, Honduras and the Amazon. In 1862 he urged Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to buy and deport slaves. In this plan slavery was to continue until 1900. At the end of his speech, Lincoln uttered the famous words: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.”¹³ As with so many of Lincoln’s memorable phrases, these words have been taken to mean whatever those who quote them wish for them to mean. What Lincoln himself meant was America would continue to be torn — not by slavery as such — but by the presence of a large number of Negroes, whether free or not. The “last best hope of earth” referred to a purely white European polity free of racial strife, and not to a land of freedom for all as it is absurdly interpreted today.

Given the disposition of the vast majority in New England, the other Northeastern states, the Midwest, and the West to rid themselves of the free African population in their states, it is preposterous to claim such people in vaded the South to emancipate slaves. And they did not. Yet there was a long-standing agitation about slavery in the antebellum period, and that was a fac tor (though by no means the only one) in the decision of the Southern States to withdraw from the Union. This agi tation, however, did not spring from a moral motive of concern for the liberty and well-being of the slave, but from other motives — and ones that were not always morally attractive. To appreciate this it is necessary to take a look at the main anti-slavery episodes in the antebellum period.

The first anti-slavery episode oc curred at the Philadelphia Con vention in 1787 over whether slaves should be taxed as persons and have representation in Congress or whether they should be taxed as property. New Englanders argued they should be treated as chattel and not represented in Congress. We must keep in mind that during this debate New Englanders were heavily en gaged in the international slave trade and that many were well-accustomed to treating Africans as livestock. When criticized about his travels to Africa to buy slaves, John Brown (who with family support founded Brown Uni versity), said “there was no more crime in bringing off a cargo of slaves than in bringing off a cargo of jackasses.”¹⁴

Southerners pointed out their laws gave the master ownership only in the labor of the slave, not his person. A com promise was reached in which slaves were counted three-fifths for the pur pose of representation in Congress. This did not mean, as it is tirelessly said to mean, that slaves were three-fifths of a human being, but only that slaves, so it was thought, could perform only three-fifths of the work of a free white man. Racially conscious New England ers resented this rule. They demanded that only whites have representation in Congress. One cannot exaggerate the resentment New Englanders felt over the three-fifths’ rule for slaves. They complained about it continuously up to 1860. But this first national quarrel over slavery had nothing to do with a moral concern for the well-being of the slave. If anything, the New England position that slaves were like livestock was morally inferior to the Southern position that, though subordinate (like women and children), slaves were nevertheless persons needing protection and hence representation.

The second anti-slavery episode occurred over Jefferson’s close race with Aaron Burr for the presidency, which was decided in the House of Representatives. To New England Federalists this election was seen as illegitimate because with out the slave representation Jefferson would not have won. Accordingly, as we have seen, racially conscious New Englanders referred to Jefferson as the first “Negro president.” It was in this connection that stories about a sexual liaison between Jefferson and one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, appeared. This supposed relation not only offended against New England’s white nativist ideology, it showed the extent to which Southerners had been dragged down by their long association with Afri cans.

The Puritans saw themselves on a mission into a dark wilderness. Nature was something alien to be conquered and controlled by a strong will guid ed by abstract reason. Southerners, in contrast, developed very early the myth of the South as a garden of Eden. Nature was to be respected, but it was also something to be embraced, culti vated and enjoyed. New Englanders found this relaxed, comfortable rela tion to nature in the South unsettling. For them, Africans were a symbol of undisciplined and uncivilized nature. By living in close association with Af ricans, Southerners had reverted back to a more primitive state of nature, making them unworthy of leadership in an American Union that should be modeled on New England. From Jeffer son’s election up to 1860, New England cultural elites launched an insistent campaign to demonize the character of Southerners. Two excellent studies of this are North Over South, by Susan Mary Grant, a British scholar; and Ann Norton’s Alternative Americas.

Thomas Goodwin, a Northern abolitionist, could write in 1864 that South erners had “African playmates … Afri can attendants .… African recreations … African voices … African minds.” The inadequate notion of liberty and the relaxed morals of Southerners was “the direct influence of so large a population of half-barbarous Africans interspersed among them.”¹⁵Southern ers had become Negroized, and so were not true Americans as defined by New England elites.

The repressed sexuality of New Englanders found ample room for fantasy about the South’s descent into nature. Repression of sex meant rising above nature to conquer it and so to advance civilization. Such was the meaning of the celibate marriage of the abolitionists Theodore Weld and Ange la Grimke. Abolitionists supposed not only masters had a free hand with slave girls but that Africans (being creatures of nature), were oversexed and proved a source of temptation to masters and mistresses. One abolitionist wrote that “The Southern States are ONE GREAT SODOM.” A female New Englander placed the blame for interracial liaisons on the uncontrolled lust of slave wom en. These she said “lured young slave holders into illicit attachments.” And John Rankin said “I could refer you to several instances of slaves actually seducing the daughters of their mas ters.”¹⁶ It is hard not to see here more than a small bit of suppressed envy.

The agitation over the three-fifths rule and Jefferson’s election was cer tainly about slavery, but it was not in the least about the emancipation and welfare of the African. Indeed, it was anti-African. Slavery was an evil be cause it brought to America a large number of half-barbarous Africans. Southerners were corrupted by close association with Africans and were unfit to govern the Union, yet some how they had acquired a commanding grip on it. As of 1860, 11 presidents had come from the South, only five from the North. Attorneys general: 14 from the South and five from the North. Supreme Court Justices: 17 from the South, 11 from the North. Speakers of the House, 21 from the South, 12 from the North. Southern character was not only barbarous (and secretly envied), it was also feared. Emerson bitterly ex plained Southern political dominance by saying that Northerners knew how to control steam and machines, while Southerners knew how to control men.

The third anti-slavery episode was sparked by Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Na poleon, his embargo, and Madison’s war with Britain. New Englanders were opposed to expansion westward which they thought was contrary to their in terest and was part of a Southern plot to take over the Union. The Louisiana Purchase and Jefferson’s embargo on British shipping confirmed their worst fears, as did Madison’s embargo and declaration of war with Britain. New England government agencies, from juries to legislatures, nullified the em bargo and refused to send troops in the War of 1812. None of this would have happened, they thought, if Virginia did not dominate the Union, and that would not have happened without the hated three-fifths’ rule that gave Afri cans representation. Representative Jo siah Quincy from Massachusetts said “the slave representation is the cause of all the difficulties we labor under.”

A Convention of New England States met at Hartford in 1814 and se riously considered secession. The Con vention sent commissioners to Wash ington with a number of demands that had to be met as a condition for New England’s remaining in the Union. Among these were repeal of the three-fifths’ rule.

Talk of slavery was certainly a fac tor in the nullification and secession movements that raged in New England from 1804 to 1814, but this talk revealed no concern for the emancipation and welfare of the African population. New England, until 1808, was still engaged in the African slave trade. The agitation was about how the South had come to dominate the Union and was pursuing policies not in New England’s commer cial and political interests.

The fourth anti-slavery episode was in 1820 over admission of Missouri as a slave state. A compromise was reached by drawing a line across the continent, allowing slavery south of the line but prohibit ing it north of the line. In our popular history, this is presented as a moral drama between those who were anti-slavery and those who were pro-slav ery. But it was nothing of the sort. On the anti-slavery side was Senator James DeWolff of Rhode Island, who strongly opposed Missouri’s entrance as a slave state. We recall that DeWolff, one of the richest men in the country, had gained his wealth through the New England slave trade. His company had run some eighty voyages to Africa until the trade became illegal for Americans in 1808, only 12 years before the Missouri Com promise. And DeWolff would continue trading in slaves in a foreign market.

What was the meaning of De Wolff’s anti-slavery position? He was simply continuing the New England Federalist policies which had led to the secession movements in 1804-1814 — namely to weaken the expansion of the Southern agrarian interest which favored Westward expansion, free trade, and was opposed to a national bank and to government subsidies for business, all of which were in conflict with New England’s subsidized ship ping, fishing and manufacturing inter ests. DeWolff’s — and New England’s — anti-slavery position on admitting Missouri as a slave state was not in the least motivated by a moral concern for the welfare of the slave.

However, it is difficult for us to day to read the expression anti-slavery without importing our own 21st centu ry moral sensibilities into it. Unless his torians go out of their way to correct us, we cannot help but think the Missouri controversy was a great moral drama between those who sought to keep Africans in slavery and those who sought to liberate them, or at least to limit ex pansion of the evil. But that is most certainly not how the participants in the controversy thought. The freedom and welfare of the African population never crossed the mind of DeWolff and most other opponents of Missouri entering as a slave state. Yet there is an important compli cation that needs to be addressed. As we have seen, nearly all Americans, including Southerners, as Lincoln acknowledged, believed that slavery ab stractly considered is a violation of natu ral law. Consequently, slavery could be justified only by positive law, or by natural law, if and only if circumstanc es were such that eliminating it would do more harm than good.

This distinction between abstract principle and moral practice is difficult for Americans to grasp today because we have been trained to think about morals ideologically — to believe mo rality is mostly a matter of adhering to abstract principles. To be sure, be lieving in certain moral principles is a part of morality, but it is not the most important part. Moral merit attaches not to what one believes but to what one does or seriously intends to do. To believe in the abstract moral principle that slavery is wrong or that abortions of convenience are wrong conveys in tellectual merit because one believes something which is true, but it con veys no moral merit unless it is part of an action intended to end the evil.

Let us call a critique of slavery based merely on assertion of an ab stract moral principle sentimental anti-slavery. Such a critique enables one to feel good about oneself without having to do anything about ending slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin enabled millions of Northern ers to ignore slavery was a national evil and to feel good about themselves without having to acknowledge their own collective foundational and con tinuing participation in an economy dependent on slave-produced staples. Most criticism of slavery in the North throughout the antebellum period was rooted in sentimental anti-slavery.

The use of sentimental anti-slav ery to mask (often morally unworthy) economic and political motives is mor ally corrupt because it singles out the slave owner for condemnation (while willfully ignoring the institution is a national evil) and because the critic has no intention of actually doing any thing (for which there would be a cost) to eliminate it. Jefferson unmasked the sentimental anti-slavery agitation over Missouri by sardonically observ ing that all the moralistic noise about preventing Virginia slaves from going to Missouri did not free a single slave in Virginia. The Missouri Constitution prohibited the entrance of any free Ne groes, a provision which called forth no moralistic agitation, as it conformed entirely to Northern anti-Negro atti tudes and practice.

That a genuine moral concern for the welfare of the slave played no part in the anti-slavery episodes we have ex amined so far should not be surprising. James Banner, a historian of New Eng land Federalism, observed throughout the entire North after the Revolution and for the next half-century there was no interest in a genuine moral critique of slavery: “Save for a few isolated lead ers, no one spoke out vigorously and continuously in defense of manumis sion, nor did the successful campaign against the slave trade engage the pub lic interest or enter to any substantial degree into partisan debate.”¹⁷

The fifth anti-slavery episode was that brought on by a small num ber of New England abolitionists, usually marked by the appearance in 1831 of William Garrison’s journal The Liberator. One cannot accuse the New England abolitionists of sentimental anti-slavery. They certainly felt good about themselves for professing the ab stract proposition that slavery is wrong, but they also called for action and were prepared to suffer for the cause. They held that slavery is a sin committed by the South against humanity, and they demanded immediate and uncompen sated emancipation. The abolitionists at first proposed what their New Eng land fathers had proposed in 1804-1814, namely secession of the North from the South. This would free them from complicity in the slave economy and fatally weaken the institution in the South. Jeffrey Hummel, in Emancipat ing Slaves and Enslaving Freemen, has recently defended this abolitionist argu ment that secession of the North was the best way to end slavery.

As the Abolitionist movement developed, however, more violent meth ods were urged. Lysander Spooner of Massachusetts, a libertarian thinker of some merit, proposed infiltrating the South with armed units that would join black escapees and poor whites to form insurgent groups in wilder ness areas. Spooner wrote to Bostonian abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips in 1840: “I think in five years, 500,000 men in the North would join and that nearly all the non-slave holders of the South would be with us. Cultural elites such as minister Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Stephen Foster encouraged the plan.” Wendell Phillips paid for printing 500 copies of a handbill explaining the plan, and hoping, as he said, to “spread panic” among Southerners. The South was flooded with flyers and pamphlets of this kind proposing insurrection and advocating terrorist tactics such as poi soning well water and the like.

In time the hatred of abolitionists would be directed to all Southerners — whether they owned slaves or not. John Brown killed Southern farmers in Kansas who did not own slaves and was praised by New England elites for doing so. His mission to seize weapons at the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry for a slave insurrection was funded by New England elites.¹⁸ After it failed, he was executed, and immediately be came an abolitionist hero and martyr. Today he is still admired by a certain kind of American.

The only part of the Abolitionist movement that had moral merit was the early effort to effect the North’s se cession from the Union as the best way of putting slavery on the road to extinc tion. That proposal had real promise of effecting a beneficial change. But it was the terrorist part of the movement that came to dominate. That part, how ever, must be repudiated as morally reprehensible. The project of ending slavery is a morally worthy one, but not if one uses immoral means. Some 50 million babies have been killed in America through abortions, usually for the purpose of birth control. That is morally reprehensible, but it does not justify killing abortionists or bombing abortion clinics, which is the counter part of what abolitionists recommend ed for Southerners. This Puritan vision of slaying in the name of the Lord is celebrated in The Battle Hymn of the Re public which sadly has become an icon of American national identity.

Mainline historians either praise the abolitionists or are muted or mild in their criticism. It is said that, though violent and uncompromising in their rhetoric, they at least awoke the North to the moral problem of slavery. But they did no such thing. All they did was loudly assert an abstract moral principle to which they professed al legiance, demonize Southern character, demand immediate and uncompen sated emancipation, and advocate ter rorist tactics. No one had to tell Ameri cans slavery abstractly considered is a violation of natural law. That was not the moral problem. The moral problem was to put forth a practical proposal to end slavery that would do more good than harm to all sides concerned. This would have to include some form of emancipation, compensation to slave holders, and integration into American society.

