Saturday, July 31, 2010

U.S. Marine Recruit Rejected For Confederate Battle Flag Tattoo

from Confederae Digest:

Sunday, July 11, 2010


U.S. Marine Recruit rejected for Confederate Flag Tattoo



By Lt. Gene Williams





I have always been proud of my time spent as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. I served in the Republic of Vietnam in 1969 and, while I was certainly no “John Wayne” type, I tried to do my duty to the best of my ability and I did bring all of my platoon out of Vietnam alive.



This past summer, the son of a frend of mine was very ‘gung ho’ about joining the Marines and asked my opinion, which I tried to give as honestly as possible, warts and all. I don’t know if my discussions had any influence on him, but he enlisted, completed all of the pre-enlistment tests and physical exams and went to all of the pre-enlistment meetings. To say the least, he was very excited about serving his country in the Corps.



Shortly before he left Nashville for boot camp, he was told he could not serve his country because he had a Confederate Battle Flag tattooed on his shoulder in an area that would be completely covered by a t-shirt, and certainly by his uniform.



When informed of this, I went to the local recruiting station that had processed this young man to see if I were getting the entire story. The recruiter, a staff sergeant, told me, “Yes, sir. The Marine Corps considers the Confederate Flag a ‘hate symbol,’ but if the young man in question had a state or U.S. flag tattoo, that would be acceptable.”



I informed the young sergeant that my family had defended the State of Tennessee (also his home state) against a sadistic invasion under that flag and to call our sacred flag of honour a ‘hate symbol was an insult to ALL southerners, but especially to those southereners who had risked or even given their lives in service to the Marine Corps. Southerners had served at Belleau Woods, at Taraw and Iwo Jima, at Inchon and the Chosin Reservoir, and at Khe Sahn and Hue City, but now we are no longer wanted in the politically-correct don’t-offend-any-minorities military? (This was just prior to the Fort Hood massacre)





He was polite, even sympathetic, but said the flag policy was a Marine Corps policy from Headquarters Marine Corps and not a local decision. After informing the sergeant that it seemed to me that our military was building a mercenary force of illegal aliens while rejecting native-born Americans in order to have a ready force to turn, without question, on American citizens, I asked the sergeant if he had taken out the trash yet. He replied that he hadn’t.



I then said, “Please add these to the day’s garbage,” and returned my lieutenant’s bars, my gold and silver Marine Corps emblem from my dress blues, my shooting badges and my Vietnam ribbons.



I, like many of you, have always been told, “Once a Marine, always a Marine,” and “There are no ex-Marines, only former Marines,” but for me that is no longer true.



I was born in the South. I was raised here. I raised my family in the South and some day, God-willing, I hope to be buried in the native soil of our Southern homeland. I have always considered myself a Southerner first, and will remain so, despite any other organization that I may temporarily join.



I will never make a critical remark about a veteran, from any branch of the service, but from now on, I will do everything in my power to discourage any Southern young man, or lady, from becoming a future veteran. I am now an ex-Marine.



Gene Andrews, ex-Marine

1st Lieutenant 3rd Marine division

Vietnam



This article can be found on the web pages of the Missouri Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, James Morgan Utz Camp. Here is a link:

http://utzfmc.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/a-southerner-speaks/

Posted by J. Stephen Conn at 1:08 PM

The New Intolerance

from Confederate Digest:

Saturday, July 31, 2010


The New Intolerance



by Patrick J. Buchanan





“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 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, 1861, the first shots of the Civil War, 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 battlefields. They do re-enactments of Civil War 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 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.





Copyright © 2010 Patrick J. Buchanan - All Rights Reserved





This article appears on Mr. Buchanan's website. You may see it here:

http://buchanan.org/blog/the-new-intolerance-3878

Posted by J. Stephen Conn at 4:48 PM

Friday, July 30, 2010

A New War Between The States

From Forbes and Rebellion:

New Geographer


A New War Between The States

Joel Kotkin, 07.27.10, 06:00 AM EDT

Will the stars and bars win this time?









Nearly a century and half since the United States last divided, a new "irrepressible conflict" is brewing between the states. It revolves around the expansion of federal power at the expense of state and local prerogatives. It also reflects a growing economic divide, arguably more important than the much discussed ideological one, between very different regional economies.



This conflict could grow in the coming years, particularly as the Obama administration seeks to impose a singular federal will against a generally more conservative set of state governments. The likely election of a more center-right Congress will exacerbate the problem. We may enter a golden age of critical court decisions over the true extent of federal or executive power.



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Yahoo! BuzzSome states are already challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care program. Indiana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Nevada and Arizona joined a suit on March 23 by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum to overturn the law. And Arizona's right to make its own pre-immigration regulations has gained support from nine other states: Texas, Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and Virginia.



These may be just the opening salvos. If the Republicans and conservative Democrats gain effective control of Congress, the White House may choose to push its agenda through the ever expanding federal apparat. This would transform a policy dispute into something resembling a constitutional crisis.



Such legal kerfuffles are unlikely to serve as precursors to armed conflict. But the political and rhetorical battles will certainly be heated. The federalistas can take heart from the the Civil War of a century and a half ago, which was decisively won by the union. They can also gain some encouragement from the ultimate success of the New Deal and of World War II.



The federal government's greatest bragging right--ending the absolute evil of slavery--was secured during the last war between the states. While most Union soldiers may have gone to war for the Union, the final result was an end to slavery. The consolidation of that gain during the 1960s also rests on expanded federalism.



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JohnDFroelich I hear what you are saying and let us not forget "Slavery and Womens Rights", why go forward when you can go backwards So MsMox you say "High taxes, rent control, and other forms o





Read All Comments (13)Post a CommentBut the Civil War also was, as Karl Marx observed, a conflict between powerful economic interests. The Southern economy depended heavily on the export of commodities--primarily cotton, but also tobacco and other foodstuffs. It enjoyed profitable trading ties with the capitalistic superpower of the time, Great Britain. The North, in contrast, was an emerging industrial power for whom the British Empire represented the prime competitor.



After the war the industrial capitalists ran the country virtually unchallenged. They overcame the Southern commodity producers politically and burdened them with high tariffs. By the 1890s American manufacturing surpassed Great Britain. The North became relatively rich while the South and much of the West remained backwaters until the 1950s.


The economic map looks very different today. Generally speaking, states in relatively good economic shape are concentrated in an economic "zone of sanity" across the vast Great Plains. They are also in the least "fiscal peril," according to a recent Pew study. Not surprisingly, these states see little reason to extend federal power and increase taxation in order to bail out their more profligate counterparts.




To a large extent these states, according to Pew, are also the ones willing to reform their pension and other spending to keep down costs. Significantly, strong pension reforms have been enacted in some hard-hit sunbelt states--such as Nevada, Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona--which appear to be following the fiscal model of the zone-of-sanity states.



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Yahoo! BuzzIn contrast those states most favorable to a more powerful Washington are often the ones suffering the worst fiscal situations. They also seem least willing to solve their structural budget issues. Free-spending, poorly managed states like New York, California, Michigan, Oregon and Illinois--all of which are controlled by the president's political allies, need massive federal largesse to pay their bills without ruinous tax increases or painful cuts. Some localities in these states could become the Greeks of late 2010 as they head inexorably toward defaults.



The differences between the states, however, extend beyond budget items. Many of the worst-managed also benefit from more federal spending on academic and medical research, and from subsidies for their often expensive green energy policies. They can also argue, with some justification, that the zone-of-sanity states have benefited in the past from federal crop supports, military spending and highway funding. Now it's their turn for disproportionate time at the trough.



Perhaps the most divisive issue will be the Obama administration's proposed "cap and trade" legislation. For the most part, the strongest opposition comes from coal-dependent, industrial heartland states such as Indiana, whose governor, Mitch Daniels, has denounced the legislation as "imperialism" from Washington. Other keen opposition can be expected among members in both parties from energy-producing states like West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming.



In contrast "cap and trade" seems less of a problem to the rapidly deindustrializing coastal states. Many of these states pride themselves as exemplars of an emerging low-carbon "information economy" and seem determined to limit their gas-spewing sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and transportation. A strong federal mandate on carbon emissions also would diminish the competitive gap between states like California, burdened by draconian local climate change policies, and less restrictive places like Texas.



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JohnDFroelich I hear what you are saying and let us not forget "Slavery and Womens Rights", why go forward when you can go backwards So MsMox you say "High taxes, rent control, and other forms o





Read All Comments (13)Post a CommentSo who is likely to win the emerging new war between the states? Federal partisans might paint their opponents as the new "Confederates" fighting a protracted rear guard action, this time against science and social enlightenment. Certainly some demographic trends--youth attitudes on environmental issues, growing ethnic diversity and urbanization of "rural" states--favor the unionists

Yet you can argue that the fiscally strong states will be better positioned for the future. In contrast to the mid-19th-century Confederates, whose population growth paled compared with the Northern states, many of today's demographic trends favor the anti-federalists.




Over the past decade America's population and enterprises have been shifting away from the unionist strongholds. Once depopulating states like Kentucky and the Dakotas are enjoying net in-migration from the rest of the country. Texas gradually threatens to supplant California as the leading destination for the young and ambitious.



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Yahoo! BuzzThis suggests that after the 2010 census we could see something of a neo-confederate majority in Congress. Historical patterns may be repeating themselves, but they could produce a very different final result.



Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London and serves as executive editor of newgeography.com. He writes the weekly New Geographer column for Forbes. His latest book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, was published in February 2010 by Penguin Press.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Inolerance Of Southern Accents: One Of The Last Acceptable Prejudices For Yankees?

From Confederate Digest:

Thursday, July 29, 2010


Intolerance of Southern accents - the last acceptble prejudice?



