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Saturday, July 26, 2014
New Executive Director
Washington & Lee Rally
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Canny White House Theorist Versus Outlawed Rebels
From: bernhard1848@gmail.com
Author Francis Butler Simkins observed that the South's leaders "had committed a crime against the dominant patriotism of the nineteenth century" by "preaching national disintegration." Lincoln the nationalist responded with "You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend it." Lincoln would not recognize the right of Americans in the South to create a more perfect union.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Canny White House Theorist Versus Outlawed Rebels
"Southerners were convinced that what they lacked in military and naval equipment would be outweighed by their superior intelligence, bravery and hardihood. Had not the American colonies, who were weaker than the South, defeated England, a nation stronger than the North? The Confederacy need only stand on the defensive, win a few victories, and the un-heroic Yankees would quickly withdraw from the hornets' nest. Jefferson Davis and other thoughtful leaders, however, did not share such popular fallacies; they believed there would be a long war against a merciless foe.
It was true that in Abraham Lincoln the Confederacy had an implacable enemy. Behind the white face and black beard of a St. John the Baptist was the statesmen willing to use the methods by which great leaders of modern times have built or maintained empires. This meant nothing less than imposing forcibly the will of the strong upon the weak. With Lincoln the word was "charity to all men," the reality "blood and iron."
The President's objective was clear: the complete destruction of the Confederate government, and the restoration of its constituent States to the Union. In his opinion the contest was not a war, but an attempt to put down domestic insurrection which had become too formidable for ordinary officers of the law.
The withdrawal of the Southern States and their subsequent organization into a new nation was declared illegal. To come to terms with the new Confederacy necessitated a great war, but the canny theorist in the White House called it an endeavor to re-establish constitutional authority. Accordingly the President mobilized armies and inaugurated a military struggle without asking Congress for a declaration of war.
He launched an invasion against powerful armies without extending to them the formal belligerent rights customary among civilized war-makers. The Confederacy was blockaded to deprive it of basic necessities. The Federal armies moved forward not to come to terms with a legal enemy, but to possess militarily and politically the territory of outlawed rebels. When the policies of blockade and invasion were not immediately successful, novel methods of warfare were employed.
The Emancipation Proclamation, issued after Lee's advance into the North had been stopped at [Sharpsburg], at least by implication, was designed to demoralize Southern Society and to give the war the character of a crusade in which righteousness was buttressed by vengeance. Provinces were devastated to break their will to resist.
When victory and the cessation of hostilities came, there was no armistice or peace treaty with [a] humbled foe, but surrender by an adversary who had been cut to pieces. The Confederacy was dissolved and its constituent parts re-incorporated into the United States."
(The South Old and New, A History, 1820–1947, Francis Butler Simkins, Albert A. Knopf, 1947, pp. 140-141)
The North's Deliberate and Inexorable Policy of Non-Exchange
From: bernhard1848@gmail.com
With only Northern reporters sending postwar observations and stories to their readers in the North, and all possessing biased views of the South shaped in wartime, the result was predictable as they emphasized any unfavorable aspects of Southern civilization. It was Edwin Stanton who deliberately buried Northern dead on Lee's Arlington property, and who deliberately had Jefferson Davis placed in chains at Fortress Monroe.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
The North's Deliberate and Inexorable Policy of Non-Exchange
"[The] years from 1865 to 1880 were dreary years in which there was no peace. The war had only ended on the battlefield. In the minds of men it still persisted. Memories of the past and issues living in the present combined to perpetuate and perhaps enlarge the antagonism that victory and defeat created. One observer made the comment that "it was useless to preach forgiveness and good will to men still burning with the memory of their wrongs."
Deeply [engraved] on the Northern heart was the conviction that the Confederacy had deliberately mistreated the prisoners of war captured by its armies. The Southern prisons . . . were at best what one Confederate surgeon described as a "gigantic mass of human misery."