Abolitionists, however, had noth ing to offer but immediate and uncom pensated emancipation, and failing that, terrorism. These demands were as unjust as they were practically im possible. No emancipation could be just that did not include compensation, and that was not proposed. The abolitionists made no contribution whatso ever to the real moral challenge posed by slavery. What they did was heat pas sions up to the boiling point, making rational discourse about the problem impossible. Their legacy lives on in the effacement from collective memory that slavery was a national evil (demanding a national solution, which Americans failed to provide) and in the self-congratulatory demonization of Southern character. It is this legacy that informs the official story that the war about slavery.

And perhaps here something should be said about Calhoun’s fa mous remark that slavery is a positive good. This has been twisted by histori ans to mean that Calhoun repudiated the American principle that slavery is a violation of natural law in favor of the unAmerican principle that slavery is a positive good. But he did no such thing. He made clear that he was not talking about slavery as an abstract moral prin ciple at all, but about the merits and de merits of an actual practice which the Union had inherited.¹⁹

By the 1830s Southerners were confronting an unreal situation. Their character was constantly vilified by abolitionists who let their imagina tions run wild in decrying the evils of slavery, real and imaginary. Yet no morally responsible proposal was put forth to eliminate it. Since Northern ers were not prepared to do anything about eliminating the institution, Cal houn shifted attention away from ab stract principle to an evaluation of the actual practice — something would have to be done in any serious attempt to reform or eliminate it. He argued the practice in fact did not corrupt the virtue and patriotism of Southerners as was claimed. And as to slaves, he observed they had arrived, a people torn from their tribal roots, in a barba rous condition, but over time had grad ually become civilized, Christian and a part (though a subordinate part) of Southern society. It was simply a fact, he said, that Africans had progressed under slavery, and Calhoun placed no limit on the future progress they could make. He urged the vicious attacks on Southern character cease (which ad vanced no practical agenda in eliminat ing the institution) and the institution be reexamined in another ten years.

Calhoun taught that liberty is a reward for virtue. This logically im plies blacks who achieved the required level of virtue should be given more responsibility, and eventually freedom. Calhoun did not go out of his way to stress this point nor to propose a plan of gradual emancipation, but neither did anyone else at the time. The crude, ideological way historians have treat ed Calhoun’s claim the institution of slavery had achieved some positive good is symptomatic of how ideologi cal Americans have become and how deeply entrenched is the error that to claim allegiance to an abstract moral principle confers moral merit. Such historians can see in Calhoun’s remark only the assertion of the abstract moral principle that slavery is not a neces sary evil but a positive good. From this they conclude Calhoun was an odious man. They simply cannot see he was not talking about principles at all, but was offering a concrete evaluation of the practice in the particular context of an American Union that had never intended for Africans to be part of the polity. Far from being odious, Calhoun appears as a judicious man of practical wisdom among strident moral adoles cents who confuse allegiance to ab stract principle with moral merit and who cannot perceive any moral merit which is not accompanied by a confes sion of allegiance to an abstract moral principle.

And it should be added though abolitionists made much of the abstract principle that slavery is wrong, most of them shared the racist attitudes of most Northerners who recoiled from association with blacks. Senator Benja min Wade of Ohio was a towering fig ure in the Abolitionist movement, but he abhorred contact with blacks. He arrived in Washington in 1851, describ ing it as “a God forsaken N…… ridden place.” He complained, “the food was all cooked by n…… until I can smell and taste the n……” Looking for a housekeeper in 1874, he complained “for mere n…… power it will cost over $500 a year.” He was determined to find a “white woman” because, “I am sick and tired of n…….” Wade said he did not like blacks, but he hated South erners more.

The sixth anti-slavery episode was prompted by the Kansas-Ne braska Act which abolished the Missouri Compromise line. Slavery would now be allowed in Western states if they chose to have it. The Act was passed in 1854. Prior to that time Lincoln had been silent on slavery. As a lawyer he had taken on the case of a slave owner seeking return of his slaves who had fled to Lincoln’s state of Illinois for freedom. He supported the cruel black codes in his state, and urged colonization of Africans abroad. But his political career was at its lowest point, and so after 1854, he began play ing the anti-slavery card.

Prior to the war, Lincoln offered no practical solution to the moral challenge of slavery other than deportation. And though he rejected the abolitionists be cause of their demand for immediate and uncompensated emancipation, he followed them in treating adherence to abstract moral principle as identical to morality. He said that the great struggle confronting Americans was that “One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended” [Lincoln’s italics].²⁰ Here the conflict is structured in pure ly ideological terms as a philosophical conflict between contrary beliefs in abstract moral principles, and not as a conflict over practical proposals of how to eliminate the evil of slavery. We are led to think Southerners simply think slavery is right and so are evil, while Northerners think it is wrong and are good.

But the truth was just the opposite. Americans were not divided between those who think slavery, abstractly considered, is right and those who think it is wrong. Most agreed that it violates natural law, but Northerners, did not want to live with free Africans in their midst. They were opposed to slavery in principle, but could not see eliminating it without having to inte grate free blacks into their states, and that was not on the table for discussion. But to take that view is, in effect, to say slavery is acceptable as a practical matter. All of the practical difficulties and complications which emerge from a thoughtful understanding of the real moral challenge posed by slavery are flattened out by Lincoln and reduced to a conflict of belief about abstract principles. Rather than see this as a failure in moral understanding, it is celebrated today as a moral achievement.

This explains why our popular history presents Lincoln as a moral gi ant in his opposition to the westward expansion of slavery. The great man, it is thought, drew a line in the sand beyond which the slave power could not go. But the no-slavery-in-the-West agitation which brought Lincoln to power (like the quarrel over allowing slavery in Missouri), had nothing to do with a moral concern for the libera tion and welfare of the African popula tion. It was about white Northern and Western interests which, among other things, included keeping free Negroes out of the West.

Moreover, there was no realistic possibility the plantation system could move west. As Charles Ramsdell has shown, the geography of the West did not lead itself to large-scale plantation agriculture.²¹ In the Western territories, under the Missouri Compromise line, where slavery could have expanded, there were only 17 slaves in 1860. But more importantly, there were moral limits. As we have seen, Western states were determined to keep free blacks out of their territory. Slave owners in West ern states could never be secure. Those who ventured out soon left. There were 55 reported slaves in Kansas in 1856. By 1860 there were only two. The prospect of slavery moving west in the mid-fif ties when Lincoln began exploiting the issue that made him president was non-existent. The real reason was stated by Charles Eliot Norton of Massachusetts, a militant liberal activist, a professor of art and literature at Harvard, and said to be one of the most cultivated men in America. He supported the free soil movement in the West in order to “confine the Negro within the South.”

Instead of proposing a national solution to the moral problem of slavery as he should have done, Lincoln played on racist fears and demonized the South as a great slave power likely to extend slavery not only over the West, but over the entire United States! This claim was preposterous, but Northerners were whipped up into a mass hysteria and believed it. Its legacy sur vives today in the myth that the war was about the South’s desire to protect and expand slavery.

It is true Southerners insisted on the right to use the common territory as a matter of constitutional right, even though many knew it would not be used in practice to expand slavery. To renounce that right would mean the loss of other constitutional rights in a sectional Cold War over economic, political, and constitutional differences stretching back some fifty years. Be sides, much good could come from al lowing slaves to go West. As Jefferson suggested, one practical good would be that slaves could be taken West for emancipation. Diffusion of the African population over the continent would ease the racial tensions which would inevitably arise from emancipation. A small minority of blacks could be more easily integrated into white society than a large block of thirty to forty per cent of a state’s population.

Here was a real morally responsi ble proposal for gradual emancipation. Instead of deporting blacks to Africa, as Lincoln proposed, why not use the vast unoccupied territory of the West to allow slaves to work out their freedom? Southern philanthropists opposed to slavery secured land for just this purpose. John Randolph was one of these. He strongly supported the entrance of Missouri as a slave state, though he hated slavery. He provided in his will that property be bought in Ohio for the comfortable accommodation of 300 of his freed slaves. But the white citizens of Ohio refused them entrance. The freedmen returned to Virginia and asked to be wards of the state.

Why did not Lincoln urge a nationally funded program of gradual emancipation in the Western territories? The answer is that he lacked the moral courage and even the inclination to challenge the racial prejudices of his time. This is understandable, but it sits uneasily with the myth of the Great Emancipator and friend of black equal ity.

The no-slavery-in-the-West platform that Lincoln ran on was merely a code word for no-Africans-in-the-West, slave or free. As a historian of Kansas put it, “The western settlers did not talk about the sinfulness of slavery; they despised the Negro.” The editor of the influential Chicago Tribune said the North’s greatest fear was “if the slaves were liberated, they would become roaming vagrants; that they would overrun the North and subsist by mendicancy and vagrancy; and that from the day they were made free, they would cease to work.” That might well be true if they had to live under the black codes of Lincoln’s Illinois, but not if they were gradually emanci pated, endowed with basic civil rights, and given their own farms in the vast unsettled West.

The editor of the Chicago Times said “There is in the great masses of the peo ple a natural and proper loathing of the Negro, which forbids contact with him as with a leper.” Senator Sherman of Ohio, brother of the Union general, said although most Northerners op posed slavery in the abstract, they were also “opposed to having many Negroes among them.” These were spurned and hated all over the coun try. The influential Illinois State Journal declared “The truth is the n…… is an unpopular institution in the free States … we confess that we have, in com mon with nineteenth-twentieths of our people a prejudice against the n…….” Governor John M. Palmer, who became governor of Illinois, said that race, not slavery, was the real problem confront ing Northerners: “It is the presence of the Negro race: a race which the senti ments of our people doom to a condi tion of racial and political inferiority beyond the reach of all efforts for their elevation.”

The editor of The Milwaukee Sentinel said the two races could never live to gether in peace: “Whether it is instinct, reason or prejudice, is scarcely profit able to discuss … It exists throughout the whole North and time seems to do little or nothing toward mollifying it.” An abolitionist said this about his fellow Midwesterners who supported Lincoln’s no slavery-in-the-West agita tion: “They are more properly Negro haters, who vote Free-State to keep Negroes out, free or slave; one half of them would go for Slavery if Negroes were to be allowed here at all.” The inherent sinfulness of slavery is not once thought of by them.

The Republican Party platform of 1856 declared “all unoccupied territo ries of the United States, and such as they may hereafter acquire, shall be reserved for the white Caucasian race — a thing that cannot be except by the exclusion of slavery.” And Lincoln said keeping slavery out of the territories would free them from “the trouble some presence of free Negroes.” The New York Tribune said barring slavery from the territories would “give them an opportunity to become what New England is now,” namely a uniquely white, morally superior, and enthusiastically commercial society unpolluted by Africans and racially compromised Southerners.

To conclude. There was certainly a lot of anti-slavery talk in the antebel lum period, but it did not have the mor al content the official story implies. We have examined the major anti-slavery episodes from the Philadelphia Con vention in 1787 to the Kansas-Nebras ka Act of 1854. Not a single one was motivated by a moral intention to do something about freeing the African population or attending to its welfare. In every case the motive was the eco nomic and political interests of white people in the North and West against those of the South. The African popu lation was viewed from New England, throughout the North, and across the West as a pariah people to be removed from one’s presence as far as possible.

The South did not secede to protect slavery from a national plan of eman cipation because no national political party proposed emancipation. Indeed, there was greater legal protection for slavery in 1860 than ever. And the South did not secede to expand slavery into the Western territories because given its geography and, more importantly, the racial attitude of Westerners, there was no realistic possibility of the plantation system moving West. Besides by leaving the Union, the Southern States lost all claim to the use of those territories. We should also note that the Confederate Constitution abolished the slave trade and allowed the entrance of non-slave-holding states. Confederates were not intent on spreading slavery to every state in the Confederacy, and the same people who wrote the Confederate Constitution were not disposed in the 1850s (contrary to Lincoln and the official story) to spread slavery throughout the United States.

It is true that some states gave attacks on slavery as their reason for seceding, but not all of them did. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas at first refused to join the Confederacy. They reversed themselves after Lincoln ordered — what they considered an unconstitutional — invasion of the seceding states. As Lee said, he did not want to live in a Union held together by bayonets. Those states that did give attacks on slavery as their reason for seceding did not have in mind resistance to a morally responsible nationally funded program of emancipation, but the virulent, irresponsible attacks of abolitionists. Their long advocacy of a slave insurrection and terrorism was put in practice by John Brown and supported by national cultural elites and even government officials. When the governor of Virginia requested the return for trial of fugitives of Brown’s raid which had fled North, the governors of Ohio and Iowa refused to comply, even though the Constitution requires governors to return fugitives from justice to the state where the alleged crime occurred when requested by the governor of that state. South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi mentioned this break-down in the rule of law as one of their reasons for seceding.

And to this we should add Northern leaders, moving through the unchartered territory of the industrial revolution, were beginning to deny that America is a federation of States. They began talking of it as a unitary nationalist regime with the central government having plenary powers controlled, of course, by the North. This was contrary to the Jeffersonian vision of the Constitution as a federation of sovereign States, which dominated in the South and which was the view of many in the North as well. Lincoln got no electoral votes from the South. He was the first sectional president.

Southern fears the Republican Party was a revolutionary party seeking to destroy the federation of States in favor of a unitary state governed by the North was openly affirmed by Wendell Phillips, a nationally recognized leader in the abolitionist movement. Prior to Lincoln’s election, he gave a speech explaining the meaning of the Republican Party: “It is just what we have at tempted to bring about. It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country. It … calls itself national; but it is not national, it is sectional. The Republican Party is a party of the North pledged against the South.”²² If there were indeed two sections, with such strong identities that one could be pledged against the other, why not separate them and have two distinct federations of States? The Union was morally dissolved prior to the South’s secession.

