Long time readers know that Confederacy bashing is an area where I indulge myself in intemperate beliefs; much like I do when it comes to Daylight Saving Time and class basketball. So, you can imagine my reaction when I read a story out of Texas linked to by Sheila Kennedy.
The treasurer of the Hardin County, Texas GOP – and apparently someone involved in the state textbook screening process – is calling for secession.
“We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity. But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity.”
“Texas was once its own country, and many Texans already think in nationalist terms about their state,” Morrison continued. “We need to do everything possible to encourage a long-term shift in thinking on this issue. Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way in peace, sign a free trade agreement among the states and we can avoid this gut-wrenching spectacle every four years.”
We had this national discussion once before, Mr. Morrison. Your side committed treason against the U.S. in service of the principle that property rights were superior to human rights and liberty rights. And your side lost because it was wrong and weaker.
I cannot recommend highly enough Tony Horwitz’s book “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.” The Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War continues to be harmful to this country. It feeds into the feelings of pride and privilege for guys like Hardin and allows them never to address whether the pride and privilege he enjoys are warranted. The Wikipedia entry on Lost Cause introduces it as:
Many white Southerners were devastated economically, emotionally, and psychologically by the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865. Prior to the war, many Southerners proudly felt that their rich military tradition would allow them to prevail in the conflict. When this did not happen, white Southerners sought consolation in attributing their loss to factors beyond their control, such as treachery.
Two thoughts on this – first, it sounds a lot like the “stabbed in the back” mythology in Germany following World War I. Second, the myth of Southern superiority that preceded the war was dashed against reality when that myth was put to the test. Seems like there is a parallel in the pre-election “unskew the polls” movement and whatnot where the conservative information bubble deprived the Romney campaign and its supporters of crucial information about the actual state of the race.
In any event, guys like Hardin need to be chased out of respectable society as does the idea of Southern (or Texan) exceptionalism.
I would say that rightness or wrongness isn’t a factor in the success of a war.
As is sometimes said, “winners get to write history.”
The Confederacy’s military weakness led to their defeat not their wrongness.
That and the good fortune that England/France didn’t back them. That would have made a messy conflict longer and messier.
Well, at the very least, their ancestors could quit pretending that the treason was committed for a morally defensible reason.
You are correct that rightness or wrongness is not a factor in winning a war. But it makes victory more righteous and defeat more ignonimous.
You are correct that generally, the pen of history goes to the victors, to the loser goes the archeologist’s spade. But not in the case of the civil war. The corpse of the Confederacy was burned but not buried.
In a sense, Hardin makes the case for secession. I used to travel to Georgia and Texas almost weekly on legal business. Those places seemed a more foreign country than Ontario. Irrational, bigoted hate mongers like Hardin should not be part of the same country that provides him the freedom to spew such hatred.
So you favor allowing secession, or are you calling for genocide.
Where is there a hint of calling for genocide in my post?
If they wish to secede, they should be permitted to.
The hint of genocide was the equivocal “Irrational, bigoted hate mongers like Hardin should not be part of the same country that provides him the freedom to spew such hatred.” One way to take him out of the country is to allow secession. Another is to “take him out” simpliciter.
There was nothing uneqivocal about my opinion about Hardin. I expressed by opinion very pointedly. A little more literately, perhaps, than calling him a maggot.
But given the context of Doug’s original post, Hardin’s dream of seccession, my contrasting Texas’s other worldliness with the moderate middle-class glow of Ontario, I thought the call to secession was apparent.
I meant nothing “equivocal,” not “unequivocal.”
Let’s forget the Civil War for a moment.
I don’t sense that those who think the course of human events has brought them to where they must dissolve the political bands which have connected them with the USA, have yet paid their decent respect to the opinions of mankind by declaring the causes which impel them to the separation.
A little rigor, please. May we hear the long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object and evincing a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism?
Is this a question, or a passage in a post-structuralist parody?
I don’t know what post-structuralist means.