By Kip Burke, News Editor

The News-Reporter, Washington, Georgia



It's amazing how blind some people are to their own inborn prejudices, but I got a chance to open one or two women's eyes last Fourth of July.



Three wome n were visiting Athe ns from Connecticut, and happened upon our fair city with about 10,000 other people for our annual Independence Day celebration. I was volunteering at the Chamber of Commerce's Welcome Center, helping visitors with questions on where to eat, what to do, and how to spend their money in town.



The three Connecticut women came in to cool off, sit a spell, and complain to me about the heat as if I had arranged it personally for them. They were educators, they said, which are like teachers only better paid, apparently.



While we were talking, a handful of local kids came in to use the restrooms, and they chattered away while they waited. To my eyes, they were bright and smart, a fine crosssection of our local kids, our pride and joy.



The Connecticut educators, however, saw and heard something far different. "My Gahhhdddddd," one woman said through clenched teeth. "The schools here must be terrible! Listen to those little… I can't understand a word they're saying with that hideous accent. Can't the schools teach them to speak correctly? Are the teachers as ignorant as they are?"



And it went on, the three of them mocking the schools and the teachers who would allow children to speak with the rural Southern accent that these precious children were born to. I admit I got pretty angry, which is rare. When it happens, The Ancient Burke comes forth, the spirit of 390 years of my Southern ancestry.



The Ancient Burke spoke the truth, and hoped it would hurt.



"I am absolutely shocked," I said quietly. "I'm shocked and appalled that you educators would be so intolerant of our diversity."



They all gasped and went wideeyed and pale. I could tell that tolerance and diversity were gods to them, at least in theory. Certainly they'd always thought they worshipped at the altar of tolerance and diversity, but I'd just caught them being very intolerant of our children's rural Southern diversity. And they knew it.



So, of course, I twisted the blade a bit. God forgive me, I enjoyed it.



I looked down my nose and asked them, "Do you really think it's acceptable for teachers to express such ugly intolerance against children with diverse linguistic backgrounds?"



"Oh, no, we're not really…" they began to babble, suddenly realizing what they'd said.



"Surely you don't teach your students that your way of speaking is the only one that's good, that it's perfectly fine to discriminate against minority accents because they don't sound just like you?"



I could tell that one hit bone. One woman broke into tears, then another, and they got up to leave, blubbering apologies and swearing that they weren't really intolerant, "We're just, just …"



"Hypocrites?" I suggested. "Blind to your own intolerance? Seems to me that you think discrimination against rural Southerners is the last acceptable prejudice in America. You came here, guests in our community, and mocked our children as hopeless and stupid little rednecks and back-country black kids, simply because you're so prejudiced you think that being Southern means being backward and ignorant."



I held the door open for them. "We appreciate visitors who come here with open hearts and open minds, but some folks make it clear that they just don't belong here. In the words of the great Georgia philosopher Lewis Grizzard, 'Delta is ready when you are.' Good day."



See the original article here: http://www.news-reporter.com/news/2009-07-02/opinion/022.html

Posted by J. Stephen Conn at 9:27 PM

Behind The Dixie Stars

From Good Old Rebel:

10:11 PM (49 minutes ago)Behind the Dixie Starsfrom GoodOldRebel.com by Webmaster


Awesome short documentary on the Confederate flag and what it really stands for. The video also addresses the fact that black soldiers indeed served in the Confederate Army and were also slaveholders. Great video!


Monday, July 26, 2010

The Fighting Scots-Irish: They Shaped America, But Did They Make It Free?

From Reason.com and Rebellion:

The Fighting Scots-Irish


They shaped America, but did they make it more free?

Charles Oliver from the July 2005 issue



Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, by James Webb, New York: Broadway Books, 369 pages, $14.95



Long dismissed as rednecks, crackers, and hillbillies, the Scots-Irish--also known as Scotch-Irish, Ulster Scots, or Borderers, because they hailed from Northern Ireland and the border counties of Scotland and England--have provided a disproportionate share of America's political leaders, military brass, writers, and musicians. As an ethnic group, James Webb argues in Born Fighting, they "did not merely come to America, they became America, particularly in the south and the Ohio Valley, where their culture overwhelmed the English and German ethnic groups and defined the mores of those regions."



For Webb, a descendant of Scots-Irish immigrants who has written novels, fought with highly decorated distinction in Vietnam, and served as secretary of the navy and assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, the political culture of the Scots-Irish is defined by hyperpatriotism, a devotion to strong leaders, and individualist self-reliance. "It has shaped the emotional fabric of the nation, defined America's unique form of populist democracy, created a distinctly American musical style, and through the power of its insistence on personal honor and adamant individualism has become the definition of 'American' that others gravitate toward when they wish to drop their hyphens and join the cultural mainstream," he writes.



But the Scots-Irish impact on American politics is more problematic than Webb would have us believe. The populist politics they pioneered doesn't necessarily produce the sort of values that sustain liberty. Indeed, the democratic impulse toward comfort and safety often undercuts self-reliance and individualism. Webb's book, though well-written and often insightful, is more an exercise in ethnic self-mythologizing than an evenhanded attempt to judge the impact of the Scots-Irish and their culture on America.



How did this culture evolve? Webb tries to place the Scots-Irish within a larger framework of the Celtic tradition. But there's quite a bit of dispute among historians about just how Celtic the Scots-Irish actually were. David Hackett Fischer, for instance, insists in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America that the term Celtic is "very much mistaken as a rounded description of their ethnic origins." Fischer notes the Scottish border area saw a mixing of Celtic tribes with Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, a fact reflected in some of the common surnames carried by the Scots-Irish, such as Hall, Ridley, Potts, Jackson, Forster, Calhoun, Young, and Oliver.



They also generally referred to themselves as a mixed people, Fischer says. "By the eighteenth century, the culture of this region bore little resemblance to the customs of the ancient Celts," he writes. "The dominant language was English."



The "Celticness" of the Scots-Irish is a matter of dispute. But one thing all historians agree on is that their culture is one shaped by war. Webb notes that by the time of the great emigration to America--starting around the turn of the 18th century----the Scots-Irish had seen more than 700 years of almost continuous warfare along the border between Scotland and England.



The Scots-Irish came to prize aggressiveness and cunning, and they insisted on choosing their own leaders based on those traits. They developed a distrust of government, which seemed to exist only to burn their homes, seize their property, and kill their kin. And they reserved to themselves the right to judge the laws they lived under and determine whether they would obey them or not. They lived in rough, simple, ill-kept shacks. They saw no reason to build better homes when they were only going to get burned down eventually. They were at once fervently religious and intensely sensual.



Webb notes that some of the Scots-Irish made their way to Massachusetts in the early 1700s, thinking the Puritans would welcome them as fellow Calvinists. Instead, the Puritans thought their women flirted too much, their men gambled too much, and all of them drank and fought too much.



The Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Cavaliers in Virginia shared that assessment but at the same time thought these feisty people would form a perfect buffer between them and hostile Indians, so they invited the new immigrants to settle their frontiers. It was an invitation they would soon regret--before long the colonial governors were complaining that the Scots-Irish caused more trouble than the Indians, and that their presence inflamed the Indians even more.



But it was too late. They kept coming, spilling down the Appalachian Mountains into the Carolinas, Georgia, and westward, into what would become Kentucky and Tennessee. By the time the great migration had ended, almost half a million of them had poured into the colonies.



While New England merchants and Virginia aristocrats provided the philosophical and political leadership for the American Revolution, the Scots-Irish supplied the muscle and fighting spirit. Webb says between a third and a half of the rebel army was Scots-Irish.



"The famed Pennsylvania line, perhaps the best unit in the regular Army, was mainly Scots-Irish," he adds. "True to form, it is also remembered for angrily (and drunkenly) marching on the Continental Congress on New Year's Day, 1781, after not having been paid for more than a year."



The Scots-Irish have provided many of America's political leaders, including at least a dozen presidents from Chester Arthur to Woodrow Wilson. But Webb singles out Andrew Jackson as the pre-eminent Scots-Irish leader. "Andrew Jackson was an original, an unusual and fearless leader who dominated the American political process more fully than any president before or since," he writes.



Webb argues that the wave of "Jacksonian populism" remains one of the most powerful forces in American politics. Indeed, he identifies it as no less than the basic governing philosophy not only of the South and the Ohio River Valley but of working-class America as a whole. That populism, he argues, is based on an ingrained distrust of elites and an emphasis on individual rights and responsibilities.

Jackson surely was a fearless soldier and capable politician, and in many ways he did represent a sort of rugged individualism. But Webb's portrait of Old Hickory whitewashes him and his impact on American politics, largely because he doesn't acknowledge the tensions in the Scots-Irish culture and its approach to politics. A fuller account of Jackson's military career and his presidency would show that he rarely allowed legal restrictions or constitutional requirements to get in the way of his use of power. And it would reveal that Jackson's "populism" did not extend much to outsiders, especially Indians or blacks.




"This Jackson," historian Amy H. Sturgis has written in Reason (see "Not The Same Old Hickory," May 2004), "was a man who exemplified characteristics later associated with other national leaders: Before Abraham Lincoln, he represented selective adherence to the Constitution; before William McKinley, energetic imperialism; before Teddy Roosevelt, the cult of personality; before Bill Clinton, the personal made political." Perhaps it is no accident that three of the four presidents in that rogues' gallery were of Scots-Irish descent.



Jacksonian populism requires that political leaders be responsive to the demands of the masses. Jacksonian politicians quickly learn that voters may say they want liberty, but what really gets their votes are new and expanded benefits and services.



Take former Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.). He's best known to most Americans for his strident denunciation of his own Democratic Party for not being sufficiently willing to use military force overseas. Many observers point to Miller as an advocate of Jacksonian foreign policy. But Miller also represents Jacksonian domestic policy, or at least what it has devolved into.