The North did not acquire a “treasury of virtue” from prosecuting one of the bloodiest wars of the 19th century. Instead, it acquired a habit of self- righteousness and moral self-deception which unfortunately has become a national characteristic. Just as Northerners suppressed the obvious fact slavery was a national evil for which they bore some responsibility, so our popular history today cannot acknowledge the invasion and plundering of the South from 1861 to 1877 was an awful crime, as the great 19th-century liberal Lord Acton put it. Their very identity requires they view the conflict instead as a great moral struggle to abolish slavery, even though the antebellum North put forth no morally responsible proposal for eliminating it.

The official story that the war was a great moral struggle for the “soul of the nation” only strengthens the disposition to self-deception and self-righteousness. The war could not have been a battle for the soul of the nation because America in 1860 was not a centralized nation-state that could be said to have a soul. It was an inchoate federation of sovereign states only 70 years old; it had grown in only 50 years to more than four times its original size, which was expanding to the Pacific; and in which secession had been publically acknowledged as an option in every section of the Union.

Our nationalist historians have made it virtually impossible to perceive the moral truth that the best solution to all the problems confronting the federation of States in 1860 would have been a peaceful division into two federations, which is what the early abolitionists recommended. That, among other things, would have ended the fear that Southerners would use the Western territories as a dumping ground for emancipated Africans because by seceding, they would have no constitutional claim to those territories. Secession would also have hastened the extinction of slavery, which drew its strength from being integrated with the Union. Jefferson Davis himself said that secession would mean the end of slavery.

The official story that the war was about the South’s desire to protect and expand slavery and the North’s determination to abolish it is not merely an error in academic history. The evidence against it has not been ignored so much as it has been suppressed. It had to be suppressed because it contradicts the legitimating myth of the centralized nationalist regime that emerged after the war. Having been repeated so often, it has come to be believed because of repetition.

There is a lack of moral maturity in a regime that cannot confront its own moral failures, but constructs its national identity by projecting those failures onto a scapegoat. And this disordered view of moral reality accepted by both the people and their rulers cannot but have a deleterious effect on domestic and foreign policy. A great stride would be made in ending the ideological style of politics — so characteristic of Lincoln’s rhetoric — which distorts the moral lens through which public conflicts are perceived, if the whole truth were told about the North’s role in slavery, in constructing racial attitudes, and in its failure to even remotely confront the great moral challenge posed by slavery.

But that would require writing a quite different kind of history from the one taught to the public over the past 50 years. Indeed, it would require se riously rethinking the standard narrative of post-bellum American national ism. Such a history is long overdue. As I hope to have suggested in this essay, there is no lack of evidence to support writing such a history.

ENDNOTES

1. Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered, General Robert E. Lee and Civil War His tory (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 25-26.

2. Michael Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 308.

3. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery, Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cor nell University Press, 1998), pp. xii-xiv, 7, 17.

4. Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), pp. xviii, xxv,xxix.

5. Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858, ed. Don E. Feh renbacher (New York: The Library of America, 1989), p. 271.

6. Ibid., pp. 636-37, italics added.

7. Ibid., pp. 510-11.

8. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy R. Basler (New Bruns wick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953-55), vol. 3 pp. 311, 79, italics add ed.

9. Melish, p. 201.

10. Quoted in Complicity, p. 183.

11. Ibid.

12. Eugene Burwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery (Urbana, Illinois: Uni versity of Illinois Press, 1967).

13. Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865, p. 415.

14. Quoted in Complicity, p.110.

15. Quoted in Ann Norton, Alterna tive Americas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p.229.

16. Quoted in Ann Norton, p. 158.

17. James Banner, To the Hartford Convention: the Federalists and the Origin of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815.

18. Otto Scott, The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (New York: NYT Books, 1979).

19. Union and Liberty, The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lence (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992), pp. 463-76.

20. Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865, p. 403.

21. Charles Ramsdell, The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 16 (1929), pp. 151-71.

22. Quoted in Albert Taylor Bled soe, Is Davis a Traitor, or Was Secession a Constitutional Right? (Charleston, S.C.: Fletcher and Fletcher, 1995), p.250. This is a reprint of the original 1866 edition.

PLEASE NOTE: Donald W. Livingston is president of the Abbeville Institute, dedicated to educating college and graduate students about what is true and valuable in Southern tradition. See www.abbevilleinstitute.org and consider making a donation.

The "Civil War" Gazette is Yankee-Biased; Confederate Descendants Not Welcome There

2010-04-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

I made the mistake of linking to the Civil War Gazette in the links section on the left of this page. However, the editor of that site has run two insulting pieces on the recent Virginia proclamation of April as Confederate History Month. In one of them he insults the Sons of Confederate Veterans as "a divisive, neo-Confederate organization." See the graphic below which the Yankee Propaganda Gazette ran on its site.

BEWARE, the "Civil War Gazette" is antagonistic to Confederate descendants who take pride in their Southern ancestors. Southerners are NOT WELCOME there.

The site is yet another propagandistic purveyor of the Northern Myth, annoyed that many Confederate descendants refuse to apologize for their ancestors or accept Northern-biased history. Spread the word.

Bloggers Needed for This Website

2010-04-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Additional bloggers are sought to write regular news and prepare updates for this blog. The only requirement is that they be members of the California Division of the SCV.

Writing and updating a blogspot blog (like this one) is especially easy -- you don't have to know computer programming or html code.

If interested, please contact Gary at gwcpa1 "at" gmail.com.

"The New Intolerance" -- An Essay by Patrick J. Buchanan, Member, SCV

2010-04-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

The New Intolerance
by Patrick J. Buchanan
04/09/2010

"This was a recognition of American terrorists."

That is CNN's Roland Martin's summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.

Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing that Gov. Bob McDonnell had declared Confederate History Month in the Old Dominion. Virginia leads the nation in Civil War (sic) battlefields.

So loud was the howling that in 24 hours McDonnell had backpedaled and issued an apology that he had not mentioned slavery.

Unfortunately, the governor missed a teaching moment -- at the outset of the 150th anniversary of America's bloodiest war.

Slavery was indeed evil, but it existed in the Americas a century before the oldest of our founding fathers was even born. Five of our first seven presidents were slaveholders.

But Virginia did not secede in defense of slavery. Indeed, when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, March 4, 1861, Virginia was still in the Union. Only South Carolina, Georgia and the five Gulf states had seceded and created the Confederate States of America.

At the firing on Fort Sumter, April 12-13, 1865, the first shots of the Civil War (sic), Virginia was still inside the Union. Indeed, there were more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy. But, on April 15, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers from the state militias to march south and crush the new Confederacy.

Two days later, April 17, Virginia seceded rather than provide soldiers or militia to participate in a war on their brethren. North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas followed Virginia out over the same issue. They would not be a party to a war on their kinfolk.

Slavery was not the cause of this war. Secession was -- that and Lincoln's determination to drown the nation in blood if necessary to make the Union whole again.

Nor did Lincoln ever deny it.

In his first inaugural, Lincoln sought to appease the states that had seceded by endorsing a constitutional amendment to make slavery permanent in the 15 states where it then existed. He even offered to help the Southern states run down fugitive slaves.

In 1862, Lincoln wrote Horace Greeley that if he could restore the Union without freeing one slave he would do it. The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, freed only those slaves Lincoln had no power to free -- those still under Confederate rule. As for slaves in the Union states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, they remained the property of their owners.

As for "terrorists," no army fought more honorably than Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Few deny that.

The great terrorist in that war was William Tecumseh Sherman, who violated all the known rules of war by looting, burning and pillaging on his infamous March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. Sherman would later be given command of the war against the Plains Indians and advocate extermination of the Sioux.

"The only good Indian is a dead Indian" is attributed both to Sherman and Gen. Phil Sheridan, who burned the Shenandoah and carried out Sherman's ruthless policy against the Indians. Both have statues and circles named for them in Washington, D.C.

If Martin thinks Sherman a hero, he might study what happened to the slave women of Columbia, S.C., when "Uncle Billy's" boys in blue arrived to burn the city.

What of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, at whose request McDonnell issued his proclamation? What racist deeds have they perpetrated of late?

They tend the graves of Confederate dead and place flags on Memorial Day. They contributed to the restoration of the home of Jefferson Davis, damaged by Hurricane Katrina. They publish the Confederate Veteran, a magazine that relates stories of the ancestors they love to remember. They join environmentalists in fighting to preserve Civil War (sic) battlefields. They do re-enactments of Civil War (sic) battles with men and boys whose ancestors fought for the Union. And they defend the monuments to their ancestors and the flag under which they fought.

Why are they vilified?

Because they are Southern white Christian men -- none of whom defends slavery, but all of whom are defiantly proud of the South, its ancient faith and their forefathers who fell in the Lost Cause.

Undeniably, the Civil War (sic) ended in the abolition of slavery and restoration of the Union. But the Southern states believed they had the same right to rid themselves of a government to which they no longer felt allegiance as did Washington, Jefferson and Madison, all slave-owners, who could no longer give loyalty to the king of England.

Consider closely this latest skirmish in a culture war that may yet make an end to any idea of nationhood, and you will see whence the real hate is coming. It is not from Gov. McDonnell or the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Mistrial Declared in Confederate Flag Case

2008-08-16T11:53:00.001-07:00

See the video here and respond to the poll:

http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/26886319.html

Fox News Chickens Out: No Fair Reporting on the Tampa Confederate Flag

2008-08-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

From Vern Padgett:

Folks,
As you are aware, the Florida Division's giant flag-raising in Tampa has generated a lot of interest in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Following the first flag raising, we have received 17 straight days of national news coverage, including 6 national market radio talk show interviews, about 12 television reports on local stations and national TV coverage on ABC, CNN and FOX. ABC News, NY was the first national media outlet to break the story. Nearly every newspaper from Miami to Chicago has printed multiple stories on the project. Even a newspaper in Poland called for an interview.

For at least a week, talk radio shows across the country were weighing in on this issue. We were recently informed by the media, that the Tampa Flags Across Florida project will be a major issue in the Presidential Elections, as candidates will be asked about it when they campaign in Florida.

A reporter for FOX NEWS Miami, Orlando Salinas, came to Tampa and did a story about the flag, the SCV and the "alleged controversy". His report was not only fair and balanced, it probably could be described as "pro-Confederate". Mr. Salinas is a "Shenandoah Valley" native with sympathies towards our Cause.

His video report included an opening sequence showing African-Americans and SCV members raising our flag in Tampa on Flag Day. It includes interviews with several African-American supporters, including SCV compatriot Nelson Winbush.

Mr. Salinas interviewed both sides of this issue, but his report questions the common notion that the flag is simply racist. Salinas made a special effort to report the TRUTH ABOUT THE FLAG.
Salinas' piece was to have run Friday night on FOX NEWS as a special story on Britt Hume's 6-7pm EST segment. It now appears that FOX management in New York is afraid to run this story, and intend to let it die. It seems that TRUTH and FAIRNESS make the producers "uneasy". We were told that one FOX NEWS director actually insisted that any story had to paint the flag as "racist".

The Florida Division needs your help. We are asking that each of you (and your friends) contact FOX NEWS NEW YORK and POLITELY ask the following:

1. For two days the Orlando Salinas report on the Confederate Flag in Florida has been put off.
2. When is Orlando Salinas's package on the Confederate Flag going to run?
3. If no firm date, then ask Why Not?
4. Let them know that you want to see this story, and that you feel it is important to all Americans that it be aired.
5. Remember to be courteous and polite. We simply want to urge FOX NEWS to run this story, as filed and unedited, and to follow their own axiom - "We report - You Decide". You may mention that not running the story gives the appearance that FOX decided, instead of the viewers.

Please call FOX NEWS at: (202) 824-6300 (ask the receptionist for the Producer of the Britt Hume show)or e-mail them at: http://us.mc326.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Special@foxnews.com and http://us.mc326.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=americasnewsroom@foxnews.com and Fncspecials@foxnews.com.

Please do this as soon as possible. The longer the story is delayed, the closer it comes to getting killed permanently.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Confederately,
John W. AdamsCo-chmn, Flags Across Florida Program1st Lt. Cdr. FL Division
P.S. If you want to contribute to the Flags Across Florida project, please visit our website at http://www.florida-scv.org/. VISA, MC, and PAYPAL are welcome!

THE CONFEDERATE FLAG
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Confederate_Flag
CONFEDERATE AMERICAN PRIDE
Dedicated to Americans who are proud of their Confederate heritage
http://www.confederateamericanpride.com/

Commander Ramsey Reports on NC Convention

2008-07-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a month long road trip with the family to North Carolina to visit relatives and attend the National Convention. While I enjoyed the vacation immensely, (despite several truck breakdowns) I must concur with Vern Padgett’s assessment of the convention.

While I stayed in my travel trailer and did not use the local hotels, it was obvious that the evening camaraderie which has come to a part of these events just wasn’t happening. Many events seemed to be haphazardly planned and poorly executed. Confusion was the order of the day. The meetings however were conducted in an orderly and well planned manner. All business matters went smoothly with very little confusion or dissension.

On Saturday night, the Debutante presentation was the largest in recent history. There are usually 5-6 debs, but this year there were 17 young ladies. I am proud to say I had the honor of escorting the California Division’s first debutante, my daughter Samantha Jo. I am also proud to say that there were 15 Ramsey family members in attendance at the Ball, including my parents.

Kenny Ramsey
Sons of Confederate Veterans
California Division Commander
Commander, Camp 2048

Vern Padgett Reports on the Reunion in Concord

2008-07-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

Reunion in Concord, North Carolina, was good. I've been to 9 Reunions now, and this was the best one as far as the leaders getting along. Absolutely the very best.

It was the absolute worst Reunion in many other ways. The meeting rooms were 20 miles from the hotels. So after leaving the commuting nightmare of L.A./O.C., we got to drive half an hour to the meeting, half an hour back, getting lost several times and wasting $4 a gallon gas, then we drove half an hour there again, and half an hour back. Or, we sat there all day, each day for 4 days. One day I was there from 8 am to 11 at night. I don't think I've worn the same clothes from 7 am to 11:30 pm for a long time.