A war-crazed [Northern] public could not dissociate this suffering from deliberate intent of the enemy. Rather it fitted the purposes of propaganda to attribute the barest motives to the Confederates [that] "there was a fixed determination on the part of the rebels to kill the Union soldiers who fell into their hands." The great non-governmental agencies of relief and propaganda [such as the Union League] contributed to the spread of similar impressions.
Northern opinion was thus rigidly shaped in the belief that "tens of thousands of national soldiers . . . were deliberately shot to death, as at Fort Pillow, or frozen to death as at Belle Island, or starved to death as at Andersonville, or sickened to death by swamp malaria, as in South Carolina." Horror passed into fury and fury into a demand for revenge. And the arch-fiend of iniquity, for so the North regarded him, Major Henry Wirz, was hanged as a murderer [in November 1865] . . . he was the scapegoat upon whom centered the full force of Northern wrath.
Meanwhile the South had no effective way of meeting these charges of brutality [though] it is not difficult to find, however, material in these years that the South received the Northern charge with sullen hatred. Typical is an article contributed to the Southern Review in January 1867:
"The impartial times to come will hardly understand how a nation, which not only permitted but encouraged its government to declare medicines and surgical instruments contraband of war, and to destroy by fire and sword the habitations and food of noncombatants, as well as the fruits of the earth and the implements of tillage, should afterwards have clamored for the blood of captive enemies, because they did not feed their prisoners out of their own starvation and heal them in their succorless hospitals.
And when a final and accurate development shall have been made of the facts connected with the exchange of prisoners between the belligerents, and it shall have been demonstrated . . . that all the nameless horrors [of both sides] were the result of a deliberate and inexorable policy of non-exchange on the part of the United States, founded on an equally deliberate calculation of their ability to furnish a greater mass of humanity than the Confederacy could afford for starvation and the shambles, men will wonder how it was that a people, passing for civilized and Christian, should have consigned Jefferson Davis to a cell, while they tolerated Edwin M. Stanton as a cabinet minister."
(The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900, Paul H. Buck, Little, Brown and Company, 1937, pp. 45-48)
Friday, July 25, 2014
Texas Heritage Violation-Flag Pole Cut & Flag Stolen
The Bellmead Confederate Flag Pole Story 2014-07-15
Commander Charles Oliver of the General Felix H Robertson SCV Camp #129 in Waco, Texas related this Information. The title was transferred to the SCV (national) a couple of years ago for insurance purposes. It will be a topic of discussion at the national reunion this week. It is a heavy duty 40 foot Flag Pole located between two hotels an in full view of everyone traveling south on IH 35. It was cut down using what appears to have been a pipe grinder & the Flag was stolen Friday night, 07-11-2014, by vandals. The Pole was left on site. This is the 4th time this has happened. The Insurance Company has always pays for it to be re-installed. The Waco News Paper customarily prints a story. Each time this has happened, the the Waco Camp has gained several new members.
The flag went up Mar 05, 2011, the dedication was meant to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Texas joining the Confederacy.
Frank
Frank
Waco, Texas - CSA Memorial
The CSA Army of Tennessee Battle flag/Naval Jack flag flying on the flagpole and monument are located on the west-side frontage road along I-35 between exits 338 and 339 in Waco, McLennan County, Texas. The Motel 6 sign in the background is also visible as a point of reference
Reverse of Waco, McLennan County, Texas CSA Monument
Reverse of Waco, McLennan County, Texas CSA Monument
This monument was placed by the efforts of the General Felix H Robertson Camp #129 Sons of Confederate Veterans in Waco, Texas. Quite an accomplishment.
The text of the reverse:
"The following regiments had at least one company form in Waco from men of McLennan Co.