In his home state, Miller long ago earned the nickname Zig Zag Zell for his ability to change his position on an issue if it proved politically damaging. And his signal achievement in his more than 40 years in Georgia politics was the creation of the HOPE scholarship, a middle-class entitlement funded by a lottery. The scholarship, which pays for local students to attend Georgia's colleges and universities, is now one of the most popular programs in the state, and those hardy individualistic Scots-Irish voters scream if anyone suggests cutting the program and forcing them to pay a larger share of their children's college costs.



The tensions inherent in Scots-Irish political culture are also reflected in Southern attitudes toward Franklin Roosevelt. Webb admits FDR centralized power in Washington and saddled the United States with a "quasi-socialistic state." And Roosevelt was surely a member of the patrician elite those populist Scots-Irish typically loathe. Yet FDR is still revered among liberty-loving Scots-Irish of a certain age, as Webb is forced to concede.



In part that's because Roosevelt was a strong leader in a time of war, but Webb implies that his domestic programs are at least as responsible for the affection. "At last," he writes, "they had found a president who, when it came to their dilemma, was not afraid to lead and who was willing to address key issues rather than simply paper them over with rhetoric."



Leaving aside their histories of Jim Crow, Sunday blue laws, and restrictions on alcohol, the regions where Webb says Scots-Irish culture remains strongest are arguably freer and more individualistic than other parts of the country in several respects. For instance, the parts of America Webb identifies as having the largest Scots-Irish populations --New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Illinois, and Indiana--tended to be ranked highly in the U.S. Economic Freedom Index put together last year by the Pacific Research Institute and Forbes magazine.



But they surely aren't bastions of small, limited government. For generations, Southern politicians have been less noted for their devotion to liberty than for their skill at bringing home pork. That's what their voters demand.



Do they also demand liberty? Southern voters, or at least a good chunk of them, may still get outraged if politicians try to take away their guns. But in so many other areas--from smoking bans to zoning laws to the licensing of carpenters, mechanics, plumbers, and other blue-collar professionals--Southern legislatures, city councils, and county commissioners nibble away each day at the liberties of their citizens. Maybe not as swiftly as those "elites" in New York and California, but just as consistently. At the very least, those individualist Scots-Irish meekly acquiesce as their liberties get snatched. In many cases they lead the charge for even more government regulation and oversight.



That isn't to say Scots-Irish individualism, with its screw-you attitude toward foolish authority, is dead. But it resides in people Webb neglects to mention. The spirit of the people who tarred and feathered tax collectors during the Whiskey Rebellion lives on in the man cooking meth in his kitchen, the family that violates local clean-yard ordinances by leaving cars jacked up on concrete blocks in front of their house, and the mechanic who breaks licensing and zoning rules by working in his backyard, while not declaring his cash income on tax forms.



Otherwise, the "unbridled raw, rebellious spirit" of the Scots-Irish grows tamer each day, domesticated by the government programs their democratic impulse demanded. Gradually, the Scots-Irish are becoming more and more like other Americans. Or maybe other Americans are becoming more like them.�

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Confederate Roll Of Honor Memorial service For 1st Lt. James G. Wilson, CSA

From Arkansas SCV:

Confederate Roll Of Honor Memorial Service for 1st Lt James G. Wilson


July 25, 2010 Web Master

The Arkansas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans recently held a memorial service for Confederate Roll of Honor ecipient 1st Lt. James Graham Wilson, 1st Arkansas Infantry Company F, for his brave service at the Battle of Chickamagua on July 17, 2010 at the Cypress Valley Cemetery in Vilonia, Arkansas.



Attended by Civil War reenactors, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and many descendants of 1st Lt. James G. Wilson, the service began in prayer as the SCV Arkansas Division Commander Mark Kalkbrenner recited the 23rd Psalm followed by the “Tribute to the Confederate Soldier”:”Not for fame nor reward, not for place nor for rank, not lured by ambition nor goaded by necessity, but in simple obedience to duty as they understood it, these men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all. This is their final bivouac, their eternal sleep as they rest under this hallowed ground. Strike the Tent, for we will cross over the river and rest under the shade of the tree.”



Kalkbrenner continued with the recitation of a prayer written by an unknown Confederate Soldier: “I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed.”



Following the prayer, Kalkbrenner then introduced compatriot Charles Wilson, a direct descendant of 1st Lt. James G. Wilson and member of the Patrick R. Cleburne Camp #1433 in Pine Bluff, Arrkansas. Donned in a Confederate uniform, Charles Wilson made his way to the remains of his great great grandfather when Kalkbrenner explained the libation ritual of the service:



Dating back to the time of the Roman Legions, it was their custom to go and pay homage to their fallen comrades by taking them lambskins of wine, drinking from them, and then sharing with their fallen brethren. It was noted that during this late War, the Confederate soldier would also pay homage to their fallen brethren, drinking from his canteen and then sharing with his fallen comrades."



Following the explanation of the libation ritual, Charles Wilson then knelt on the grave of his great great grandfather, took a sip of water from his canteen, then poured water on the grave of 1st Lt. James G. Wilson as Kalkbrenner concluded the "Tribute to the Confederate Soldier":



"The earth hides their human frailties from our sight forever. Soon we too will fold our hands in peaceful repose and lay down beside them. There shall be no awakening until the bugler plays Reveille and shall rouse the slumbering millions to answer to their names before the Great Creator of the Universe on Resurrection Day. Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee that it might be displayed because of the truth."



Following the libations part of the memorial service, Mark Kalkbrenner related information about the Confederate Roll of Honor: "During the war, the Confederate Congress and General Order #93 established the Confederate Medal of Honor. This was established before the United States Congress established the Congressional Medal of Honor. From part 27 of General Order #93 from the Adjutant Inspector General's Office, Richmond, Virginia, November 22, 1862:



an act to authorize the grant of medals and badges of distinction as a reward for courage and good conduct on the field-of battle. “The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized to bestow medals, with proper devices, upon such officers of the armies of the Confederate States as shall be conspicuous for courage and good conduct on the field of battle; and also to confer a badge of distinction upon one private or non-commissioned officer of each company after every signal victory it shall have assisted to achieve. The non-commissioned officers and privates of the company who may be present on the first dress-parade thereafter rosy choose, by a majority of their votes, the soldier best entitled to receive such distinction, whose name shall be communicated to the President by commanding officers of the company; and if the award fall upon a deceased soldier, the badge thus awarded him shall be delivered to his widow; or, if there be no widow, to any relation the President may adjudge entitled to receive it.”



Kalkbrenner continued as he recited General Orders Number 131 from Richmond, Virginia on October 3, 1863:



“Difficulties in procuring the medals and badges of distinction having delayed their presentation by the President… Difficulties in procuring the medals and badges of distinction having delayed their presentation by the President, as authorized by the act of Congress approved October 13, 1862, to the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of the armies of the Confederate States conspicuous for courage and good conduct on the field of battle, to avoid postponing the grateful recognition of their valor until it can be made in the enduring form provided by that act, it is ordered–



I. That the names of all those who have been, or may hereafter be, reported as worthy of this distinction, be inscribed on a roll of honor, to be preserved in the office of the Adjutant and Inspector General for reference in all future time, for those who have deserved well of their country, as having best displayed their courage and devotion on the field of battle.



II. That the roll of honor, so far as now made up, be appended to this order, and read at the head of every regiment in the service of the Confederate States at the first dress-parade after its receipt, and be published in at least one newspaper in each State.”



Kalkbrenner, while reading from his notes facing the nearly 200 in attendance, appropriately recited General Orders Number 64 from the Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office in Richmond, Virginia on August 10, 1864:



“I. The following Roll of Honor is published in accordance with Paragraph I, General Orders, No. 131 (1863). It will be read to every regiment in the service at the first dress-parade after its receipt.



“II. Attention is called to the manner in which the selections under the law should be made. The non-commissioned officers and privates are authorized, at the first dress-parade after each victory the company shall have assisted to achieve, to distinguish by a majority of their votes one private or non-commissioned officer most conspicuous for gallantry and good conduct in the battle. Should more than one soldier be hereafter selected by a company as equal in merit, the name to be announced upon,the roll will be determined by lot. Commissioned officers distinguished for gallantry on the field are not to be selected by the vote of the company, battalion, or regiment to which they belong, but a statement of their special good conduct

should be made by their immediate commander and forwarded

through the regular channel to this office.”



Kalkbrenner then stopped, looked up from his notes, and in a powerful and echoing tone, he read from the Confederate Roll of Honor: “Battle of Chickamagua. James G. Wilson, Company F 1st Arkansas Infantry!”



“Since the medals during the War were not presented, the Sons of Confederate Veterans have seen fit that these men and their descendants should receive that honor. The Confederate Roll Of Honor, General Order #93, Confederate Congress, 1862 extended official recognition to outstanding men that display courage and good conduct on the field of battle.



Kalkbrenner read from the official certificate from the International Headquarters in Columbia, Tn., “Know ye that First Lieut James Graham Wilson, Co. F 1st Regiment Arkansas Infantry is carried on the Confederate Roll of Honor, whose honor results from his actions related to valor at Chickamagua, Georgia on September 19-20, 1863, signed by Chuck McMicheals, Commander in Chief, Mark Simpson, Adjutant in Chief, 9th Day of July, 2010.”



At the conclusion of the service, the Sons of Confederate official Medal of Honor was placed around the stone of 1st Lt. James G. Wilson followed by a presentation on roses to two James Wilson’s grandchildren in attendance and a series of three musket and artillery vollies fired by Civil War reenactors from around Arkansas.