During one of those long days we were all locked out of the meeting room building. People who had medical conditions and needed to use the restrooms were pounding on the doors to be let in, but the staff said they were "not authorized" to allow them in.

Even worse were the physical accomodations: Not a nice hotel, but a crummy "event center" with bare concrete floors, exposed ductwork, and so on. We ate off plastic plates and used plastic forks the whole time. It was too hot inside all the time. Quite different from the other reunions. And it cost more. A switch from the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, or that beautiful old hotel in Charleston, the year the Hunley came back in.

Worst of all, according to everyone but me, was the food. I like food, and I'm not complaining, but everyone else did. In my OCS class in the Marines in 1969, everyone lost from 6 to 25 pounds in those first 6 weeks. All except me. I gained 8 pounds. The sergeant instructor called me over and asked me if I liked the food. I said yes sergeant I do. He said how can that be. I told him "it depends on what you are used to."

I missed every one of the evening receptions. These have been the highlight of every reunion. I missed them because no one showed up at the event center 20 miles away, but instead stayed at their own hotel in Charlotte. I missed the best one the last night, even though I was in the same hotel!

Those informal gatherings are the real highlight of the Reunion, and often are worth more than everything else together.

Vern Padgett

Photo: Vern Padgett and his lovely lady at the Concord Reunion last week.

Black Confederates: Southern Fantasy or Historical Fact? Part II

2008-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

Did Black Confederates Serve in Combat?

by Vernon R. Padgett, Ph.D. - Adjutant, California Division, SCV

Black Southern men served in the Confederate Army, and they served as soldiers. But did they fight in combat? Yes they did. The evidence is varied, and comes from many sources.

First, eyewitness testimony from Federal physician Louis Steiner, second, a report from Frederick Douglass; third, monuments reflecting black Confederate contributions, especially the unique work of Moses Ezekiel in Washington, D.C. Third, we see a sampling of combat reports of individual black Confederates, from a variety of sources, including the Official Records, and General Forrest’s U.S. Congressional testimony regarding his 45 black slaves. Finally we review the Confederate Governmental recruitment and enlistment of black Southerners in the Confederate Army in March 1865-- and a few examples of their limited combat experience.

1. Eyewitness Testimony of Union Physician Louis Steiner

Dr. Lewis Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission, observed General Stonewall Jackson's occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862. He wrote:

Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this number [of Confederate troops]. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie knives, dirks, etc. ... and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army (in Barrow, et al., 2001).

This description of men wearing shell jackets or coats and carrying weapons suggests soldiers. It does not appear indicative of cooks or musicians or body servants. Of course, we cannot know by the description, but it suggests 3,000 armed black Confederate soldiers.

2. Report of Frederick Douglass

"There are at the present moment many Colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down any loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the rebels" (In Williams “On Black Confederates”).

Douglass’s report is clear: Black Southerners were fighting “as real soldiers.”

3. Monuments to Black Confederates

The first military monument in the U.S. Capitol honoring an African-American soldier is the Confederate monument at Arlington National cemetery. The monument was designed in 1914 by Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish Confederate. He wanted to correctly portray the “racial makeup” in the Confederate Army.

The Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

............

Moses Jacob Ezekiel was the first Jewish cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. He was wounded in May 1864 at the Battle of New Market. As the first Jewish cadet at VMI, sculptor Ezekiel knew firsthand the nature of ethnic prejudice, and was for that reason a unique observer, and recorder, of the ethnic composition of the Confederate Army, observations which he recorded in the first military monument to honor a black American soldier in Washington, D.C. He is now buried at the base of the famous monument he created.

Enlargement of frieze of Confederate Monument, Arlington National Cemetery. Note black soldier in center and black woman at right.

In 1900, a Confederate Section was authorized in Arlington National Cemetery. Confederate casualties from around the cemetery were gathered and re-interred in that Section. A circular frieze of 32 life-sized figures shows Southern soldiers going off to war.

Black Confederate soldier depicted marching in rank with white Confederate soldiers. This is taken from the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery. Designed by Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish Confederate, and erected in 1914. Ezekiel depicted the Confederate Army as he himself witnessed. As such, it is perhaps the first monument honoring a black American soldier. (Photo by Bob Crowell)

Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery depicting a Confederate soldier entrusting his children to a slave. While Confederate soldiers were away from their homes, Union soldiers frequently would victimize southern blacks in much the same ways as southern whites. Sometimes blacks experienced even worse treatment than whites, as Union officers often protected white women, but turned a blind eye when slave women were "ravaged" or abused. Photo by Bob Crowell.

In his statue, a black Confederate soldier is shown marching in step with white Confederate soldiers. Engraved in the stone, you can also see a white soldier giving his child to a black woman for protection.

4. Individual Accounts of Black Confederate Soldiers in Combat

When we think of black Southerners who served in the armies of the Confederacy, we often think of them in the roles of teamsters, cooks, surgeon’s assistants, nurses, shoemakers, blacksmiths, laborers, fortifications builders, and valets (most of these positions are now part of the modern military). But many blacks served in combat. Black Confederate Nim Wilkes said: "I was in every battle General Forrest fought after leaving Columbia ... I was mustered out at Gainesville (May 1865)" (Rollins, 1994).

One federal cavalry officer related how he was held under guard by a shotgun-wielding black who kept the weapon trained on the Yankee's head with unwavering concentration. "Here I had come South and was fighting to free this man," the disgusted major wrote in his diary. "If I had made one false move on my horse, he would have shot my head off" (Barrow et al., 2001, p. 43).

Private Louis Napoleon Nelson served the Confederate States of America at Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, Brice's Crossroads and Vicksburg as soldier and chaplain in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, under Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Nelson was sent by his master to take care of his (master's) son. When the young Confederate was wounded, Nelson picked up his rifle and continued fighting against Northern aggression throughout the war. After the war, Nelson and his former master were best friends; their farms bordered each other (Winbush, 1996).

Col. Parkhurst’s (Northern) Account of Forrest’s Black Confederates: "The forces attacking my camp were the First Regiment Texas Rangers, a battalion of the First Georgia Rangers … and quite a number of Negroes attached to the Texas and Georgia troops, who were armed and equipped, and took part in the several engagements with my forces during the day" (Lieutenant Colonel Parkhurst's Report (Ninth Michigan Infantry) on General Forrest's attack at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, July 13, 1862, in Official Records, Series I, Vol XVI, Part I, page 805).

The efforts of Jack, servant of an officer of the Thirteenth Arkansas Regiment, stands out as an act of heroism. Jack fought beside his master during the heat of battle. He fell seriously wounded but refused to be evacuated and continued to fire at the enemy. He later died in a hospital of his wounds sustained in the ranks of the Confederate army" (Memphis Avalanche, quoted in Charlotte Western Democrat, December 31, 1861).

At Brandy Station, Tom and Overton, two servants in the 12th Virginia Cavalry, picked up rifles discarded by Northerners and joined the 12th in a charge. They captured the black servant of a Union officer and marched him back to camp at gunpoint, where they held him prisoner. For two months, the Yankee servant waited upon the Southerners (Austerman, 1987, 47).

Levin Graham, a free colored man, was employed as a fifer, and attendant to Captain J. Welby Armstrong (2nd Tennessee). He refused to stay in camp when the regiment moved, and obtaining a musket and cartridges, went across the river with us. He fought manfully, and it is known that he killed four of the Yankees, from one of whom he took a Colt's revolver. He fought through the whole battle, and not a single man in our whole army fought better" (New Orleans Daily Crescent, 6 December 1861, cited in Rollins, 1994).

Black Confederate Levi Miller, born in Rockbridge County Virginia, was one of thousands of slaves who accompanied their owners to the war as a body servant. After nursing his master back to health from a near-fatal wounding in the Wilderness campaign, Miller was voted by the regiment to be a full-fledged soldier (Jordan, 1995).

Miller served the remainder of the war, exhibiting bravery in battles in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. His former commander spoke highly of Miller's combat record, giving a riveting account of his performance at Spotsylvania Courthouse. "About 4 p.m., the enemy made a rushing charge," wrote Captain J. E. Anderson. "Levi Miller stood by my side-- and man never fought harder and better than he did-- and when the enemy tried to cross our little breastworks and we clubbed and bayoneted them off, no one used his bayonet with more skill, and effect, than Levi Miller. Captain Anderson wrote: “During the fight, the shout of my men was 'Give 'em hell, Lee!'" (Jordan, 1995).

In his letter of recommendation, Anderson dispelled any doubts as to whether Miller had fought for the South of his own free will. "He was in the Pennsylvania campaign, and at New Castle and Chambersburg he met several Negroes whom he knew, and who had run away from Virginia," wrote Anderson. "They tried to get Levi to desert-- but he would not" (Jordan, 1995).

After the war, Miller received a full pension from Virginia as a Confederate veteran. According to the Winchester Evening Star, "The pension was granted without trouble, and he had the distinction of drawing one of the largest amounts of any person in the state." Upon his death in 1921, the Evening Star published a front-page obituary under the headline "Levi Miller, Colored War Veteran." It was the sort of stirring tribute fit for a local hero (Jordan, 1995).

Researcher Ervin Jordan (1995) cites another case of a valiant black Confederate, citing a diary that tells of an Afro-Confederate [who] became a local hero after being thrown into jail with nothing but bread and water for three days because of his support of the South and his refusal to work for the Union side ... The old man was made to chop wood with iron ball and chains attached to his arms and legs, but the curses of his jailers were unavailing: He stubbornly vowed to support the South until death.

The most telling account is from the most remarkable general officer of the War, Nathan B. Forrest.

General Forrest’s Account of his 45 Black Confederates: “Better Confederates Did Not Live”

Both slaves and Free Men of Color served with Forrest's Escort, his Headquarters, and many other units under his command (Rollins, 1994). General Forrest took 45 slaves to war in 1861. He told a Congressional committee after the war:

I said to 45 colored fellows on my plantation that I was going into the army; and if they would go with me, if we got whipped they would be free anyhow, and that if we succeeded and slavery was perpetrated, if they would act faithfully with me to the end of the war, I would set them free. Eighteen months before the war closed I was satisfied that we were going to be defeated, and I gave those 45, or 44 of them, their free papers for fear I might be called.

In late August 1868, General Nathan Bedford Forrest gave an interview to a reporter. Forrest said of the black men who served with him: "... these boys stayed with me ... and better Confederates did not live" (Rollins, 1994).

5. The Confederate Government Enlists Black Soldiers, March 1865

In March 1865, the Confederate government began actively recruiting and enlisting black soldiers. One witness recorded that the streets of Richmond were filled with 10,000 Negroes who had been gathered at Camp Lee on the outskirts of Richmond … (Rollins, 1994, p. 26). Richmond’s vast hospitals were a prime source of recruits. One writer observed “the battalion from Camps Winder and Jackson, under the command of Dr. Chambliss, will parade on the square on Wednesday evening at 4 ½ o’clock. This is the first company of Negro Troops raised in Virginia,” he noted. Thus a few black Southerners finally saw combat in authorized Confederate units in 1865. Not only did Chambliss’ regiment fight against Sheridan, but other units were noted at various points in the retreat to Appomattox.

On April 4, 1865 (Amelia County, VA), a Confederate supply train was exclusively manned and guarded by black Infantry. When attacked by Federal Cavalry, they stood their ground and fought off the charge, but on the second charge they were overwhelmed and captured (Confederate Veteran, 1915, 404; 411).

A courier reported that on April 4th he saw black Confederates … “all wore good gray uniforms and I was informed that they belonged to the only company of colored troops in the Confederate service, having been enlisted by Major Turner in Richmond. Their muskets were stacked … “ (Rollins, 1994, p. 27).

In an action on 7th April the 108th New York Infantry captured an armed black Confederate by the name of Tom Brophy; he was made a servant by the New Yorkers, and later lived in New York until his death in 1888 (Rollins, 1994, p. 28).

A book-length treatment of the topic of official black service in the Confederate Army is the excellent Gray and the Black: Confederate Debate on Emancipation by Robert F. Durden, (1972).

*****************************************
References

Austermann, Wayne R. (1987). Virginia’s Black Confederates. Civil War Quarterly, 8, 47.

Barrow, C. K., & Segars, J. H., & R.B. Rosenburg, R.B. (Eds.) (2001). Black Confederates. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company.

Brewer, J. H. (1969). The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s craftsmen and military laborers, 1861-1865. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Confederate Veteran, 1915, 404; 411).

Durden, R. F. (1972). The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Helsley, Alexia J. (1999). South Carolina’s African American Confederate Pensioners 1923-1925. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 140 pages.

Jordan, Jr., Ervin. (1995). Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia. University Press of Virginia, 447 pages.

Oblatala, J.K. (1979). The Unlikely Story of Negroes Who Were Loyal to Dixie. Smithsonian, 9, page 94.

Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 17, Part II, p. 424.

Quarles, Benjamin (1955). The Negro in the Civil War. Boston: Little, Brown.

Rollins, Richard, Ed. (1994). Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in Confederate Armies. Rank and File Publications, Redondo Beach, California, 172 pages.

Segars, J. H. & Barrow, C. K., Eds. (2001). Black Southerners in Confederate Armies. Southern Lion Books, Atlanta, Georgia.

Tennessee Colored Man’s Pensions. Nashville Tennessee State Library and Archives.

Thomas, Emory (1971). “Black Confederates: Slavery and Wartime” in The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 119-132.

Wesley, C. H. (1919). The Employment of Negroes as Soldiers in the Confederate Army. Journal of Negro History, 4, 242.

Wesley, C. H. (1927). Negro Labor in the United States 1850 to 1925: A Study in American Economic History. New York: Russell & Russell. Chapter 4: The Negro and the Civil War

Wesley, C. H. (1937). The Collapse of the Confederacy. New York: Russell & Russell.