But, knowing Tipsy (and I was happy to see him in person yesterday), I believe he’s saying that Jefferson & Co. thought it necessary to explain their reasons instead of merely leaping to the bond dissolving part of the Declaration. We should expect no less from our Southern brethren.
And, my guess is, that if and when they get about detailing the specifics, we’ll find that the abuses either aren’t that abusive or are largely imaginary.
Ah! Literacy! How refreshing!
Obviously one former ruling country’s traitors become the new country’s patriots and founding fathers (or mothers). That of course doesn’t end the inquiry concerning views on the moral righteousness of the cause. But I agree with what I think is Doug’s implication that the rantings of Mr. Hardin likely pale in camparison with the writings of Thomas Jefferson.
The explanation was tersely stated by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in the “Cornerstone” speech prior to succession:
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.
Could there be a better percursor to the Southern Exceptionalism you referenced in your original post.
Give Texas to Mexico!
i don’t have anything constructive to add at this point; i just want to point out that the chairman of the Hardin County Republican Party is named Kent Batman.
Kent Batman.
The Indiana Court of Appeals had a judge named Ira Batman back in the 1920s, I think.
Why not let them secede and NOT have a free trade agreement? How would they like that? I don’t really want to compete against the third world labor practices that an unleashed Texas would enact.
Doug,
I have not looked it up in a while, but I believe that although no state may legally secede, Texas may actually break up into as many as five different states. I think it has something to do with the documents admitting Texas.
I’ve Googled that “Texas breakup” subject and it’s some interesting reading, but concludes that intervening events and decisions have essentially negated that “right”.
This is actually just a continuation of what started around four years ago. Obama and the Dem Party once said about gun control that what Chicago needs and Wyoming needs are two separate things. They have since changed that stance back to the central planning, federal gov rules all equal stance. Just in the last four years, a handful of states have passed laws/resolutions claiming individual gun rights can’t be trumped by anything the federal government does.
Not sure where this ends up. I don’t think the red states will leave, but I can see more and more of the producing class taking a step back. They may even decide to live the lifestyle of part of the voting block of the progressives (single motherhood to where the white out-of-wedlock birth rate is 70-80%, cradle to the grave welfare, males in and out of the criminal justice system, etc.). This will only come about if tax rates continue to rise. There is only so much taxation a person will take before they decide it just isn’t worth it anymore. If we have enough people willing to run a company, putting in 50-60 hours a week, making only $100K but taking home only $40K, then maybe things won’t be so bad. But if massive tax hikes go through to support the welfare state, the cost of daily living has to go down. Home values have to crash if people are to obtain the “American Dream.”
The future will be interesting for sure. Steve Hammer wrote about this recently in a Nuvo column. I don’t understand this concept that the US could never break-up. Empires all over the world change on a constant basis. Look at what happened with Russia, the calls by some for the EU to be dissolved, and all the historic empires of the past.
Here is Steve’s column:
http://www.nuvo.net/Hammer/archives/2012/06/27/a-return-to-un-united-states
Well, I suppose we could start looking into where we might be able to hold neo-con(federate) POWs here in Indy. Had a few “gentlemen” from down there as guests for a couple of years. Last location was pretty good, but it’s all built up now.
Somewhere away from the southwest side, though. Lots of “sympathizers” down that way.
Two comments, and I’ll put them into separate threads so comments can be directed correctly.
My wife and I watched a documentary on the history of New York last night, at least part 1 of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York:_A_Documentary_Film
One of the central points about the last half of it was Alexander Hamilton’s views and how they contrasted with Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton viewed industry, banking, and cites as the future with a strong federal government. Jefferson saw farming, country living, and strong state government as the future.
When the time came to repay the debts the states incurred, (New York state being the largest), Hamilton saw it as the federal government’s job to repay the debts. Jefferson (and the southern plantation owners) saw this as the country paying for the cities’ debts, and wanted each state to deal with its own issues.
The compromise was moving the capitol to Washington, DC (at that time, a swamp) giving Jefferson what he wanted, and a federal takeover of the debt, giving Hamilton what he wanted.