The medal and certificate is on permanent display at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

What Led Up To The War Between The States?

from Confederate Digest:

Saturday, July 24, 2010


What Led to the War Between the States?



by Walter E. Williams





The problems that led to the Civil War are the same problems today—big, intrusive government. The reason we don’t face the specter of another Civil War is because today’s Americans don’t have yesteryear’s spirit of liberty and constitutional respect, and political statesmanship is in short supply.



Actually, the war of 1861 was not a civil war. A civil war is a conflict between two or more factions trying to take over a government. In 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was no more interested in taking over Washington than George Washington was interested in taking over England in 1776. Like Washington, Davis was seeking independence. Therefore, the war of 1861 should be called “The War Between the States” or the “War for Southern Independence.” The more bitter southerner might call it the “War of Northern Aggression.”



History books have misled today’s Americans to believe the war was fought to free slaves. Statements from the time suggest otherwise. In President Lincoln’s first inaugural address, he said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so.” During the war, in an 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln said, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery.” A recent article by Baltimore’s Loyola College Professor Thomas DiLorenzo titled “The Great Centralizer,” in The Independent Review (Fall 1998) cites quotation after quotation of similar northern sentiment about slavery.



Lincoln’s intentions, as well as that of many northern politicians, were summarized by Stephen Douglas during the presidential debates. Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to “impose on the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by the central government” that “place at defiance the intentions of the republic’s founders.” Douglas was right, and Lincoln’s vision for our nation has now been accomplished beyond anything he could have possibly dreamed.



A precursor for a War Between the States came in 1832, when South Carolina called a convention to nullify tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, referred to as the “Tariffs of Abominations.” A compromise lowering the tariff was reached, averting secession and possibly war. The North favored protective tariffs for their manufacturing industry. The South, which exported agricultural products to and imported manufactured goods from Europe, favored free trade and was hurt by the tariffs. Plus, a northern-dominated Congress enacted laws similar to Britain’s Navigation Acts to protect northern shipping interests.



Shortly after Lincoln’s election, Congress passed the highly protectionist Morrill tariffs. That’s when the South seceded, setting up a new government. Their constitution was nearly identical to the U.S. Constitution except that it outlawed protectionist tariffs, business handouts and mandated a two-thirds majority vote for all spending measures.



The only good coming from the War Between the States was the abolition of slavery. The great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of-the governed” was overturned by force of arms. By destroying the states’ right to secession, Abraham Lincoln opened the door to the kind of unconstrained, despotic, arrogant government we have today, something the framers of the Constitution could not have possibly imagined.



States should again challenge Washington’s unconstitutional acts through nullification. But you tell me where we can find leaders with the love, courage and respect for our Constitution like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John C. Calhoun.





Copyright by Walter E. Williams





Dr. Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist.

Posted by J. Stephen Conn at 8:16 AM

Are We South Carolina "Nationalists"?

From Third Palmetto Republic:

Are we South Carolina ‘nationalists’?


On July 24, 2010, in SC, Secession, US Empire, by Michael ....In the popular sense of the word, Russia, Canada and France are all nations. In other words, they are independent governments. In this sense of the word the United States today is “one nation” as the Pledge of Allegiance states since it it thus far remains a single, self-ruling government. This understanding of the word, though popular, is not accurate. “The idea of a nation (from the Latin word natio which derives from natus “(of) birth”) implies a common blood relationship.” This blood relationship defines something tribal and cultural which people generally do not mean when they talk of the United States as a country. Typically what people mean by “nation” is an independent state. “[T]he word state derives from an Italian term, lo stato, coined by Machiavelli to describe the whole of the social hierarchy that governs and rules a country… A state, then, may be defined as an institutional structure charged with exercising authority within a definable jurisdictional purview (which is often territorial in nature).” In more common terms, a state is an independent country.



South Carolinians are certainly unique even in the South, yet we are not our own nation of people. We are part of a broader Southern culture (and beyond that we are also part of the broad North American civilization that includes Canada and the United States and which is much different in terms of language, religion and culture from neighboring Latin America). Our nationality and culture would remain even despite great political change. An Italian was ethnically and nationally an Italian no matter which of the numerous independent states he was from in the Middle Ages. The Italians didn’t have to be united and forced together under Mussolini to start being Italian. Likewise, a Southerner is Southern no matter which of the Southern States he is from – and irregardless of whether these were independent, dependent or abolished all completely. Unassimilated immigrants who live in South Carolina remain part of the nation from which they come. In all of the United States there are many different nations: the Hawaiians, the Lakota, the Amish, the Seminole, etc.



So, we are not South Carolina nationalists since South Carolina is not a nation. We are, however, for the independence of South Carolina. We’re South Carolinians and patriots and secessionists and are very proud of our land and country – that of the Palmetto State. We understand that a free South Carolina has numerous advantages over remaining with the United States. We want to grasp these advantages. We want to forge our own future towards prosperity and security free of the orders that come out of Washington, DC.



This post will be continued with a piece on “country” – what is our country?

Friday, July 23, 2010

Why Doesn't The Confederacy Fade Away?

From Civil War Memory:

Why Doesn’t the Confederacy Just Fade Away?


July 23, 2010



in Civil War Culture,Civil War Historians,Lost Cause



Historian David Blight has written a little editorial that is making its way around various newspapers today. The last section caught my attention and I thought it would make for a thought provoking post:



In 1907, Mosby drove a dagger into the heart of Lost Cause mythology about slavery: “I am not ashamed that my family were slaveholders. The South went to war on account of slavery. I am not as honored for having fought on the side of slavery – a soldier fights for his country … the South was my country.” Why doesn’t the Confederacy just fade away? Is it because we are irresistibly fascinated by catastrophic loss? Or is it something else? Is it because the Confederacy is to this day the greatest conservative resistance to federal authority in American history? Or is it that nothing punctuates the long and violent story of white supremacy in America quite like the brief four years of the Confederate States of America?



Is it really all about federalism? Or the honoring of ancestors? Or valor and loyalty? Or regional identity? Or about white racial solidarity in an America becoming browner and more multi-ethnic every day? In 1951, in an essay probing how and why Americans have a difficult time facing their racial past, AfricanAmerican writer James Baldwin left a telling observation: “Americans have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.”



We should decorate our battlefield heroes, and we have been doing so for a century and a half. We can only wonder whether this time, during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, we can finally face the past and probe the real causes and consequences of that conflict, or whether we will content ourselves again with unexamined moral contradictions and piquant confections in our public memory. If we do it better this time, we will need stronger verbs than “involved,” and a good dose of Mosby’s candor

The Declaration Of Southern Cultural Independence

From The League of the South:




THE DECLARATION OF

SOUTHERN CULTURAL INDEPENDENCE

(Issued at Montgomery, Alabama, on 4 March 2000)





“We, as citizens of the sovereign States of the South, proclaim before Almighty God and before all nations of the earth, that we are a separate and distinct people, with an honourable heritage and culture worthy of protection and preservation. Standing in the very place where our President Jefferson Davis stood in 1861, we declare that Southerners are entitled, like all peoples, to self-determination. Looking ahead to the time when political self-determination is a reality, we hereby pledge ourselves to the preservation of our culture in preparation for, and in the fervent hope of, the coming of that day.



To this end, we exhort all Southerners to abjure the realm of the American Empire that now threatens the liberties of our families and communities, and of the corrupt and sterile national culture that pervades this land. The national culture of the United States is violent and profane, coarse and rude, cynical and deviant, and repugnant to the Southern people and to every people with authentic Christian sensibilities. Purveyors of the national culture have everywhere lowered standards of morality and debased human dignity. They have appealed to mankind's worst impulses through profanity and obscenity in the arts and literature; they have depicted decadence and debauchery as normal and desirable; they have distorted Southern symbols and denied our right to interpret or display those symbols; they have assumed the authority of parents in the areas of religion and education; they thus have driven a wedge between the generations; they have prostituted all areas of thought and learning for market share; they have demonised Southern heroes and canonised tyrants and war criminals; they have distorted Southern history to advance their ideas of social justice; they thus have driven a wedge between the races and regions; they have destroyed hope; they have spread despair; they have called good evil and evil good; they have everywhere substituted the opinions of men for the decrees of God.



We, as Southerners, will, as far as possible, decline to participate in this alien, national culture. Rather, we shall seek to defend and perpetuate our noble heritage and be of service to our people. In doing so, we will emulate our great heroes--Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Calhoun, Davis, Lee, and Jackson, among others. In an attempt to preserve Southern language, speech, manners, music, literature, tradition, thought, custom, and faith, we pledge to cooperate economically to build and sustain our separate educational and cultural institutions. We intend regional and local action; pledging blood, treasure, and sacred honour, we shall starve the national malignance and nourish the goodness close at hand.



Our cultural inheritance is not based upon the abstract slogans, armed doctrines, and sanctified greed that characterizes the present American regime. Instead, it is based on the permanent things that order and sustain life: faith, family, tradition, community, and private property; loyalty, courage, and honour. Cut off from these permanent things, the South will become only a point on the compass, and our descendants will justifiably curse us for the destruction of their noble heritage.



To our Southern forebears the triune God gave the inspiration and wisdom to create a confederated, constitutional republic based on the principle of local self-government and sustained by a vibrant and vital cultural heritage. We consider our heritage a sublime and unmerited blessing and we cherish it. Today it is threatened as never before by the godless national culture of death, supported by an overbearing government that acknowledges no limits to its power.



We reaffirm the cultural inheritance of our honourable forefathers and declare to the world our intention to defend and preserve it. The preservation of historic cultures--especially those that establish liberty--has never been cheap or easy. We hereby proclaim to the world that the struggle to protect and advance our Southern cultural heritage begins in earnest today. Henceforth, we shall stand steadfast in defense of our inheritance as free men and women of the South, and we welcome all who share our principles to stand with us. As witness to our intent, we affix our signatures to this Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence, invoking the blessings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, on a just cause.”