Williams, Scott “On Black Confederates” http://www.texasls.org/articles/reading_room/on_black_confederates_by_scott_w.htm

Winbush, Nelson (1996). Black Southern Heritage (video). Presentation delivered at Hollywood Performing Arts Center, 10 February 1996. Available for $22 from Nelson Winbush, 1428 Grandview Blvd., Kissimmee, Florida 34744.

Black Confederates: Southern Fantasy or Historical Fact? Part I

2008-07-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

...................................
Did Blacks Serve in the Confederate Army as Soldiers?

by Vernon R. Padgett, Ph.D., Division Adjutant, California Division, SCV

Blacks served by the thousands in the Confederate States Army. Many dismiss their service as that of servants—attached to the Army, but not soldiers in the Army. But black Southerners served as soldiers in the Confederate Army, not simply with that Army.

Evidence of the service of black Southerners as regular soldiers includes proclamations by Southern State governors, and authorizations by Southern State legislatures, calling specifically for black soldiers. Near the close of the War the Confederate Government enlisted thousands of slaves as regular Confederate soldiers.

Non-combat Job Classifications are Part of Today’s Army

Black Southerners served as teamsters, cooks, musicians, nurses, hospital attendants, blacksmiths, hostlers, foragers, wheelwrights, and in other roles in the Army of the Confederate States of America. In the modern military, these same categories, or their modern equivalents, still exist. By today’s standards these black Confederates were soldiers.

To the Confederate States Army, not the United States Army, goes the distinction of having the first black to minister to white troops. A Tennessee regiment had sought diligently for a chaplain, but had been unsuccessful until “Uncle Lewis,” who accompanied the regiment, was asked to conduct a religious service. Soldiers were so pleased that they asked Lewis to serve as their chaplain, which he did from the time of Pittsburgh Landing to war's end. “He is heard with respectful attention and for earnestness, zeal, and sincerity, can be surpassed by none"-- Religious Herald, 10 Sept 1863. To the men of the regiment as well as to the editors of the Richmond newspaper, the service of the black chaplain was a matter of great pride (Barrow, 2001).

Black Southerners served as laborers on fortifications. The National Park Service, after a recent discovery, recognized that blacks were asked to help defend the city of Petersburg, Virginia, and were offered their freedom if they did so. Regardless of their official classification, black Americans performed support functions that in today's army would be classified as official military service. The successes of white Confederate troops in battle was achieved only with the support of these loyal black Southerners (Williams, “On Black Confederates” website).

General Joe Johnston wrote in early 1864 to Senator Wigfall: “I propose to substitute slaves for all soldiers … as cooks, engineer laborers, pioneers, or on any kind of work. Such details for this little army amount to more than 10,000 men. Negroes would serve for such purposes better than soldiers” (Vandiver, 1970, p. 264). Again, in today’s army, these job classifications are filled by soldiers.

Applying today’s standards to the past, blacks served as soldiers in the Confederate Army. But no historian applies modern standards to history. Let us turn to the question “did blacks serve as soldiers by the standards of 1861?”

Equal Treatment of Black and White Army: “Employees” Ordered by General Johnston

General Order Number 38, issued by Confederate General Braxton Bragg at Tullahoma, Tennessee, in January 1863, stated, "All employees of this army, black as well as white, shall receive the same rations, quarters, and medical treatment." The Confederate Army was providing equal treatment at a time when the U.S. Army discriminated against black men in the matter of pay (Barrow, et al. 2001). The Confederate government authorized equal pay for musicians, many of whom were black, in contrast to the Federal Army, in which musicians received lower pay. The Confederate Congress passed legislation requiring that black and white military bandsmen receive the same pay. Free black musicians, cooks, soldiers and teamsters earned the same pay as white Confederate privates. This was not the case in the army of the United States (Barrow, et al., 2001).

Confederate Government Impressment

“The War Department was authorized to impress up to 20,000 blacks.” State governors also drew on “private property” so that whites could fight more and dig less. … The military also rented or impressed black men, slave and free, to cook and drive wagons and ambulances … in several large hospitals more than one-half of the male nurses were black. Government and private manufacturers hired or rented black labor for skilled and unskilled work. In 1865, for example, 310 of 400 workers in the naval ordnance works at Selma, Alabama were black.

As the war wore on, the trend toward black labor became more pronounced. “Every black man employed meant one more available white soldier” (Thomas, 1971, pp. 119-132). Black Southerners served in roles now considered part of the modern army, as teamsters, etc.

Evidence of military service of blacks in the Confederacy appears in Southern states records:

The Tennessee Legislature Authorizes Male Persons of Color for Military Service

In June 1861, the Tennessee legislature authorized the governor to accept for military service all male persons of color between the ages of 15 and 50. By that time one Negro company from Nashville already had joined a white regiment in marching east to fight in Virginia (Wesley, 1927, p. 107; Barrow, 2001).

The 1st Louisiana Native Guards

In May 1861, Governor Thomas O. Moore of Louisiana issued a proclamation providing for the enrollment of free blacks in an all-black regiment with some black officers. By early 1862, nearly 3000 men had joined this regiment and other nearby units around New Orleans. Their officers were skilled tradesmen, craftsmen, and even a few slave owners. There were several sets of fathers and sons and sets of brothers in this regiment, and “all the males in the large Duphart family were members” (Rollins, 1994, pages 22-23). Black officers included:

Captain Noel Bachus, 40, a carpenter and landowner;

Captain Michael Duphart, a 62-year old wealthy shoemaker, and

Lt. Andre Cailloux, a cigar maker and boxer.

The 1st Louisiana Native Guards was a 1307 man regiment with some black officers. It included many of the leading individuals in the New Orleans black community. Like most Southern militia regiments early in the war, they provided their own arms, and uniforms. They spent the greater part of their Confederate service as Provost Guards, although there is some indication that part of the regiment saw action at Fort Jackson during the New Orleans campaign (Official Records, I, 6, 858).

Black Louisianans played a significant part in Louisiana’s military history ever since the beginning of settlement. They fought for, and against, the French, the Spanish, the English, as well as with Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. By late 1861, about 3000 black Louisianans were enrolled in state troops and militia organizations, in the state, in service to the Confederate cause (Rollins, 1994, 22; 167-168).

Five Units of Confederate Blacks in Mobile, Alabama

Black Southerners in Mobile, Alabama took part in the defense of that city. In early 1862, a citizen wrote to the Government that he could organize a regiment of Creoles – a term for people of mixed blood— writing that “they are as true to the South as the pure white race. I can raise [a regiment] in a few days.” Black confederates were already organized and working on the city’s defenses by early 1862, and in November 1862, the state legislature of Alabama passed an act authorizing the raising of troops of “mixed blood … commonly known as Creoles” for the defense of the city. Major General Dabney Maury had written to the Adjutant General of the Confederacy, asking to enlist Creoles in Confederate service as artillerymen in the defense of Mobile. In August of 1864, the Confederate commander of Mobile formed a unit of cavalry with some blacks in it, and in October he ordered the city to enlist Creoles and free blacks; five different units of black troops were active in Mobile (Rollins, 1994, pp. 25-26).

Confederate Government Enlists Black Soldiers, March 1865

In March 1865, the Confederate government began actively recruiting and enlisting black soldiers. In early 1865 Robert E. Lee publicly advocated the enlistment of black troops, and in March the Confederate Congress authorized raising 300,000 new troops “irrespective of color.” General Ordinance No. 14 stated “no slave will be accepted unless with his own consent and with the approbation of his master by a written instrument conferring the rights of freedmen …” (Official Record, IV, 3, 1161). Shortly after, one witness recorded that the streets of Richmond were filled with 10,000 Negroes who had been gathered at Camp Lee on the outskirts of Richmond. Negroes were armed and placed in trenches near Richmond” (Rollins, 1994, p. 26).

A book length treatment of this topic is the excellent The Gray and the Black: Confederate Debate on Emancipation by Robert F. Durden.

Conclusion

The evidence is clear: Black Southerners served in the Confederate Army as soldiers.

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

References

Barrow, C. K., & Segars, J. H., & R.B. Rosenburg, R.B. (Eds.) (2001). Black Confederates. Gretna:
Pelican Publishing Company, 191 pages.

Durden, Robert F. (1972). The Gray and the Black: Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, U.S. Government.

Rollins, Richard, Ed. (1994). Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in Confederate Armies. Rank and File Publications, Redondo Beach, California, 172 pages.

Thomas, Emory (1971). “Black Confederates: Slavery and Wartime” in The Confederacy as a
Revolutionary Experience. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Pages 119-132.

Vandiver, Frank E. (1970). Their Tattered Flags: The Epic of the Confederacy. New York:
Harper’s Press.

Wesley, C. H. (1927). Negro Labor in the United States 1850 to 1925: A Study in American
Economic History. New York: Russell & Russell. Chapter 4: The Negro and the Civil War.

Williams, Scott. “On Black Confederates,” www.geocities.com/11thkentucky/blackconfed.htm or
http://www.37thtexas.org/html/BlkHist.html

"Confederates in California" Book Available for Purchase

2008-07-13T22:11:00.001-07:00

The California Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans and Other Interested Parties:

I recently published a book titled "Confederates in California" which is the result of about 10 years research. The book contains the names of over 1600 Confederates who are buried in California or who were in California at one time (not all stayed in CA.) The book is in black and white hard bound and about 300 pages. It contains over 450 photos of markers or individuals; service info; date and place of birth and death; some family info; and a few comments related to service or the individual in CA. Price is $50.00 plus $5.00 shipping. I have 8 copies left from the last printing, but will have more printed if needed. I am working with a great printer who will print 1 or more copies as needed. If you need a printer for a book I will be happy to pass on his name and location to you.

Margaret Alley

For more information or to order a book, contact me at this address: malley1@earthlink.net

Jeff Davis Turns 200

2008-07-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

Jeff Davis had a birthday on June 3. He was 200 years old. Here's a picture of him I haven't seen before. He was a handsome man.

Happy birthday, President Davis. You are a continuing source of inspiration to us all.

An American Trilogy

2008-07-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

A Son of the South from Mississippi sings two great American songs. Elvis sings from 1973. Brother Elvis has been gone now going on 31 years. How time does fly.

Confederate Service Records Available Online

2008-07-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

Gary, Thanks for the update.

One of my favorite websites is http://www.footnote.com/ This is a subscription service, however, you can look at their index and also you can look at some of the records they have posted. The cost is $59.00 per year; I think you can get a trial subscription for about 1 week if you are interested.

They currently are placing the Confederate service records on line. These are the National Archives Microfilm Records!

Their on line index : Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Missisisippi, North Carolina, South CArolina, Tennessee Texas and Virginia... Not all states are complete, but they do give you the percentage of records on line.

You can browse the index and look for the man you want, then if you find him you can down load and or print the service record if you have a subscription. If you don't have a subscription you can at least look at the index.

So if you are paying 40 or 50 dollars to get service records, you should check out this website first to see what they have on line.....

Margaret Alley

Some Great Civil War Websites - Great Pictures & Articles of Confederate Troops

2008-07-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

I discovered the Civil War Gazette online while researching Civil War topics. They have some great articles and pictures of individual Confederates, Confederate uniforms and equipment, and burial sites of soldiers. UPDATE: The Civil War Gazette has recently insulted the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate cause, is Yankee biased and anti-Southern. Read at your own risk.

Here's an example. This is an original Confederate kepi worn by a soldier at the Battle of Franklin. Note the construction and the wool pattern. When purchasing replica uniforms, authenticity is important, and studying the original uniforms can aid you in achieving it.

Another worthy site is Civil War Potpourri. It has a list of articles on many aspects of the Civil War, namely the causes, casualties, uniforms, weapons, etc. The "Causes" page is of special interest to Confederate descendants -- that's because this section is told from the Southern view, what the Southern soldier thought he was fighting for. See Causes of the Civil War (From the Southern View).

Official War Records Now Available for Free

2008-07-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

Google Books is an online source of publications that are in the public domain. These are books whose copyrights have expired and may be copied and cited for free. Google makes these books available for reading online, or for download as Adobe pdf files. You can then read the pdf file on your own computer at your leisure (or, if the book is short enough, you may be able to print the book on your printer and read the hard copy).

Google has now made available, for free, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. This book was copyrighted in 1900 and is now in the public domain. A few years ago this record was only available at a steep price, in printed form; only serious researchers owned copies.

Now you too can be a serious researcher of history. Download the book from this link.

The Google Books main page is here. Use it to download valuable books on literature, poetry and other topics.

Services to be Held for Real Son Woody Plaugher

2008-07-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Compatriots

Finally received word of services for our Dear Friend and Real Son Woody Plaugher.

They will begin at 12 noon Saturday July 26th at the Orcutt Presbyterian Church located at 993 Patterson Road in Orcutt/ Santa Maria.

Anyone needing directions and is planning to attend please notify me at this E-mail address or telephone 805-929-2089.

There will be other activities at the Masonic Hall nearby and Woody's house later in the day. Additionally, anyone wishing to attend in uniform will be appreciated.

Barron Smith
Commander
Deaderick-Doremus-Thurmond Camp 1631 Santa Barbara

SCV Headquarters Blog Links to California Division Blog

2008-07-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

The International Headquarters of Sons of Confederate Veterans has linked their blog to that of the California Division. As a result, we have a sharp upturn in the number of visitors to our blog, many of them from other countries.

To assist people in other countries, I am installing a translator widget in the left sidebar that will enable readers to translate the posts in this blog into 30 different language. (Try it!)

Arkansas Division Commander Passes Away

2008-07-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

Arkansas Commander Durnett has passed away. The SCV HQ Blog has the story.

Read it here.

SCV Pin Now Available

2008-07-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

For the California Division and SCV Member/Collector - A New SCV Pin

Lt. General Wade Hampton, Camp 2023 presents for sale their new pin. 1.5” X 2” in size with the California Grizzly Bear on top. You can purchase with our Camp number for the member/collector or order one with a blank plate to have your camp number engraved on it.