Approximately 2000 men
4th Texas Infantry
7th Texas Infantry
15th Texas Infantry
5th Texas Cavalry
8th Texas Cavalry
13th Texas Cavalry
7th Texas Infantry
15th Texas Infantry
5th Texas Cavalry
8th Texas Cavalry
13th Texas Cavalry
Readers should note the strict sense of the wording. These are regiments in which at least one company was formed in Waco. The list of all the regiments with men from Waco who served would be too extensive for the monument, let alone all the men from the county.
William H. Parsons who formed and was first colonel of the 12th Texas Cavalry Regt was a newspaper editor in Waco when the war started.
The 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment was also known as "Terry's Texas Rangers"
http://www.civilwaralbum.com/misc19/waco1.htm
http://www.civilwaralbum.com/misc19/waco1.htm
Bearing Their Afflictions with Philosophy and Christian Fortitude
From: bernhard1848@gmail.com
The postwar South endured a swarm of curious Northerners: some journalists, many exploitive speculators, and often offensive bigots "who gave advice, condemned customs, asked obtrusive questions, and published tactless statements." Despite New England's large part in the African slave trade and perpetuation of slavery with its ravenous cotton mills, the North was determined that the South alone would be punished for the supposed sins of slavery.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Bearing Their Afflictions with Philosophy and Christian Fortitude
"The defeated Southerners were expected to make the sacrifices necessary for reforms favoring the Negro. They were willing to recognize the defeat of the Confederate armies, the freeing of the slaves, and the restoration of the Union. A considerable number with the fear of summary punishment before them were willing to repudiate the Confederacy with unseemly haste. A few – the first scalawags – were prepared to adopt the beliefs of the conquerors.
For the great majority, however, the tragic outcome of the war increased their hatred of Northerners, made Southern doctrines more precious, and invested the war leaders with an aura of heroism. Only the minimum demands of the victor were to be accepted. As soon as it became clear that the North would not be as vindictive as some imagined every reform suggested from the outside was contested bitterly.
Those among the conquerors who imagined that military defeat had reduced the white Southerners to impotence were to be unpleasantly surprised. Although defeated, these people were not without material resources. Despite threats of confiscation, the land remained mostly in their hands and agricultural possibilities partially compensated for decline in land values. All tools were not destroyed and many cities were unscathed or only partially wrecked.
The whites faced their difficulties with superb courage. "While clouds were dark and threatening," wrote a Northern newspaper reporter, "I do not believe there was ever in the world's history a people who bear their afflictions with more philosophy and Christian fortitude than these unfortunate people." Women cheerfully returned to the kitchen and men turned to manual labor. A philosophy of hard work and close economy was preached, and every expedient which might lead out of the impasse of poverty and social stagnation was advanced.
The war had accustomed men to hardships, and the women had learned to manage plantations, maintain slave discipline, and endure privations. Certainly there was no ground for the belief, fostered by the romantics, that Southerners were a lazy and improvident lot who were helpless unless ministered to by faithful blacks. Actually, they were ready to assume duties previously exercised by Negroes, at the same time resisting Northern assaults on their inherited privileges.
They were backed in their policies by an assertive country folk who were accustomed to dwell on lands of their own, and who had a profound contempt for Northerners . . . had proved their stamina while serving in the Confederate army . . . [and] were ready to terrorize Yankees and Negroes alike if members of either group attempted to upset the traditional social order."
(The South Old and New, A History, 1820-1947, Francis Butler Simkins, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947, pp. 171-172)
The postwar South endured a swarm of curious Northerners: some journalists, many exploitive speculators, and often offensive bigots "who gave advice, condemned customs, asked obtrusive questions, and published tactless statements." Despite New England's large part in the African slave trade and perpetuation of slavery with its ravenous cotton mills, the North was determined that the South alone would be punished for the supposed sins of slavery.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Bearing Their Afflictions with Philosophy and Christian Fortitude
"The defeated Southerners were expected to make the sacrifices necessary for reforms favoring the Negro. They were willing to recognize the defeat of the Confederate armies, the freeing of the slaves, and the restoration of the Union. A considerable number with the fear of summary punishment before them were willing to repudiate the Confederacy with unseemly haste. A few – the first scalawags – were prepared to adopt the beliefs of the conquerors.