(Please note British orthography used in Declaration)



______________



Statement issued by Dr. Michael Hill of Killen, Alabama. He can be reached for further comment at (256) 757-6789 or by email

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Confederate POW-MIA Flag

From SLMN News and Confederate POW Flag:

Confederate POW-MIA Flag








A brief overview of Confederates in Union POW camps.



Approximately 215,000 Southerners were captured and confined in Union POW camps. Of these, approximately 26,000 Confederates died while in captivity or 12.1 % of those Southerners who were captured in the conflict. In many of these prison camps records were minimal or not kept at all. The conditions were heinous. Lack of clean water, food, adequate clothing and medical care contributed to the deaths and dismal conditions in the camps. Brutality by the guards, commanding officers and the federal government took its toll also. Broiled rat was regarded as cuisine and any dog that wandered into the camp was killed and eaten. At Camp Morton POW camp located in Indiana, 24 black Confederates and 1 Hispanic Confederate are buried. It is estimated that between 250-300 black, Hispanic and Native American Confederates passed through this camp. These veterans faired as badly as their white brothers in arms.



This SCV (Scala Caeli Vale) “The ladder to heaven- farewell” flag is dedicated to the memory of those who died and those who survived the horrors in those wretched Union camps. The gray field represents the Confederate gray. The yellow star represents all those who died in the conflict, combatants and Southern civilians (approximately 50,000) that were killed by the Union Army. Many black and white people were robbed, raped, tortured and starved to death by the “Northern Liberators”. The Seal of the Confederacy with George Washington pointing the way is surrounded by the crops grown in the South which would include; corn, tobacco, cotton, beans, etc. The circle of stars represents each of the Confederate states. The navy blue St. Andrews Cross is the color of mourning.



Above the seal is the motto: “You Shall Not Be Forgotten”. Beneath the seal POW-MIA’s with the “Deo Vindice” within the seal which basically means “God Vindicates”.



This flag was created in dedication to James Madison Gornto, an ancestor, who was a Private in the 4th Florida Infantry Company “C”. He was captured at Missionary Ridge, TN and confined in December 1863.He later died the same month at Rock Island federal POW camp Illinois and is buried in plot #39.



This unique one of a kind and copyrighted flag is being offered to those who have sympathies towards the South and to the surviving relatives (soldiers & civilians) who perished. At Rock Island POW camp the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument that states;



In Memory Of The Confederate

Veterans Who Died At The

Rock Island Confederate

Prison Camp. May They Never

Be Forgotten. Let No Man

Asperse The Memory Of

Our Sacred Dead. They Were

Men Who Died For A Cause They

Believed Was Worth Fighting For And

Made The Ultimate Sacrifice



We say; "You Shall Not Be Forgotten". As long as duty, honor and sacrifice define Southern heroism your memory will live forever.



"Confederate veterans have been declared by the U.S. Congress in 1958 to be due the same respect, rights, and honors of any other American veterans. Quoting from the United States Statutes at Large, Volume 72, Part 1 Pages 133-134, "By Federal act of Congress (May 23, 1958) all Confederate veterans are United States Military Veterans, and deserve all the rights and honors pertinent to such service."



Confederate veterans are thus not only recognized as United States citizens, but fully as a Federally-recognized member of the U.S. Military (with Veterans' status) as well.







A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this flag goes to support SCV (Sons of Confederate Veterans), Camp 2086, Dixie Defenders, Cross City, FL.



This flag is made of polyester D100 and is 3’ x 5.’



To get your very own Confederate POW Flag, please see Ordering Info.



The Confederate POW-MIA flag is currently flying in the following states and countries; Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington state, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Nevada, Virginia, New York state, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arizona, Ohio the U.K. and Iraq.



A DVD entitled "The Truth Concerning The Confederate Battle Flag" will be included at no additional charge.















© 2010 Confederate POW Flag - Kenn Lightfoot, All Rights Reserved

Monday, July 19, 2010

Glenn Beck's Lincoln Problem

From Lew Rockwell and Liberty Pulse:

I heartily agree with the author; I usually agree with Glenn Beck, but on the issue of Lincoln, I never have.

Glenn Beck’s Lincoln Contradictions


by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Recently by Thomas DiLorenzo: Inflating War











I’ve been occasionally watching Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel and think he has done an admirable job of smoking out and identifying the shockingly hardcore, radical socialists who dominate the Obama administration. He has also done a generally good job talking about the libertarian founding principles of America, how they have been lost, and our duty to regain them. But he has been absolutely abysmal when discussing the subject of Lincoln, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, and its legacy. I suspect that the reason for this disconnect with historical reality is that: 1) The Fox News Channel is essentially a propaganda arm of the neoconservative political cabal that has captured the Republican Party; 2) One of the cornerstones of neocon ideology is Lincoln idolatry and hatred of the South and Southerners. (Professor Paul Gottfried, for one, has written extensively about this.) 3) Therefore, if Glenn wants to keep his gig at Fox, he must toe the party line on Lincoln. Being otherwise libertarian – while the Democrats are in power – serves the purposes of the neocon cabal nicely.



To the neocons, Lincoln idolatry serves the purpose of helping to prop up the centralized, bureaucratic, liberty-destroying, military-industrial complex that defines their existence. As William F. Buckley, Jr., the original neocon, declared in 1952, fighting the Cold War meant that "we have got to accept Big Government for the duration," including "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our own shores" with its "large armies, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington." In case you haven’t noticed, for quite some time now the Republican Party has stood for war, war, and more war, and little else. How on earth genuine conservatives who favor limited constitutional government came to embrace Buckley as one of their leading spokesmen is a bizarre mystery.





When I debated one of the gurus of neocon Lincoln idolatry – Harry Jaffa – shortly after The Real Lincoln was published in 2002, he bellowed at one point that "9/11 proves more than ever that we need a strong central government." (In reality, it proved the failure and incapability of "the central government" to protect even its own D.C. headquarters from a few nuts armed with box cutters.) "We need big, totalitarian government to fight all the new Hitlers and potential Hitlers in the world" is the neocon mantra, in a nutshell.



To neocons, Lincoln is the poster boy of militaristic big government that runs roughshod over civil liberties while bankrupting the country with taxes and debt and murdering thousands of innocent foreigners (not that Southerners during the 1861–1865 war were foreigners; they were fellow American citizens). Doesn’t this sound like the Republican Party of today, as embodied in the recently dethroned Bush administration?



Despite his admirable performances discussing the founding fathers, socialism, progressivism, and other topics, Glenn Beck has been absolutely awful and sometimes untruthful when discussing Lincoln and his legacy. During one show he claimed to have read the actual original copy of The Confederate Constitution. I assume he made this assertion to show that he must really be quite the expert on the document. I didn’t believe him when he said this, and his next sentence proved to me that he did not read the document. The next sentence was the statement that the formal title of the document was "The Slaveholders’ Constitution . . ." Anyone can look the document up at Yale University’s online Avalon Project, which warehouses all the American founding documents, commentaries, and more, to see for yourself that Beck was wrong about this.



Beck’s next false statement was that "I read it" (the Confederate Constitution) and "it wasn’t about states’ rights, it was all about slavery." Read it yourself online. It is a virtual carbon copy of the U.S. Constitution, with a few exceptions: The Confederate president had a line-item veto; served for one six-year term; protectionist tariffs are outlawed; government subsidies for corporations are outlawed; and the "General Welfare Clause" of the U.S. Constitution was deleted.





The act of secession was the very essence of states’ rights, contrary to Beck’s proclamation, for the basic assumption was that the states were sovereign. They delegated certain defined powers to the central government for their own mutual benefit, but all other powers remained in the hands of the people and the states, as stated in the Tenth Amendment. As sovereigns, they had a right to secede for whatever reason. If a state needed the permission of others to secede, as Lincoln argued, then it was not really sovereign.



The U.S. Constitution adopted a federal, not a national system of government. That is another way of saying a states’ rights system of government. The Confederate Constitution was nearly identical.



As for slavery, the Confederate Constitution was not essentially different from the U.S. Constitution as it existed at the time. Beck was grossly deceiving when he told his audience that the Confederate Constitution protected slavery while saying not one word about how the U.S. Constitution did the exact same thing. Slavery had been protected by the U.S. Constitution since 1789. That’s seventy-two years of slavery protection under the U.S. Constitution. A Fugitive Slave Clause was written into the original U.S. Constitution, and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress was never challenged constitutionally. That in fact is why the great libertarian abolitionist Lysander Spooner launched so many vitriolic attacks on the Lincoln administration. As a trained lawyer, he had laid out the constitutional case against slavery, but the Lincoln administration and the Republican Party wanted nothing to do with him or his peaceful route to emancipation – the same route all other countries of the world (and the Northern states) took during the nineteenth century to end slavery.



Moreover, Beck’s hero, Lincoln, orchestrated passage through the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives of the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which would have formally and explicitly enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution by prohibiting the government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. This amendment passed the Senate and the House just days before Lincoln was inaugurated. In his first inaugural address he said he believed slavery was already constitutional and then, alluding to the Corwin Amendment, said: "I have no objection to it [slavery protection] being made express and irrevocable" in the Constitution. This was by far the strongest defense of slavery ever made by an American politician, coming from the president himself. Beck and the wacky preacher posing as an intellectual made no mention of this.





More recently, Beck has admirably attacked the idea of "collective salvation" that Obama himself espouses, and which is apparently as much a part of the ideology of the American Left today as militarism fueled by Lincoln idolatry is of the Right. According to the doctrine of "collective salvation," a Christian cannot be saved and go to Heaven unless one first embarks on a crusade to have government "save" the "oppressed" of society by expanding the welfare state, raising taxes, making taxation more "progressive," adopting more racial hiring quotas, and regulating and nationalizing as much of private industry as possible. It is a variant of "liberation theology" which, according to Pope John Paul, II, is essentially Marxism masquerading as Christianity.