It was very interesting learning that this divide over the cities and the countryside has existed since the founding of our country.
It also made us realize that if the electoral collage was ever removed, the Republican party would cease to exist as it does today. It would no longer be a battle between liberal and conservative, but liberal and moderate, as that is what the large population centers consist of.
Part of Hamilton’s plan wasn’t just a matter of seeing debt relief as the government’s job – he wanted the federal government to assume the debt. The wealthy people to whom the debt was owed would then have a vested interest in seeing that the government succeeded. Such people would be bound together by their financial interests even where they lived in different states. It was a clever move for establishing the fledgling country.
As far as the divide between Jefferson and Hamilton, there was a chapter in a history book that began the chapter after the Civil War with the two word sentence, “Hamilton won.”
Yes, they explained that better in the documentary. New York had more debt because it did more fighting than the south. Since the fighting was for the freedom of the entire country, it was fair for the federal government to see that debt as their own, not the responsibility of a single state. The southerners attempted to spin it to their own benefit, but the facts are that they did less fighting, so they got the benefit of freedom without paying as much of the cost.
However, I was already worried my post was long-winded, so I didn’t explain as well as I should have.
Second comment:
I was travelling to Mississippi and Alabama for work a couple of weeks ago. I went with 3 other coworkers who all came from other places to get some famous Alabama BBQ at lunch one day.
When we went to order, the owner could tell I was a northerner (he guessed Michigan), so he asked where we were all from:
Me: Indiana
Owner: *nods head*
Coworker1: Germany
Owner: Welcome!
Coworker2: Germany as well
Owner: Ok!
Coworker3: North Carolina
Owner: All right! We have 1 American!
When the Germans looked confused, he went on to explain the heroics of NC being the first to secede.
The owner had to be over 70. I wonder if this attitude will die with him, or if he passed it on.
“I wonder if this attitude will die with him.”
I wish, but I doubt it. I read General Grant’s memoir a few years ago, and this passage really stuck with me:
“I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance and soldierly ability of the American citizen, no matter what section of the country he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought….For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.”
My guess is that if General Grant knew that 150 years later, we still would be litigating this matter, that people even in the north would view a confederate flag as source of regional pride, or that the civil wear still would be viewed by some folks as not having much to do with slavehe would have had General Lee hanged on the Washington Mall like the traitor he was.
It was South Carolina which seceded first, on December 20th, 1860. North Carolina waited upon the rest and seceded on June 8th, 1861.
Still waiting on the “South Carolina: First in Treason!” license plates.
LOL! I didn’t bother fact-checking the dude, but I do enjoy him not getting that right.
Interesting post and conversation. As a Hoosier who’s also lived in Texas and in the capital of the Confederacy, I can attest to the sometimes baffling cultural differences and the lingering resentment regarding what some call the War of Northern Aggression.
When I returned home to Indianapolis a few years back, I marveled anew at the monument on the circle and its real significance. It’s no mistake that Lady Liberty up there is facing her torch South.
I also commend everyone on this thread to rush to the theater this weekend to see “Lincoln” when it opens in wide release. I had the privilege of a sneak preview. I believe you will be awed and uplifted by the film. The portrayal might even lead some Lost Cause followers to revise their opinions. One can hope.
According to the Tax Foundation the former Confederate states, by and large, receive far more money from the federal government than they pay in taxes. See:
Mississippi receives $1.77 for every dollar of tax.
Alabama a $1.71, Virgina a $1.66, Arkansas a $1.47, Louisiana $1.45, South Carolina $1.38, Tennessee $1.30, North Carolina $1.10, Florida $1.02. Currently the only “contributors” are Georgia ($0.96 cents back on the dollar) and Texas ($0.94 back on the dollar).
A monument was placed just outside the Alamo in the 1930’s with an inscription honoring 100 years of Texas independence. The inscription goes on to recite that the monument was built with funds provided by the United States. Given that kind of mind set letting “them” go could be a substantial step toward controlling the federal deficit.