Cost is $12.75 - includes shipping. If ordering more than 1 Pin e-mail gary-stephens@sbcglobal.net for actual shipping cost . These are beautiful Pins!

Send order request with check or money order made payable to “SCV Camp 2023” to Gary
Stephens 2908 E. Whitmore Ave., H-150, Ceres, CA 95307

Reporter for Fox News Thankful For History Lesson

2008-06-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

From Southern Heritage News & Views (Charles Demastus [demastus@aol.com])

I'm Orlando Salinas the reporter who did the *soldiers flag* story for fox news

Thanx for the kind words! I must admit I was one of those folks that was ready to call that *battle flag* a racist symbol

I had my opinion made up and then I did something incredible... I actually listened to some one who knew more than me!

... And I learned some history that I was ignorant about! Go figure!

I'm more curious than ever to know more about southern heritage and real history... That is both proud and honourable and at the same time... A history that is almost forgotten!

I am taking somewhat of a beating for this story... Most of the *bosses* In new York felt I had the story *wrong* and there was some pressure to change it but I said no... That’s the story...

To fnc's credit they backed off and let my story air...

Still I'm taking a bit of a beating by some colleagues who say I'm flat wrong!!!

If u think I really did a fair job pls email my bosses in NY At Ny@foxnews.com

Just don't tell em I gave that addy to u!!

And pass that addy onto others who also believe the story was fair and have them email my bosses too!! I hope fnc and other media outlets realize there's a whole history out there that's not being told... And to me that is a dishonourable thing to do to our country and to the many ancestors that fought and died on both sides...

ThanxOrly

Annual Reunion to be Held in Concord, NC

2008-06-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

Important Notice to All Camps & SCV Members

All SCV members and camps are encouraged to attend the 113th Annual General Reunion which will be held in Concord NC during the period July 16 to July 19, 2008. There are a number of important documents included with (attached to) this announcement that are related to this event and normal SCV business with which you will need to be familiar.

Credentials Form- You may print this document on plain paper. Please ensure that GHQ has the names of the correct camp Commander and Adjutant in their database records because one of them must sign the credentials form to validate it. The credentials committee will check the name against the master camp rosters. Please do not send the signed credentials form back to the GHQ as it must be retained and taken to Concord NC by your camp’s delegate(s).

2008 Awards Program Information sheet- This information should answer all of your questions concerning national awards for this reunion. You may download a distinguished camp award entry form at member services, forms and documents on the SCV website at this link: http://www.scv.org/documents.php . You may also download the annual camp report form at this same link and this report should be completed and transmitted to GHQ no later than July 10, 2008. Please request a copy of your camp's current roster from the appropriate secretary, Stephanie Bible, atmdesk@scv.org for ATM and Georgia or Nikki Thornton for ANV and AOT except Georgia at anvdesk@scv.org. Please review this camp roster to determine if there are any errors, omissions or other problems to be corrected prior to the reunion. If so, please contact your Army secretary by email, phone, facsimile, or letter, and these corrections will be made by the GHQ before the reunion. GHQ will continue to process all new memberships and reinstatements which are postmarked by July 1, 2008. New members and reinstatements received after this date will not be included on reunion camp rosters for voting purposes.

SCV National Organization Starts a Blog

2008-06-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that the national organization of Sons of Confederate Veterans has also started a blog website. It is located at this link.

I will add them to our link list in the left sidebar right away.

UPDATE: Confederate Veteran Magazine has also started a blog. It has been added to the sidebar link under "Blogs." It is located at this link.

Attention Camp Commanders, Adjutants, Others

2008-06-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

If your California camp doesn't have its own website or blog, and you don't want the hassle of starting one, send your meeting and event notices here (secesh@rebelgray.com) and we will post them as soon as we open your email.

Also, please do send news of upcoming reenactments, Civil War Roundtables, events of related organizations (Daughters of the Confederacy, Confederate Rose, Sons of Union Veterans, Military Order of the Stars and Bars, parades, etc). Send photos if you want them posted with the article (one or two photos - don't get carried away!).

Out of state news is also welcome, as are articles related to the Civil War, reenactments, movie reviews, book reviews, etc, as long as they are "on topic."

Newsletters can be posted here as an article. Send the newsletter to us in Word format and we will post it here too.

Our goal is to add articles on a daily basis so that this blog becomes a useful and frequently used tool for the California Division.

Woody Plaugher: In Memoriam

2008-06-24T19:42:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of Will Tisch.

Click photo to see full size.

Fox News Video on Florida Flag Raising

2008-06-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

The Florida Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans has raised a huge Confederate battle flag along a state highway. Many of the Sons and friends (including some valued black friends) were there to celebrate the event.

Here is the video of the Fox News broadcast that aired last night. Fox News was remarkably objective about it; so often any news about Southern heritage is spoken in disapproving and mildly accusatory tones (the undertone being shame, shame, shame).

Way to go, Florida brothers!

Chuck Norred: A Message Re Woody Plaugher

2008-06-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

Folks

Most of you know by now that California has lost a "Real Son" in Woody Plaugher. Thanks to Compatriot Barron Smith and Compatriot Vern Padgett for helping pass the word.

Camp 1804 members please know that we will invite his niece and her family who lives in Fresno to a dinner meeting. His nephew whose family lives in nearby Woodlake will also be invited. His nephew was a World Known Bull Fighter (Rodeo Clown.) I don't think many people within the SCV knows that. I have attended a few of his FCC (Fellow of Christian Cowboys) meetings and still use my FCC Bible he gave me years ago.

Woody had an awesome personality and loved his Confederate Heritage. Most of all Woody was a man of outstanding Character and never had a bad thing to say about any one person. Please place Woody Plaugher in your prayers.

I do not have my full address book recorded within my new comcast book and I would appreciate you folks if you would pass onto others the news of Woody Plaugher, a very loved California "Real Son" within the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Thank you Barron Smith as I know you have had your own very serious health problems. Thank you for being a good friend to Woody and all you have done for him. You have been an inspiration as I know you have been the one who has helped him at every National Reunion I have been to. God Bless you for that and please know you are still in my prayers.

I was not able to make our past Division Reunion because I was at a GEC meeting. I will always remember the two Reunions (2007 & 2006) before our 2008 Reunion, in Bakersfield. Commander Kenny Ramsey at each Reunion hosted Woody's Birthday party. At our 2007 Reunion, Commander Ramsey presented Woody with the most beautiful Confederate Flag birthday cake. At the same reunion our members, and Woody had the privledge of singing "Dixie" that was broadcasted over 5 different radio stations at the Crystal Palace in Bakersfield with Buck Owens.

Again I ask you to please place Woody's family within your prayers. I send to you a picture of Woody and Camp 1804 1st Lt. Commander Russell Snow.

God Bless

Chuck Norred

An Age-Old Forgery Still Used to Denigrate Jefferson Davis

2008-06-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I read a biography of Jefferson Davis by a northern author, written in the 1930's. The author described an incendiary speech, said to have been delivered by Davis as a response to the Emancipation Proclamation.

The author stated flatly that the speech was a forgery, created for propaganda purposes during the American Civil War, and gave examples of similar forgeries occurring in American history.

Nevertheless, this fake speech still circulates on the internet, in college classrooms and websites, presented as fact and used to denigrate Davis and his cause. Once in a while you will come across this forgery, so be prepared.

That Jefferson Davis never gave such a speech is obvious. It isn't included in any scholarly collections of his papers or speeches or newspapers of the time period. For example, see this listing of Davis's speeches on the Rice University website. The speech Jeff Davis gave on January 5, 1863 doesn't remotely resemble the fraudulent one [reproduced below].

Furthermore, though Harper's Magazine of January 31, 1863 did print Jeff Davis's response to the Emancipation Proclamation, those remarks did not resemble the fraudulent address herein described. It is doubtful that such an incendiary speech by Davis would have been overlooked, particularly one specifically addressed to "to the People of the Free States by the President of the Southern Confederacy."

Further evidence that the address is fraudulent is that Jeff Davis allegedly says ".....and entertaining the belief that the day is not distant when the old Union will be restored with slavery nationally declared to be the proper condition of all of African descent...." Jefferson Davis would never had said any such thing. He was utterly determined and committed to preserving the independence of the Southern states; restoration of the Union was to him unthinkable. Furthermore, Jefferson Davis acknowledged that slavery would come to an end at some point in the future, regardless of the outcome of the Civil War.

In the speech Jefferson Davis allegedly makes powerful policy decisions as if he were a dictator, when in reality such decisions would have to be approved by the Confederate Congress.

Here's the forged speech. If you see it anywhere, know it for what it is.
-------------------------------------------------
CONFEDERATE RESPONSE TO THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
An Address to the People of the Free States by the President of the Southern Confederacy, Richmond, January 5, 1863.

Citizens of the non-slaveholding States of America, swayed by peaceable motives, I have used all my influence, often thereby endangering my position as the President of the Southern Confederacy, to have the unhappy conflict now existing between my people and yourselves, governed by those well established international rules, which heretofore have softened the asperities which necessarily are the concomitants of a state of belligerency, but all my efforts in the premises have heretofore been unavailing. Now, therefore, I am compelled e necessitati rei to employ a measure, which most willingly I would have omitted to do, regarding, as I always must, State Rights, as the very organism of politically associated society.

For nearly two years my people have been defending their inherent rights their political, social and religious rights against the speculators of New England and their allies in the States heretofore regarded as conservative. The people of the Southern Confederacy have -- making sacrifices such as the modern world has never witnessed -- patiently, but determinedly, stood between their home interests and the well paid, well fed and well clad mercenaries of the Abolitionists, and I need not say that they have nobly vindicated the good name of American citizens. Heretofore, the warfare has been conducted by white men -- peers, scions of the same stock; but the programme has been changed, and your rulers despairing of a triumph by the employment of white men, have degraded you and themselves, by inviting the cooperation of the black race. Thus, while they deprecate the intervention of white men -- the French and the English -- in behalf of the Southern Confederacy, they, these Abolitionists, do not hesitate to invoke the intervention of the African race in favor of the North.

The time has, therefore, come when a becoming respect for the good opinion of the civilized world impels me to set forth the following facts:

First. Abraham Lincoln, the President of the Non-Slaveholding States, has issued his proclamation, declaring the slaves within the limits of the Southern Confederacy to be free.

Second. Abraham Lincoln has declared that the slaves so emancipated may be used in the Army and Navy, now under his control, by which he means to employ, against the Free People of the South, insurrectionary measures, the inevitable tendency of which will be to inaugurate a Servile War, and thereby prove destructive, in a great measure, to slave property.

Now, therefore, as a compensatory measure, I do hereby issue the following Address to the People of the Non-Slaveholding States:

On and after February 22, 1863, all free negroes within the limits of the Southern Confederacy shall be placed on the slave status, and be deemed to be chattels, they and their issue forever. All negroes who shall be taken in any of the States in which slavery does not now exist, in the progress of our arms, shall be adjudged, immediately after such capture, to occupy the slave status, and in all States which shall be vanquished by our arms, all free negroes shall, ipsofacto, be reduced to the condition of helotism, so that the respective normal conditions of the white and black races may be ultimately placed on a permanent basis, so as to prevent the public peace from being thereafter endangered.

Therefore, while I would not ignore the conservative policy of the Slave States, namely, that a Federal Government cannot, without violating the fundamental principles of a Constitution, interfere with the internal policy of several States; since, however, Abraham Lincoln has seen fit to ignore the Constitution he has solemnly sworn to support, it ought not be considered polemically or politically improper in me to vindicate the position which has been at an early day of this Southern republic, assumed by the Confederacy, namely, that slavery is the corner-stone of a Western Republic. It is not necessary for me to elaborate this proposition. I may merely refer, in passing, to the prominent fact, that the South is emphatically a producing section of North America; this is equally true of the West and Northwest, the people of which have been mainly dependent on the South for the consumption of their products. The other States, in which slavery does not exist, have occupied a middle position, as to the South, West and Northwest. The States of New England, from which all complicated difficulties have arisen, owe their greatness and power to the free suffrages of all other sections of North America; and yet, as is now evident, they have, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution, waged a persistent warfare against the interests of all the other States of the old Union. The great centre of their opposition has been Slavery, while the annual statistics of their respective State Governments abundantly prove that they entertain within all their boundaries fewer negroes than any single State which does not tolerate slavery.

In view of these facts, and conscientiously believing that the proper condition of the negro is slavery, or a complete subjection to the white man, -- and entertaining the belief that the day is not distant when the old Union will be restored with slavery nationally declared to be the proper condition of all of African descent, and in view of the future harmony and progress of all the States of America, I have been induced to issue this address, so that there may be no misunderstanding in the future.

*****

The commentary of a modern university teacher is included below:

This document shows Jefferson Davis, the commander-in-chief of the
confederate armies, firmly promulgating the national policy that the
southern armies were fighting for slavery. It also belies any supposed
confederate support for blacks in their own ranks, as Davis clearly regards
having blacks as soldiers degrades white society.

There's only one problem, lady. Jeff Davis never wrote it or said it.
...

A Message from Louis Olker

2008-06-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

VERY nice new website!! Thanks for putting in the time and effort on that. A couple of things I should relate to you now while I've got you on email. Along with Connie Lawson(UDC-Vallejo), I am putting together a grave marking ceremony for Major Joseph P. Vaughn, who is buried in the Benicia Cemetery. We are planning this for 10:00AM, Saturday, October 4th, 2008 and there will be riflemen, UDC, SCV in and out of uniform from our Camp and I hope your Camp too. We will be installing a bronze marker for Maj. Vaughn, who left Benicia in 1862, traveled back to Missouri to join the State Guard, He fought in the battle of Lexington and was promoted to Major and led the MO 6th INF REG at the Battle of Iuka where he was killed. There will be a picnic afterward down the hill in one of the City Parks (we have it reserved). Do you know any buglers?