What Beck and his wacky preacher/faux Lincoln expert do not know is that the main supporters of the Lincoln regime believed in the exact same quasi-religious ideas. Indeed, it defined their very existence. As explained by Murray Rothbard in "America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861" (in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War, Transaction Publishers, 1997, p. 128):



The North, in particular the North’s driving force, the "Yankees" – that ethnocultural group who either lived in New England or migrated from there to upstate New York, northern and eastern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois – had been swept by a new form of Protestantism. This was a fanatical and emotional neo-Puritanism driven by a fervent "postmillennialism" which held that, as a precondition for the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, man must set up a thousand-year Kingdom of God on Earth.



To the Yankees, their "kingdom" was to be a "perfect society" cleansed of sin, the principal causes of which were slavery, alcohol, and Catholicism. Furthermore, "government is God’s major instrument of salvation," Rothbard wrote. This is why the Yankees never seriously considered ending Southern slavery how THEY had ended it in their own states – peacefully through some kind of compensated emancipation. They were not so concerned about the welfare of the poor slaves. Indeed, even Tocqueville noticed that "the problem of race," as he phrased it, was worse in the North than it was in the South. Instead, as Rothbard continues:



The Northern war against slavery partook of fanatical millennialist fervor, of a cheerful willingness to uproot institutions, to commit mayhem and mass murder, to plunder and loot and destroy, all in the name of high moral principle and the birth of a perfect world. The Yankee fanatics were veritable Pattersonian humanitarians with the guillotine: the Anabaptists, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, of their era.





"Collective salvation," as opposed to the individualistic salvation that the Bible teaches, was what motivated the Yankees and their war on the South. This of course is exactly what Glenn Beck has been ranting and raving about recently when it is practiced by opponents of the neocon establishment – the exact same establishment that embraces the Lincolnite, Yankee millennialist fervor as one of its defining characteristics. That’s why the neocons constantly invoke Lincoln’s "all men are created equal" words from the Gettysburg Address (via Jefferson’s Declaration of Secession) to "justify" their endless military meddling in over 100 countries of the world. ALL men deserve "equal" liberty, they tell us, and it is OUR job to invade, conquer, and occupy any nation on earth where there is a lack of such liberty.



America was founded with the George Washington/Thomas Jefferson foreign policy of commercial relationships with all nations, entangling alliances with none. The neocon establishment, which is influential in both major political parties, believes in just the opposite: "entangling alliances" and endless military interventionism with as many nations as possible, all in the name of some undefinable Great Moral Cause, in the tradition of Dishonest Abe.



Of course, all of this high-handed talk about the Republican Party supposedly being "the party of great moral ideas" is also a convenient smokescreen for the economic greed that is its real motivation, and has been ever since the party first gained power. As Rothbard further explained: "On the economic level, the Republicans [in 1860] adopted the Whig program of statism and big government: protective tariffs, subsidies to big business, strong central government, large-scale public works, and cheap credit spurred by government." It hasn’t changed much since.





July 17, 2010



Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.



Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

The Hypocrisy Of The Union (Northern) Position

From SLMN Blog:

15 July 2010The hypocrisy of the Union position


It was Lincoln's contention that the States of the South never left the Union and that it is in fact impossible to ever leave the Union without the permission of the other States and the Congress. Lincoln claimed the Southern States were in rebellion against the US and he acted according to this belief by prosecuting a war against the South.



Others of Lincoln's Republican Party, especially after the War, claimed that the Southern States were outside the Union and had to meet certain conditions to be re-admitted to it. They were forced to pass controversial laws and amendments to the Constitution that were even opposed by many Northerners. In 1870, five years after the War was over, Georgia became the last Confederate State to be re-admitted under these Congressionally-imposed terms to the Union.



So which is it? Were the Southern States outside the Union from 1861 to 1865 as Congressional Republicans claimed in forcing all sorts of legislation upon them as requirements to re-join the Union? Or were the Southern States within the Union the entire time and simply in rebellion against the US government as Lincoln claimed? The two are not mutually possibly. Either Lincoln or the Congress were wrong. Any yet Lincoln prosecuted his war based upon his beliefs and ended up getting 600,000 people killed. And Congress forced legislation and Constitutional amendments based upon its belief. Such is the hypocrisy of the Union position. In the end it comes down to force. The Union government could use the strength of its military to mandate membership in their government and they could force whatever requirements they wished upon the conquered South.

Black Dog, Osage Confederate Officer

From SLMN Blog:

17 July 2010Black Dog II: Osage Confederate officer




My friend Terry Warren, who is from the Osage nation, sent me this picture of a Confederate ancestor of his named Black Dog II (number 6 in the picture). He was the leader of the Osage division of the Cherokee Braves and a Confederate officer who fought at Pea Ridge and 30 or more battles besides that. The picture was probably taken around 1870 or so. Black Dog died in 1910.



Here is more information on the Confederate Indians, the only official allied nations the South ever had.

Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 6:13 PM
 
from Access Genealogy:
 
Osage Indian Tribe History Search For Your Ancestors:


Given:

Surname:







Osage (corruption by French traders of Wazhazhe, their own name). The most important southern Siouan tribe of the western division. Dorsey classed them, under the name Dhegiha, in one group with the Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, and Quapaw, with whom they are supposed to have originally constituted a single body living along the lower course of the Ohio river.

Geographically speaking, the tribe consists of three bands: the Pahatsi or Great Osage, Utsehta or Little Osage, and Santsukhdhi or Arkansas band. These appear to be comparatively modern, however, and the Osage recognize three more closely amalgamated divisions which seem, from the traditional account of them, to represent as many formerly independent tribes. According to this account, as gathered by J. O. Dorsey, the beings which ultimately became men originated in the lowest of the four upper worlds which Osage cosmology postulates and ascended to the highest where they obtained souls. Then they descended until they came to a red-oak tree on which the lowest world rests and by its branches reached our earth. They were divided into two sections, the Tsishu, or peace people, who kept to the left, living on roots, etc.; and the Wazhazhe (true Osage), or war people, who kept to the right and killed animals for their food. Later these two divisions exchanged commodities, and after some time the Tsishu people came into possession of four kinds of corn and four kinds of pumpkins, which fell from the left hind legs of as many different buffaloes. Still later the tribe came upon a very warlike people called Hangka-utadhantse, who lived on animals, and after a time the Tsishu people succeeded in making peace with them, when they were taken into the nation on the war side. Originally there were seven Tsishu gentes, seven Wazhazhe gentes, and seven Hangka gentes, but, in order to maintain an equilibrium between the war and peace sides after adopting the Hangka, the number of their gentes was reduced to five and the number of Wazhazhe gentes to two. In camping the Tsishu gentes are on the left or north side of the camping circle, and the Hangka or Wazhazhe gentes on the right or south side, the entrance to the circle being eastward. Beginning at this entrance the arrangement of gentes is as follows:

Tsishu gentes (from east to west):

l, Tsishusintsakdhe;

2,Tsedtukaindtse;

3,Minkin;

4, Tsishuwashtake;

5, Haninihkashina;

6, Tsetduka;

7, Kdhun.



Hangka gentes (from east to west):

8, Washashewanun;

9, Hangkautadhantsi;

10, Panhkawashtake;

11, Ilangkaahutun;

12, Wasapetun;

13, Cpkhan;

14, Kanse.

The gentile organization appears to have been very similar to that of the Omaha and other southern tribes of this division, involving paternal descent, prohibition of marriage in the gentes of both father and mother, and probably gentile taboos. The functions of the various gentes were also differentiated to a certain extent. Matters connected with war were usually undertaken by the war gentes and peace-making by the peace gentes, while it was the duty of the chief of the Tsishuwashtake gens to defend any foeman who might slip into the camp-circle and appeal to him for protection. The Tsishu gentes are also said to have had the care and naming of children. Heralds were chosen. from certain special gentes, and certain others monopolized the manufacture of moccasins, war standards, and war pipes. On the death of a head-chief the leading man called a council and named four candidates, from whom the final selection was made. Seven appears as a sacred number in the social organization of the Osage, but from the war and other customs of the tribe it appears that the sacred ceremonial number was usually four (Dorsey in Am. Nat., Feb. 1884).

The first historical notice of the Osage appears to be on Marquette's autograph map of 1673, which locates them apparently on Osage river, and there they are placed by all subsequent writers until their removal westward in the 19th century. Douay (1686) assigns them 17 villages, but these must have been nothing more than hunting camps, for Father Jacques Gravier, in a letter written in 1694 from the Illinois mission, speaks of but one, and later writers agree with his statement, though it must be understood as applying only to the Great Osage. Gravier interviewed two Osage and two Missouri chiefs who had come to make an alliance with the Illinois, and says of them: "The Osage and Missouri do not appear to be so quick witted as the Illinois; their language does not seem very difficult. The former do not open their lips and the latter speak still more from the throat than they" (Jes. Rel., lxiv, 171, 1900). Iberville in 1701 (Margry, Dec., iv, 599, 1880) mentions a tribe of 1,200 to 1,500 families living in the region of Arkansas river, near the Kansa and the Missouri, and, like these, speaking a language that he took to be Quapaw. The name of this tribe through errors in copying and printing became Crevas, but the description indicates the Osage. In 1714 they assisted the French in defeating the Foxes at Detroit. Although visits of traders were evidently quite common before 1719, the first official French visit appears to have been in that year by Du Tisné, who learned that their village on Osage river then contained 100 cabins and 200 warriors. The village of the Missouri was higher up, and a short distance south west of the latter was another Osage village which from later maps is shown to have been occupied by the Little Osage. Then, as always, the tribe was at war with most of the surrounding peoples, and La Harpe witnesses to the terror in which they were held by the Caddoan tribes. The Illinois were also inveterate enemies, though at one time, when driven west of the Mississippi by the Iroquois, they fled to the Osage for protection. Charlevoix met a party of Osage at the Kaskaskia village on Oct. 20, 1721. Regarding them he wrote: "They depute some of their people once or twice every year to sing the calumet among the Kaskasquias, and they are now actually here at present." The French officer Bossu met some Osage at Cahokia in 1756. About 1802, according to Lewis and Clark, nearly half of the Great Osage under a chief named Big-track migrated to Arkansas river, thus constituting the Arkansas band. The salve explorers (1804) found the Great Osage, numbering about 500 warriors, in a village on the south bank of Osage river, the Little Osage, nearly half as numerous, 6 miles distant, and the Arkansas band, numbering 600 warriors, on Vermilion river, a branch of the Arkansas.