For the great majority, however, the tragic outcome of the war increased their hatred of Northerners, made Southern doctrines more precious, and invested the war leaders with an aura of heroism. Only the minimum demands of the victor were to be accepted. As soon as it became clear that the North would not be as vindictive as some imagined every reform suggested from the outside was contested bitterly.
Those among the conquerors who imagined that military defeat had reduced the white Southerners to impotence were to be unpleasantly surprised. Although defeated, these people were not without material resources. Despite threats of confiscation, the land remained mostly in their hands and agricultural possibilities partially compensated for decline in land values. All tools were not destroyed and many cities were unscathed or only partially wrecked.
The whites faced their difficulties with superb courage. "While clouds were dark and threatening," wrote a Northern newspaper reporter, "I do not believe there was ever in the world's history a people who bear their afflictions with more philosophy and Christian fortitude than these unfortunate people." Women cheerfully returned to the kitchen and men turned to manual labor. A philosophy of hard work and close economy was preached, and every expedient which might lead out of the impasse of poverty and social stagnation was advanced.
The war had accustomed men to hardships, and the women had learned to manage plantations, maintain slave discipline, and endure privations. Certainly there was no ground for the belief, fostered by the romantics, that Southerners were a lazy and improvident lot who were helpless unless ministered to by faithful blacks. Actually, they were ready to assume duties previously exercised by Negroes, at the same time resisting Northern assaults on their inherited privileges.
They were backed in their policies by an assertive country folk who were accustomed to dwell on lands of their own, and who had a profound contempt for Northerners . . . had proved their stamina while serving in the Confederate army . . . [and] were ready to terrorize Yankees and Negroes alike if members of either group attempted to upset the traditional social order."
(The South Old and New, A History, 1820-1947, Francis Butler Simkins, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947, pp. 171-172)
Letter to W&L Alumni group
From: vaproto@optonline.net
Washington and Lee University, Office of Alumni Affairs, Lexington, Virginia 24450
Waller (Beau) T. Dudley, Executive Director of Alumni Affairs wdudley@wlu.edu
Thomas D. Lovell, Associate Director of Alumni Affairs tdlovell@wlu.edu
Mary Webster, Assistant Director for Engagement mwebster@wlu.edu
Lady and Gentlemen:
There is no need to reiterate what has happened at your university yet, it would help if some of the misinformation surrounding the matter were dispelled. These "students" are hardly that; they are professional race-baiters wedded to the crusade to destroy the heritage, history, heroes and symbols of the South in the name of "civil rights." Unfortunately, as with Eric Holder, these particular crusaders do not believe that such rights extend to anyone but those of their race—a concept that cannot be more un-American.
Of course, given that most of today's academia is slightly to the left of Chairman Mao, one can be sure that the Administration of Washington & Lee had no problems with this "demand." Indeed, it is possible—if not probable—that there was collusion in the matter and that the entire affair was as spontaneous as a Broadway play.
But be that as it may, there is one truism in today's world; that is, that the "bottom line" trumps just about everything else including ideology. As long as these conspirators don't have to pay for their actions, the matter will remain where it presently rests. And, of course, that fact gives power to the alumni of Washington & Lee as represented by yourselves. You have an opportunity to put an end to this farce which pretends that these were merely innocent "students" who didn't realize that while attending Washington & Lee—in Virginia!—they might be forced to view an historical symbol which would offend their delicate egos. However, you should understand this: if you fail to make use of the power you have, then you will not be able to use it when the next group of "students" demands the removal of all vestiges of the man who saved your university from oblivion.
It is to be hoped that sufficient intestinal fortitude remains among the former students of this institution that you will go forward to have these symbols of a noble man and his equally noble cause restored. This is your moment; only you can seize it—or not.
Valerie Protopapas, Huntington Station, New York.
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