Also, your men may want to know about the Duncan Mills reenactment over on the Russian River July 19-20. For the past few years I have brought an old oak "recruitment table" for our SCV Camp in Sacramento to share with the SUVCW Post in Santa Rosa on Saturday. There are two reenactments during the day and tons of suttlers and displays. Probably the second best and nicest site for joint ACWA and NCWA reenactment.

Also, I will send you Wayne Ford's email address(our Adjutant....didn't notice if you had it posted). Sorry to hear about Woody. He was quite a trouper!

Thanks again! Lou

Remember Your Heritage

2008-06-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a great video from YouTube. It has segments from the movies "Gods and Generals" and "Gettysburg."

The first segment shows Stephen Lang as General Jackson explaining to his troops why Virginia will enter the war on the side of the South.

Another segment shows General Armistead rallying his troops for Pickett's Charge. I was present in the making of that scene; in fact, I was one of the Confederate infantrymen standing at attention behind him.

Black and White Compatriots Celebrate Confederate Flag - Together!

2008-06-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

This news item from Fox News is interesting and hopeful.

Controversial Confederate Flag Raising Ceremony
by FNC News Crews
By Orlando Salinas

I thought I’d only see Caucasians attending a controversial Confederate flag raising ceremony, early on Saturday morning in Tampa, Florida. That’s what I get for thinking.

But there they were-a smattering of African Americans, mixing it up with Caucasian bikers wearing Confederate flag jean jackets and caps. But what really caught my eye was seeing some of those same African American folks also sporting the controversial symbol on their bodies too.
Right smack dab at the politically powerful junction of Interstate 4 and I-75… hoisted 139 feet up in the in the air, was what most Americans call the flag of the onfederacy, but what is more correctly referred to by historians as “a soldiers flag.”
Marion Lambert, who owns the sliver-size piece of property where the flag has been displayed, calls himself a proud member of the sons of Confederate veterans, who says his local organization would never defend the painful issue of slavery. And, as I watched Caucasian and some African Americans, hoist that heavy flag 139 feet in the air, there was a collective but “Out of tune” rendition of “I wish I was in Dixie,” and yep, African Americans folks were singing it too, and off key as well.
Throughout the morning, motorcycles rumbled in and out of the parking lot, making it hard to hear, and these folks wanted to be heard. Marion Lambert told me he wants people to notice the flag, wants people to ask, “Why is that huge flag being flown here in Tampa.”
Lamberts answer was simple enough: “I want people to talk to us, let us tell ‘em we’re not for slavery, we’re not for racism, we don’t hate minorities. We just want to show pride and reverence to our ancestors. We don’t agree with the slavery part, it was wrong, but we can’t ignore this flag. It represents our southern heritage, the good that we want to remember, and the bad part we should never forget.”
So there it was, white and black folks, some sitting on cinder blocks, smoking pipes. One elderly African American man wearing a suit and a Confederate tie, back-slapping and joking with a younger Caucasian man wearing so many Confederate symbols, he looked like the poster child for the event. The local NAACP has called these Confederate flag-supporting blacks “out of touch,” saying they don’t represent black America.
I asked the older black man in the Confederate tie, what he thought about the NAACP’s comment, he said “I’m about as black as it gets, I’m the grandson of slaves, I’m a U.S. war veteran, and I’m just as proud of this (Confederate) flag, because it represents my heritage too. And the NAACP doesn’t represent all of black America either.”
Read the entire article here.

I love it -- black Southerners and white Southerners being friends and celebrating Confederate heritage together even though some folks find that inconvenient. I hope this trend continues.

Real Son Woody Plaugher Passes Away

2008-06-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Woody Plaugher, a Real Son of a Confederate veteran, passed away last night. Woody was well known and often honored by the California Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Here's the message we received:

Hello Friends and Compatriots

I just want to inform everyone that our dear Friend and Real Son of a Confederate Soldier Woody passed away last night peacefully about 6:30 pm in the presence of his Grandson. The family plans to have a celebration of his life in the near future but there will be no gravesite services. I will keep you all informed.

Sincerely

Barron Smith

Lt. General Wade Hampton, Camp 2023 - Modesto

2008-06-22T16:54:00.000-07:00

Wade Hampton was born in Charleston, South Carolina on March 28, 1818. As a member of one of the wealthiest families in antebellum South Carolina, Wade Hampton was reputed to be the largest landowner in the South. He owned several plantations in both South Carolina and Mississippi.

Wade Hampton was one of three citizens to attain the rank of Lt. General in the Confederate Army without benefit of formal military training – the other two being Nathan Bedford Forrest and Richard Taylor.

Prior to the War for Southern Independence, Wade Hampton served as both a State Representative and a State Senator for South Carolina. At the outbreak of the War, he resigned from the South Carolina Senate to accept a Colonel’s commission in the Confederate Army. Hampton formed Hampton’s Legion, which he equipped at his own expense. Taking his Legion to Virginia, Hampton’s force fought at First Manassas where Hampton was wounded. Hampton’s Legion was later broken up into separate units. Hampton also was wounded at Gettysburg. In 1865, he evacuated Columbia, South Carolina when General Sherman’s forces entered the city.

After the War, Wade Hampton was elected Governor of South Carolina and was instrumental in ridding the state of carpet baggers. He died in Columbia on April 11, 1902 and is buried at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

General Albert Sidney Johnston, Camp 2048 - Tehachapi

2008-06-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the Civil War it was almost universally agreed that the finest soldier, North or South, was Albert Sidney Johnston. The Kentucky-born Johnston was appointed to West Point from Louisiana and graduated eighth in the class of 1826. After eight years of service he resigned to care for his terminally ill wife. A failure at farming, he went to Texas and joined the revolutionary forces as a private. He rose to the forces chief command as senior brigadier.

He served as secretary of war in the Republic of Texas and commanded the lst Texas Rifles in the Mexican War. Reentering the regular army in 1849 as a major and paymaster, he became colonel, 2nd (old) Cavalry, in 1855. For his services in the 1857 campaign against the Mormons in Utah he was brevetted brigadier general. He resigned his commission on April 10, 1861, but did not quit his post on the West Coast (the Presidio at San Francisco) until his successor arrived.

Relieved, he began the long trek to Richmond overland. Meeting with Jefferson Davis, he entered Confederate service where his assignments included: general, CSA (August 30, 1861, to date from May 30, 1861); commanding Department No. 2 (September 15, 1861 - April 6, 1862); in immediate command of the Central Army of Kentucky, Department No. 2 (October 28 - December 5, 1861; February 23- March 29, 1862).

As the second ranking general in the Southern army he was given command of the western theater of operations. Establishing a line of defense in Kentucky from the Mississippi River to the Appalachians, he held it until it was broken at Mill Springs in January and at Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862. Abandoning Kentucky and most of Tennessee, he fell back into northern Mississippi where he concentrated his previously scattered forces.

In early April he moved against Grant's army at Shiloh. In what was basically a surprise attack, he drove the enemy back. While directing frontline operations he was wounded in the leg. Not considering his wound serious, he bled to death. His early death in the war was an incalculable loss to the Confederacy.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is a genealogical-historical organization dedicated to preserving the history and honoring the memory of our Confederate ancestors. The SCV is the direct heir of the United Confederate Veterans, and the oldest hereditary organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers. Organized at Richmond, Virginia, in 1896, the SCV continues to serve as a historical, patriotic, and non-political organization dedicated to insuring that a true history of the 1861-65 period is preserved.

C.S.S. Virginia, Camp 2062 - Ventura County

2008-06-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. Today, the Sons of Confederate Veterans is preserving the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause.

The SCV is the direct heir of the United Confederate Veterans, and the oldest hereditary organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers. Organized at Richmond, Virginia in 1896, the SCV continues to serve as a historical, patriotic, and non-political organization dedicated to insuring that a true history of the 1861-1865 period is preserved.

Membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans is open to all male descendants over the age of twelve of any veteran who served honorably in the Confederate armed forces. The SCV has ongoing programs at the local, state, and national levels which offer members a wide range of history-related activities. In addition to the privilege of belonging to an organization devoted exclusively to commemorating and honoring Confederate soldiers, members receive "The Confederate Veteran", the bi-monthly national magazine which contains in-depth articles on the war along with news affecting Southern heritage.

CSS VIRGINIA CAMP 2062

The Camp was named to honor the 320 soldiers, sailors and Marines of the Confederate Armed Forces who served as Ship's Company from February to May of 1862. CSS Virginia Camp 2062 organized on July 20, 2002 in Thousand Oaks, California, in order to serve the needs of members in the north and west San Fernando Valley, the Santa Clarita Valley, and Ventura County.

See the Camp's website here for more information.

Captain Cameron E. Thom, Camp 2007 - Long Beach

2008-06-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

Captain Cameron Erskine Thom, Camp 2007, received its charter on 15 October 2002. Founding members came from Camp 1742 Inland Empire, Camp 1208 Los Angeles, Camp 584 Headquarters, and members new to SCV.

Cameron Erskine Thom was a native of Culpeper Virginia. Along with many others, he came to California as a 49er. His group included 30 other Virginians. After a few years mining, not attaining the sought after fortune, he began to study law. Captain Thom started his law career in land claims.

C. E. Thom moved his practice to Los Angeles; after two years he was elected City and County Attorney. Cameron Thom was an ardent Southron. Upon hearing the call, he returned to his beloved Virginia. He served the Confederacy well participating in 15 battles and being wounded twice.

After the war of Northern Aggression, Thom returned to California. He lost his property, fortune, and his wife. Susan Henrietta Hathwell returned to her family in Marysville where she later became ill and passed on.

An Old Friend loans $300 in Gold
Shortly after arriving in San Pedro he was recognised by an old friend-- J.M. Griffith. Griffith loaned him $300 in gold. Captain Thom began to move forward with his life. He pooled his money with others and became a co-founder of the City of Glendale California. He served the City of Los Angeles as Mayor from 1882-1884. He served again as City Attorney from 1869-1873, and 1877-1879. Captain Thom served before the War in the State Senate, 1859-1860.

Cameron Erskine Thom was a true Southron Patriot. He passed on in 1915 at the age of 90 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in the 3300 block of E. 1st Street Los Angeles, California. A 20-foot obelisk prominently marks his burial site. Upon entering the cemetery, drive 100 yards straight, and you will find him on the left side of the road.

By Paul Williams

For information on meetings and events, see links in the left side panel for Camp 2007.

General Tyree H. Bell, Camp 1804 - Fresno

2008-06-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

Tyree Harris Bell was born on September 5, 1815, in Covington, Kentucky. He grew up on his family's Tennessee plantation and, when war broke out between the states, became an ardent supporter of the Confederate cause. In early 1861, Bell recruited a company for the 12th Tennessee Infantry and was elected captain of the company. He soon advanced to become lieutenant colonel of the 12th Tennessee, and led his troops at the Battles of Belmont (Missouri) and Shiloh, then took part in the Battle of Richmond (Kentucky). Transferred to cavalry command, he participated in the Battles of Perryville and Stone's River.

In 1863, Major Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest recruited Bell for an independent command that Forrest was organizing in West Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Bell served with Forrest until the end of the war. Bell served as a recruiting and conscript officer until he was eventually given command of a brigade. In recognition of his service in the Battle of Brice’s Cross Roads and various campaigns in Mississippi and Tennessee, Bell was commissioned as a brigadier general on February 28, 1865.

General Bell fought to the last along side General Forrest, finally surrendering with him at Selma, Alabama at the end of the war. Later, Bell moved to Fresno, California, and became a farmer. He died while traveling through New Orleans on September 1, 1902. His remains are buried in Bethel Cemetery, Del Rey, California, in Fresno County.

Capt. James Iredell Waddell, Camp 1770 - Orange County

2008-06-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

The Captain James Iredell Waddell Camp 1770, Orange County, California, Sons of Confederate Veterans, honors the memory of the CSS Shenandoah, her captain and crew. The only Confederate vessel to sail around the world, the Shenandoah captured 38 U.S. ships, mainly Yankee whalers in the North Pacific. During her 13-month voyage, she only dropped anchor twice and visited every ocean except the Antarctic. She surrendered to the British authorities in Liverpool England on November 6, 1865 and lowered the last Confederate Flag.

Captain Waddell wrote: "I claim for her officers and men a triumph over their enemies and over every obstacle, and for myself, I claim having done my duty."

In our lives, most of us have found some things important to us. Furthermore, we have embraced some things of honor to us. The Sons of Confederate Veterans in Orange County want to help you honor and embrace your Confederate heritage. We plan to create a Confederate memorial and burial site in Southern California. The memorial will be a centerpiece for the Confederate pride and services to honor the veterans buried there.

The need for a Confederate memorial in Orange County has been recognized for years. GAR monuments abound, but there is no marker honoring Confederate veterans though many were founding fathers of Orange County. The development of a plan to design, fund and build a suitable Confederate monument has waited for the right time. That time is now.
“For my part, when the time comes to cross the river like the others, I shall be found asking at the gates above: where is the army of Northern Virginia? For there I make my Camp.”
--Brig. Gen. G. Moxley Sorrel, CSA

Camp 1741 - Inland Empire

2008-06-22T16:10:00.000-07:00

Following the War for Southern Independence, many surviving Southern soldiers joined to form a veteran's organization named the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), formed in Richmond, Virginia in 1896, is the one and only heir to this legacy.The Inland Empire SCV Camp 1742 is based in Redlands, California. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the memory and heritage of the Confederacy and our Confederate ancestors through memorial, historical, and educational activities.

Being part of the SCV, we reject any person or group whose actions tarnish or bring dishonor upon the Confederate soldier and/or his reason for fighting. This particularly applies to those groups and persons using our cherished flag as a symbol for their own dishonorable purposes. The members of Camp 1742 thank you for visiting us. We're sure you will find much useful and interesting information on these pages. If you are a male aged 12 or over with Confederate ancestry, we encourage you to consider membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. If you are unsure of your lineage, please feel free to use our resources to help. Confederate Ancestor Research Guide

For information on Camp 1742 please email Commander - Steve Madden or Adjutant - Billy Williams

For questions or comments about this website please emailSignals Officer - Mike Climo

See Camp's website here.