On Nov. 10, 1808, by a treaty with the United States concluded at Ft Clark, Kansas, near Kansas City, Mo., the Osage ceded to the United States all their lands east of a line running due south from Ft Clark to Arkansas river, and also all of their lands west of Missouri river, the whole comprising the larger part of what is now the state of Missouri and the north part of Arkansas. The territory remaining to them, all of the present state of Oklahoma north of Canadian and Arkansas rivers, was still further reduced by the provisions of treaties at St Louis, June 2, 1825; Ft Gibson, Indian Territory, Jan. 11, 1839; and Canville, Kans., Sept. 29, 1865; and the limits of their present reservation were established by act of Congress of July 15, 1870. This consisted (1906) of 1,470,058 acres, and in addition the tribe possessed funds in the Treasury of the United States amounting to $8,562,690, including a school fund of $119,911, the whole yielding an annual income of $428,134. Their income from pasturage leases amounted to $98,376 in the same year, and their total annual income was therefore about $265 per capita, making this tribe the richest in the entire United States. By act of June 28, 1906, an equal division of the lands and funds of the Osage was provided for.

Estimates of Osage population later than that of Lewis and Clark are the following: Sibley, 1,250 men (including 400 Great Osage, 250 Little Osage, and 600 of the Arkansas band); Morse (1821), 5,200 (including 4,200 Great Osage and 1,000 Little Osage) ; Porter (1829), 5,000; U.S. Indian Office (1843), 4,102; Schoolcraft (1853), 3,758 (exclusive of an important division known as Black Dog's band). According to the Indian Office census of 1877, they numbered 3,001; in 1884, 1,547; 1886, 1,582; 1906 (after the division of the tribal lands and trust funds had been provided for), 1,994.

The following villages were occupied by the Osage at different time:



Big Chief,

Black Dog,

Heakdhetanwan

Intapupshe

Khdhasiukdhin

Little Osage Village Manhukdhintanwan

Nanzewaspe

Nikhdhitanwan

Pasnkdhin

Paghuukdhinpe

Santsepasu Santsukdhin

Takdheskautsiupshe

Tanwakanwakaghe

Tanwanshinka

Wakhakukdhin

White Hair Village

The following bands and divisions have not been identified:

Shapeinihkashina

Petkhaninihkashina

Tatseinihkashina



•Additional Osage Indian Resources



◦Osage Census Records



The books presented are for their historical value only and are not the opinions of the Webmasters of the site. Handbook of American Indians, 1906
 
And from American Tribes.com:
 
Black Dog - Osage


« Thread Started on May 25, 2009, 9:26am »



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Black Dog I was born circa 1780 near what later became St. Louis, Missouri. Later Black Dog I was named a chief of the Hunkah Division of the Osage tribe which later became known as Black Dog's Band. Their camp was located in the vicinity of where the city of Coffeyville, Kansas, is now located. In 1803 Black Dog I moved his Band to Ho-tsa-Tun-ka (Big Cedar) now Claremore, Oklahoma. However, to end Osage-Cherokee hostilities the U.S. government forced all Osage bands to remove from Arkansas and Oklahoma in 1839. These bands were relocated on the Verdigris River in the Kansas part of Indian Territory, where the Missouri Osage had agreed to settle in 1825. Black Dog I died on 24 March 1848.



Black Dog I had a son born in 1827, now known as Black Dog II. Black Dog II was elected Principal Chief of the Osage in 1880 and died in October 1910.



*******



"The Osage chief Black Dog was born circa 1780 near St. Louis, Missouri. His village, Pasuga (or Big Cedar), was located at present Claremore, Oklahoma. His original name, Zhin-gawa-ca (or Shinka-Wah-Sa), meant Dark Eagle or Sacred Little One. He possibly earned the designation Manka-Chonka or Black Dog against the Comanche. At a Fort Gibson meeting during March 1833, he was called Shonkah-Sabe or Black Horse. An Osage trail in Kansas and Oklahoma was known as the Black Dog Trail. Engineered by Black Dog, it extended from east of present Baxter Springs, Kansas, to the Great Salt Plains in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma. Under his leadership a substantial proportion of the Osage hunted west to the Salt Plains and the upper Arkansas River. It was not uncommon for members of his band to raid, hunt, and trade as far away as Mexico and Santa Fe. Portraits of Black Dog were painted by artists George Catlin in 1834 and John Mix Stanley in 1843. Blind in his left eye, he stood around seven feet tall and weighed an estimated three hundred pounds. His only son, also called Black Dog, was born in 1827 and died in 1910. Black Dog was a contemporary of and shared power with chiefs Claremore and Pawhuska. His political control perhaps extended over a third of the tribe. He was on generally friendly terms with U.S. authorities and occasionally ordered his braves to hunt and scout for American troops. Black Dog died at the present site of Claremore, Oklahoma, on March 24, 1848."



Taken from:

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/B/BL002.html



*******



"Techong-ta-saba, or Black Dog I -

PRINCIPAL CHIEF OF THE OSAGES.

A man of six feet six inches in heighth, and well proportioned, weighing some two hundred and fifty pounds, and rather inclined to corpulency. He is blind of an eye. He is celebrated more for his feats in war than as a counsellor; his opinions are, however, sought in all matters of importance appertaining to the welfare of his people. The name, Black Dog, was given to him from a circumstance which happened some years since, when on a war expedition against the Camanches. He with his party, were about to surprise their camp on a very dark night, when a black dog, by his continued barking, kept them at bay. After several ineffectual attempts, being repelled by the dog, Techong-ta-saba became exasperated and fired an arrow at random, hitting him in the head and causing instant death. By this name he is known familiarly to the Officers of the Army and white traders in that section of country. . ."



Taken from:

http://siris-artexhibition.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siaeci&uri=full=3100016~!43766~!0#focus



*******



Black Dog I - Osage (painted by George Catlin) - 1834





*******



Black Dog II and some other Osage joined the 1st Osage Battalion, C.S.A. (Confederate States of America) around 1862, under Major Broke Arm. This military unit was composed of three companies. Black Dog served as a Captain of Company B. Military records are incomplete on their activities, but it is believed that this unit was involved at the battles of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, both in northwest Arkansas in 1862.



*******



"The various Osage Indian chiefs and leaders did sign a Treaty on 2 October 1861 with Albert Pike, Commissioner of the Confederate States, to support the southern cause. The Osage tribes indicated they would provide at least 500 warriors to serve in the Confederate States Army. The 1st Osage Battalion, C.S.A., was organized with three companies in early 1862. It was sometimes known as Osage Broke Arm's Cavalry Battalion. This military unit did provide some 200 men to serve in the Confederate States Army. It was assigned first to General Ben McCulloch, then later to Brigadier General Douglas H. Cooper in his Cooper's Indian Cavalry Division in 1863-64. The 1st Osage Battalion served under Brigadier General Stand Watie in his First Indian Cavalry Brigade. Surrendered by Brigadier General Stand Watie near Doaksville, Indian Territory, on 23 June 1865.

Raids and Battles:

* Osage Mill and Mission in Kansas: (September, 1861)

* Humboldt, Kansas: ( September, 1861)

* Pea Ridge (6-8 March 1862)

* Prairie Grove

Commander:

Major Broke Arm, an Osage Indian.

Field Staff:

Captain Louis Pharamond Chouteau, Adjutant, and Osage Interpreter.

Company A:

Captain Augustus Captain (Ogeese Captaine)

1st Lieutenant No-pa-wal-la

2nd Lieutenant Wah-kou-che-la

2nd Lieutenant Sta-lach-la-ton

Company B:

Captain Black Dog (Stdanta-sape)

1st Lieutenant Ne-kar-gah-hee

2nd Lieutenant Wah-sha-sho-wah-ti-in-ga

2nd Lieutenant Wah-cha-o-nso-she

Company C:

Captain Wah-dah-ne-gah

1st Lieutenant No-ne-char-she

2nd Lieutenant Wah-skon-mon-ne

2nd Lieutenant F.A. Lewis"



"Most of the Osages who joined the army of the South were from Black Dog's band that resided on the Verdigris, but Augustus Captaine and some others who lived near the Mission went south. The Black Dog warriors came home before the war was over, but Captaine remained for sometime after the war closed."



"In 1861 there was a man by the name of Dorn who was the Osage Indian agent." says A.T. Dickerman, in the Oswego Democrat. "He had been appointed to the agency by President Buchanan. He was of southern origin and very popular among the Indians. When the war broke out he went with the south and used his infleunce [sic] to take the Osages with him. But old White Hair, head chief of the nation, was a good Catholic and thru the influence of Fr. Schoenmaker, head of the Catholic mission among them, he did all he could to have the Osages remain neutral. But in spite of all he and Little Bear, chief of the Little Osages, could do, the Black Dog band, numbering about 1000, big, little, old and young, went south and joined themselves with the southern confederacy"..."But in about January 1865, they began to tire of the war in which they got no pay, and quit fighting. They came back onto the Verdigris river just below Coody's Bluff and wintered there."



"Augustus was also present at the inception of the Drum Creek treaty, signed May 27, 1868 at the Drum Creek Agency, which was at the confluence of Drum Creek and the Verdigris River. This treaty originally sold a 30 mile strip of land, totaling 8,003,000 acres, known as the Osage Diminished Reserve, to Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston (L.L. & G.) Railway Company for $1,600,000. The government was represented by Alex R. Banks, special U.S. indian agent; George W. Yates, captain Seventh cavalry; M.W. Reynolds, reporter for commission; Charles Robinson, I.S. Kalloch, Moses Neal, W.P. Murphy, and William Babcock. Interpretors for the Osages were Augustus Captain, Alexander Beyett, and Lewis P. Choteau. Chiefs present at the signing included Joseph Paw-ne-no-pashe, White Hair, principal chief; Black Dog, Little Beaver, Nopawalla, Strike Axe, Wayohake, Chetopah, Hard Rope, Watisanka, and Melotumuni. Due to political struggles between the government and the railroads, the original treaty was never ratified as written. In September 1870 the treaty was modified, selling the land to the U.S. government for $1.25 an acre. This was the final treaty which removed the Osage from Kansas to their new home in Oklahoma, then known as Indian Territory."



Taken from:

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/a/r/Kelly-D-Park/GENE77-0003.html



*******

And From The Oklahoma Division Of The SCV:

Oklahoma Division


Sons of Confederate Veterans











Stand Watie and the Confederate Indians

By John G. Dwyer



Have you ever noticed that some participants in America’s greatest calamity, its War Between the States, are quite familiar to us? Meanwhile, many others of that eventful age are ignored or likely no longer even known by those academics who are the gatekeepers of our national memory. Among the forgotten are the American Indians of the Five "Civilized" Tribes – Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole – most of whom fought for the Confederacy.



Few participants in that war exhibited greater courage, or suffered greater loss, than these long-forgotten patriots, whose blood kin included such distinguished personages as the great Sequoyah (George Gist), who committed the Cherokee language into an alphabet. Their lands and communities in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), growing and prosperous before the War of 1861–65, lay in rubble and ruin afterwards. These Indians, many of them slaveowners, fit none of the customary American history stereotypes. Throughout their lives, they adhered to many of the core values of America’s Founding Fathers, including a devotion to the Christian faith; commitment to an excellent education distinguished by classical and scriptural distinctives; belief in self-reliant labors and the possession and cultivation of private property; support of the practices of limited government – especially on the national level – and separated powers; and the principles of free market economics, and the creativity and innovation incumbent in that.



Such a man was three-quarter-Cherokee Stand Watie, the only Indian to attain the rank of general in either the Federal orConfederate armies. Born in 1806 near Rome, Georgia, and educated at a Christian church mission school in Tennessee, Watie proved himself a leader even as a young man. A frequent correspondent in the 1830s with President Andrew Jackson (not to be confused with Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson), he recognized that man’s determination to proceed with the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokees from the southeastern United States. For instance, when uninvited white gold-seekers flooded Cherokee land in north Georgia in the early 1830s, the United States Supreme Court ordered the state to protect the mostly-Christian tribe and let them live in peace on their own land. President Jackson famously responded: "The Chief Justice [John Marshall] has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it."



So Stand Watie, divining the imminent slaughter of his people if they did not leave, and seeking to craft the best possible arrangement for them, helped negotiate the 1835 New Echota Treaty between the United States and the Cherokee Nation to which he belonged. He and a couple thousand other Cherokees left soon after for Indian Territory. The majority of Cherokees, however, led by Principal Chief (similar to a President) John Ross, who was 7/8 Scot and 1/8 Cherokee, opposed the New Echota Treaty and the relocation. They remained in their homeland until the U.S. army forcibly uprooted them a couple of years later. Broken promises by President Jackson and other Federal officials turned this phase of the Cherokees’ westward relocation, in 1838-39, into the tragic Trail of Tears. The Cherokees called it, literally, "The Place Where We Cried." Thousands of them, mostly women and children, died in the vast open wilderness amidst a howling winter and sometimes brutal Federal soldiers, en route to their new homeland.



Once there, many of Ross’s followers harbored bitter resentment against Watie and other leaders of what came to be known as the Treaty Party. Within six months of the larger Cherokee party arriving in Indian Territory, every Treaty Party leader except Watie was murdered. He escaped only by a comrade’s warning, his own wits and courage, and the borrowed horse of white Presbyterian missionary friend Samuel Worcester. Years later, Watie and Ross and their two factions made peace, though their variant philosophies would flare again during the War Between the States.



GUERILLA AND GENERAL



A successful planter and journalist, Watie supported the Confederacy from its start. His influence helped lead the Cherokee nation into a formal alliance with the South. He and many fellow Cherokees, including William Penn Adair, John Drew, and Clem Rogers (father of famous American humorist and motion picture icon Will Rogers), as well as other Indians such as Seminole John Jumper and Creek G. W. Grayson, gained renown for their battle exploits – renown largely ignored in traditional American histories. The hard-riding Clem Rogers, for instance, was one of Watie’s chief cavalry scouts.





After fighting commenced in the (Indian) "Nations," Watie organized and commanded the Cherokee Mounted Rifles. These rough-hewn Oklahoma horse soldiers earned a fearsome reputation, far out of proportion to their numbers, for their accomplishments at such battles as Wilson’s Creek in Missouri and Pea Ridge in Arkansas. At the latter, a subordinate recounted Watie’s mounted Indian troopers, though outnumbered, charging into the face of blazing Federal cannon, capturing them, then turning them on their fleeing Federal enemy: "I don't know how we did it but Watie gave the order, which he always led, and his men could follow him into the very jaws of death. The Indian Rebel Yell was given and we fought like tigers three to one. It must have been that mysterious power of Stand Watie that led us on to make the capture against such odds."



Later, Watie’s legend grew as a guerilla fighter while commanding Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, and Osage troops. One of his most famous exploits was the capture in a shootout on the Arkansas River of a Federal steamship and its $150,000 cargo. Another was his leading Confederate forces to victory in the Second Battle of Cabin Creek, in Indian Territory, where he captured an enormous Federal wagon train, the booty of which clothed his entire regiment and fed them and their civilian dependants for more than a month.



Tragically, the war forced Watie to fight not only Federal troops, who also included Indians, but some of his own people as well. The majority of the John Ross faction transferred their allegiance to the North when events turned against the Confederacy, and after Ross was captured by the Federals. Watie’s own wife and children had to refugee from northeastern Oklahoma down the Texas Road into North Texas in the cold of winter and live out the war amongst the elements.



Year after year, Federal armies from all over the west hunted Watie. They never caught him. Brigadier General and Cherokee Chief Stand Watie fought to the bitter end. He was the last Confederate general to surrender, undaunted and unvanquished, on June 23, 1865, nearly three months after Appomattox.



SACRIFICE AND REMEMBRANCE



Watie returned to financial ruin and a home burned to the ground by Federals during the war. He spent his final years farming and trying to restore his once-beautiful Grand River bottomland, which was devastated by the war. Aging into his mid-sixties, Watie exhausted his war-punished body by committing every talent and meager resource remaining to him to the quality education of his children. Realizing this, one of his daughters, Watica, who had barely learned to read and write during a childhood savaged by the years of total war in the Indian Territory, wrote him from the private school to which he had managed to send her: "I feel proud to think that I have a papa that take the last dollars he has to send me chool."



William Penn Adair

Tragedy continued to mark Watie’s life as his beloved son Saladin – captain, decorated war hero, postwar Southern Cherokee delegate to Congress, and only twenty-one years of age – became the final of his three boys to precede him in death. He also watched as colossal tracts of land legally deeded to the Indians a generation before by the U.S. government, were taken from them as punishment for their support of the Confederacy and given to other tribes; as other vast tracts were confiscated from them and given to the mercantilist railroads racing westward; and as Congress began to levy taxes on Indian Territory business enterprises, while gradually eradicating the Nations’ legally-sanctioned political independence. Tragedy has marked much of the American Indian’s history since then as well, with one of their chief contemporary distinctions being that of helming the largest casino efforts in Oklahoma.



"You can't imagine how lonely I am up here at our old place without any of my dear children being with me," Watie wrote another daughter, Jacqueline, only weeks before his death in 1871. "I would be so happy to have you here, but you must go to school."



Like another fabled Confederate general, Robert E. Lee of Virginia, it was said that Chief Stand Watie died at least partly of a broken heart. Yet Mrs. A. K. Hardcastle wrote to Watie’s widow, the lovely Sarah Bell of Tennessee: "I read with sadness of the death of your much esteemed husband. My tenderest sympathy is yours. I trust you have consolation from a Higher Power than earthly friends for the loss of one so dear to you. His labors on earth have not been in vain, he has done much lasting good for his country and country-men, that will never be forgotten but handed down to the future generations in the book of history for them to follow in his foot-steps and to aspire to leave their foot prints on the sands of time as well as he."



John J. Dwyer is a popular author and speaker and is Adjunct Professor of History at both Southern Nazarene University and Oklahoma City Community College. He is former history chair at a classical college preparatory school, newspaper publisher, and radio host. His books include the new novel When the Bluebonnets Come and the non-fiction historical narrative The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War, both from Bluebonnet Press; the historical novels Stonewall and Robert E. Lee from Broadman & Holman Publishers; the upcoming historical narrative The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People; and is the former editor and publisher of The Dallas/Fort Worth Heritage newspaper.