Deaderick-Doremus-Thurmond, Camp 1631 - Santa Barbara

2008-06-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

Colonel James G. Deaderick, was born April 25, 1838 in Jefferson County, Tennessee. He enlisted in Company B of the 19th Tennessee Infantry when the war broke out and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of his regiment. Colonel Deaderick studied law after the war. He moved his family to California in 1883 where he settled in Carpinteria, and served in various civic positions. He died on June 17, 1918 and is buried in the Carpinteria Cemetery.

Doctor Augustus Boyd Doremus was born on the 4th of July 1842 in St. Landry's Parish, Louisiana. Doctor Doremus enlisted in Company A 28th Louisiana Infantry as a second Lieutenant. Doremus served as adjutant to General Pemberton during the siege of Vicksburg. After Vicksburg surrendered on July 4th, 1863, Doremus was paroled and later exchanged. Following the war, he received his degree in dentistry and eventually settled in Santa Barbara in 1891. In recognition of his service on the Santa Barbara Parks Board, he is known as the Father of Santa Barbara's many parks. Doctor Doremus died November 22, 1937, and is buried in the Santa Barbara cemetery.

Gideon Edward Thurmond was born November 27, 1843 in Hardman County Tennessee. Thurmond enlisted in Company B 17th Mississippi Infantry, the "Featherstone Brigade." He rose to the rank of Captain, and fought in the battles of Manassas, Ball's Bluff, Seven Pines, the Seven Day's battle around Richmond and Fredericksburg. Injured by a Union shell, Captain Thurmond was left for dead, but recovered and finished out the war. He moved to San Jose, California in 1868. He ultimately settled in Carpinteria, and served as Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools, where he oversaw the expansion and modernization of the county schools. When he passed away on January 25, 1911, the flag at the Santa Barbara Courthouse was flown at half-staff in his honor. Captain Thurmond is buried in the Carpinteria Cemetery.

General George Blake Cosby, Camp 1627 - Sacramento

2008-06-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

GEORGE BLAKE COSBY was born at Louisville, Ky., January 19, 1830. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1852, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Mounted Rifle regiment. He was transferred to the Second cavalry at its organization, March 3, 1855, was promoted to first lieutenant May 1, 1856, and to captain May 9, 1860. He resigned from the service to enter the Confederate military establishment in 1861.

His first position therein was that of captain and chief of staff to Gen. S. B. Buckner. After passing through the intermediate grades, he was commissioned a brigadier general January 20, 1863, and assigned to the command of a brigade under General Van Dorn. After the close of the war he settled in California, where he engaged in contracting. He served as adjutant general of that state during the administration of Governor Stoneman, who had been a comrade-at-arms in the "old army." He subsequently filled other public positions, both state and federal. He died at Oakland, Cal., in July, 1909. [Webmaster’s note: the remains of George Blake Cosby are buried in the Old Sacramento City Cemetery, Sacramento, California.]

Biography courtesy of the Kansas State Library, http://skyways.lib.ks.us/. Excerpted from "Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1911-1912", Edited by Geo. W. Martin, Secretary. Vol XII., State Printing Office, Topeka, Kansas 1912. Submitted by Teresa Lindquist (merope@radix.net); (copyright) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist

KSGENWEB INTERNET GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In keeping with the KSGenWeb policy of providing free information on the Internet, this data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other gain. Copying of the files within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author.

Contact the adjutant for information on Sacramento camp 1627

Stainless Banner, Camp 1440 - San Jose

2008-06-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp for San Jose and the San Francisco Bay
Area

"To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we submit the vindication of the Cause for which we fought; ... the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, ... it is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations."
--General Stephen Dill Lee, C.S.A.

Camp 1440, "The Stainless Banner," is named for the second national flag of the Confederate States of America. The "Stainless Banner" flew as the official flag of the Confederacy from May 1st, 1863 until March 4, 1865. This flag was first used to drape the casket of General Stonewall Jackson as he lay in state in Richmond, Virginia after falling at the battle of Chancellorsville. It was the last Confederate flag to be furled when the raider C.S.S. Shenandoah lowered its colors in Liverpool, England on November 6th, 1865, nearly seven months after the surrender of the South's two greatest armies.

The camp has periodic meetings, and members gather at several events during the year including a Confederate Memorial Day service, Robert E. Lee supper, Confederate ball, and the SCV California Division's convention as well as parades and reenactments. We worked with the United Daughters of the Confederacy to place headstones over the unmarked graves of Confederate soldiers buried at Colma's Cypress Lawn Cemetery.

If you're proud of your Southern heritage, you'll be welcome in our ranks which include or have included a former U.S. Congressman, a Bay Area police chief, graduate of the Citadel, and a professional bull rider as well as attorneys, surgeons, accountants, teachers, businessmen, military servicemen and tradesmen. The citizen-soldiers of the South personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight a second revolution for the right to self-government.

If you are interested in defending your Confederate ancestor against the tide of political correctness, the Stainless Banner Camp and the SCV needs you.

General John Bell Hood, Camp 1208 - Los Angeles

2008-06-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

"THE SOUTH NEEDS ALL ITS SONS!" If you live in the greater Los Angeles area, including the high desert, please consider joining us. If you have direct or collateral ancestry to a Confederate Veteran, you qualify for membership. We promote the Confederate Veteran, and we promote true Confederate history.

John B. Hood has been the "Mother Camp" on the West Coast since 1951. Our camp has many activities all over Los Angeles county, including Confederate seminar luncheons, and Confederate Memorial Day services at Hollywood Cemetery each April.

We carry the Colors at the Los Angeles National Cemetery on National Memorial Day; we have joint functions with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, such as the Lee/Jackson/Maury luncheon in January; we provide memorial dedications for Confederate Veterans buried in the area, including complete bibliographies of the Veteran; we meet at Fort Tejon each August, and we have many more events supporting Confederate heritage. YOU ALL COME JOIN US!

MEETING INFORMATION:

We meet all over Los Angeles County and sometimes out of it. Please email the Camp Commander or Adjutant (see links in the left sidebar).

Father Abram J. Ryan, Camp 302 - San Diego

2008-06-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Father Abram Joseph Ryan-San Diego Camp 302 was organized on March 27, 1993 in El Cajon, California. The parent Camp was the General John B. Hood Camp 1208 in Los Angeles. The membership area of Camp 302 is San Diego, Riverside, Imperial and Riverside Counties, but members are welcome wherever they may reside.

The Camp is named after Father Abram Joseph Ryan (image, right), THE "POET LAUREATE OF THE SOUTH." Father Ryan, a Catholic Priest who served as Chaplain with the Confederate troops in Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia, is best known as the author of the poem The Conquered Banner, or as it is sometimes called, Requiem Of The Lost Cause, in 1865. He died in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 22, 1886, a poet, a patriot, and a Catholic priest.

The introduction of a poetry book, published in 1897, says this of Father Ryan: “So distinguished a character and so brilliant a man cannot be passed over lightly, or dealt with sparingly...for Abram Ryan's fame is the inheritance of a great and enlightened Nation, and his writings have passed into history to emblazon its pages and enrich its history.”

The Camp’s number, 302, is the resurrected number of the old Robert E. Lee camp active in San Diego during the 1920s. The Camp meets regularly the second Saturday of each odd-numbered month. Each meeting includes a program on a Confederate topic. The public is invited to attend these free programs.

If you are a Confederate descendant and wish to preserve the honor and memory of the Confederate soldier, as well as learn more about Confederate history, please join us.

For information on San Diego Camp 302 contact the Camp Adjutant.

African-American Confederates

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Some African-Americans fought for the Confederacy. There is debate over the actual numbers and how many were in combat. Consider, however, the following report by Thomas Knox, correspondent of the New York Herald, with the Union army at Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi, December, 1862:

"On our right a Negro sharpshooter has been observed whose exploits are deserving of notice. He mounts a breastwork regardless of danger, and getting sight of a Federal soldier, draws up his musket at arm's length and fires, never failing of hitting his mark.... It is certain that Negroes are fighting here, though probably only as sharpshooters."
This description is of an African-American exposing himself to fire by mounting the breastwork to sight on his opponents, not content to fire from the safety of the trench but showing personal courage and initiative in his cause.

Yet there are those for whom this image is an anathema, because it destroys the simplistic, politically correct view of African-Americans in the war. When confronted with evidence such as this war correspondence's report, they dismiss its significance by various means, but the truth remains - there are today, in America, African-Americans who are Sons of Confederate Veterans.
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See also Vern Padgett’s excellent series of articles on Black Confederates.

See the following books:
Barrow, Charles. K.; Segars, J. H., & Rosenburg, R. B. (2001). Black Confederates. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company. (Originally published as Forgotten Confederates.)

Durden, Robert F. (1972). The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Jordan, Ervin. L. Jr. (1995). Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia. University Press of Virginia.

Koger, Larry. (1985; 1995). Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slaveowners in South Carolina, 1790-1860.
Miller, Edward. A., Jr. (1995). Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls: From Slavery to Congressman, 1839-1915. Rollins, Richard (1994). Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in Confederate Armies. Redondo Beach: Rank and File Publications.

Segars, J. H. & Barrow, C. K., Eds. (2001). Black Southerners in Confederate Armies. Southern Lion Books, Atlanta, Georgia.

Hispanics in the Confederacy

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The Cuban patriot Narciso López approached Mexican War heroes Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in 1848 with the request to head a liberation army to free Cuba from Spain -- Lee seriously considered the offer, but turned it down.

José Agustín Quintero, a Cuban poet and revolutionary, ably served Confederate President Jefferson Davis as the C.S. Commissioner to Northern Mexico, ensuring critical supplies from Europe flowed through Mexican ports to the CSA.

Santiago Vidaurri, governor of the border states of Coahuila and Nuevo León, offered to secede northern Mexico and join the Confederacy; Jefferson Davis declined, afraid the valuable "neutral" Mexican ports would be then blockaded.

The Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol offered the Confederacy his advanced submarine Ictineo to smash the Federal blockade. Never purchased, Jules Verne apparently based the Nautilus on this, the world's most advanced vessel of the day.

Ambrosio José González, a famous Cuban revolutionary, served Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard as his artillery officer in Charleston; earlier, in New York, he helped design the modern Cuban and (inversed) Puerto Rican flags.

The Mexican Santos Benavides, a former Texas ranger, commanded the Confederate 33rd Texas Cavalry, a Mexican- American unit which defeated the Union in the 1864 Battle of Laredo, Texas. He became the only Mexican CS colonel.

Thomas Jordan, a Confederate general responsible for early codes used in spying on Washington, after the war led the Cuban revolutionary army as Commander-in-Chief, training its generals and in 1870 routing the Spaniards at two-to-one odds.

Lola Sanchez, of a Cuban family living near St. Augustine, had her sisters serve dinner to visiting Federals, while she raced out at night and warned the nearest Confederate camp. The Yankees thus lost a general, his unit and a gunboat the next day.

Loretta Janeta Velazquez, a Cuban woman, claimed to have fought in the war disguised as a Confederate soldier, Lt. Harry Buford. She chronicled her amazing and harrowing adventures in an account called The Woman in Battle.

James Hamilton Tomb, a Confederate engineer on the innovative semi-submarine ship David, accepted a post-war offer from the Brazilian emperor as technical expert on torpedoes (submarine mines) in the Paraguayan War of 1865-1870.

Hunter Davidson, a Confederate torpedo (submarine mine) scientist, assumed the head of the Argentine Torpedo and Hydrographic Bureau for some years, training its leadership, and retired to Asunción, Paraguay, where he is buried.

John Randolph Tucker, head of the Charleston Confederate Naval Squadron, accepted a post-war position as Vice-Admiral heading the combined Peruvian-Chilean fleets in a Pacific conflict against Spanish coastal incursions.

John Newland Maffitt, who before the war captured illegal slave-trading ships, served the Confederacy as the CSS Florida's commander. Afterwards, he served in the Paraguayan war and commanded the Cuban gun-runner Hornet.

Thomas Jefferson Page, a Confederate naval commander who learned of the war's end in Cuba after sailing the ironclad CSS Stonewall from Spain, settled in Argentina, his son becoming an Argentine naval commander, his grandson an admiral.

Mexican service influenced Confederate general Stonewall Jackson; he often spoke Spanish endearments to his wife, Anna.

After the war, many prominent governors and other Confederates established a colony, Carlotta, in Mexico.

More Info? Check Out These Fine Books:
Richard H. Bradford, The Virginius Affair, 1980

Light Townsend Cummins, Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783, 1991

James W. Daddysman, The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy and Intrigue, 1984

Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 1965 (reprint, 1940 edition)

Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico, 1965

Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy, 1973

Frank de Varona (ed.), Hispanic Presence in the United States: Historical Beginnings, 1993

David Werlich, Admiral of the Amazon: John Randolph Tucker - His Confederate Colleagues and Peru, 1990

John O'Donnell-Rosales, Hispanic Confederates, list of several thousand who served the Confederacy, 8 1/2 x 11, 90 pp., paper, (1997), reprint 1998. Clearfield Publishing Co., 200 E. Eager St., Baltimore, MD 21202

Introduction to Sons of Confederate Veterans, California

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The Sons of Confederate Veterans of California is a historical organization dedicated to preserving the history and good name of the Confederate soldier, sailor and marine.

Our organization has no racial component whatsoever, express or implied. All Confederate descendants are eligible and welcome to join, regardless of color, politics, national origin or religion.

This blog will replace the SCV California website. Blogs are a new, modern format for presenting the activities and information of an organization; they are much easier to update and many more people can participate in the blog's creation and content.

All California camps are urged to create a blog of their own and to link to the State Division blog.