By Plainly Spoken

February 22, 2008 8:39 AM | Link to this

Say what you will about the AJC, but it never, ever misses an opportunity to stir racist sentiment on BOTH sides of the color line … .

By The truth

February 22, 2008 9:35 AM | Link to this

we thought we’d help develop the day’s theme.

This is what the AJC is good at. Pitting white people against black people. Sort of like what the democrat socialist party does. What a bunch of crap. I’m surprised Cynthia Tucker hasn’t written a column about this. She blames white people for everything. The definition of racism has the AJC written all over it.

By Calvin Johnson

February 22, 2008 9:46 AM | Link to this

That is outstanding!!!There were many thousands of African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy and the cause of freedom.

You can check my article about Confederate History Month by putting the following in the google search engine: (The Men and Women of Confederate History Month)

By Southern Girl

February 22, 2008 10:01 AM | Link to this

The war was not all about slavery. My ancestors fought in the war when the war came into their backyard. They were poor farmers who did not have slaves to begin with. They fought to keep what little they had and the blacks fought right by their side. I welcome Confederate History Month. I bet with all “big government” excess and misuse of federal funding ya’ll wish the South had won their stand against it then.

By The truth

February 22, 2008 10:13 AM | Link to this

Southern Girl, The reasons blacks and liberals think that the civil war was about slavery is because they get their history lessons from CNN. Slavery was no more an issue in the Civil War then Chewbacca is an issue in the War on Terror. I don’t remember Abe Lincoln saying “Let’s win this war for the slaves!” Slavery was terrible but it is time to move on from this tired issue. Blacks and liberals like to tread on this issue because their lives are full of despair and depression.

By Southern Girl

February 22, 2008 10:25 AM | Link to this

Yes, and the winner gets to write the history. It’s way past time to move on.

By RJ

February 22, 2008 10:27 AM | Link to this

Southern Girl, will you be kind enough to tell me what the civil war was about?

By The truth

February 22, 2008 10:33 AM | Link to this

RJ, I will be glad to tell you what the civil war was about.

The political left in America has apparently decided that American history must be rewritten so that it can be used in the political campaign for reparations for slavery. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Chicago inserted language in a Department of Interior appropriations bill for 2000 that instructed the National Park Service to propagandize about slavery as the sole cause of the war at all Civil War park sites. The Marxist historian Eric Foner has joined forces with Jackson and will assist the National Park Service in its efforts at rewriting history so that it better serves the political agenda of the far left. Congressman Jackson has candidly described this whole effort as “a down payment on reparations.” (Foner ought to be quite familiar with the “art” of rewriting politically-correct history. He was the chairman of the committee at Columbia University that awarded the “prestigious” Bancroft Prize in history to Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, author of the anti-Second Amendment book, “Arming America,” that turned out to be fraudulent. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory and his publisher has ceased publishing the book.)

In order to accommodate the political agenda of the far left, the National Park Service will be required in effect to teach visitors to the national parks that Abraham Lincoln was a liar. Neither Lincoln nor the US Congress at the time ever said that slavery was a cause – let alone the sole cause – of their invasion of the Southern states in 1861. Both Lincoln and the Congress made it perfectly clear to the whole world that they would do all they could to protect Southern slavery as long as the secession movement could be defeated.

On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment read as follows:

ARTICLE THIRTEEN

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution … has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable (emphasis added).

This of course was consistent with one of the opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as saying: “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, and I have no inclination to do so.”

That’s what Lincoln said his invasion of the Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.

Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, “saving the Union” meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have “saved” the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states.

On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a “Joint Resolution on the War” that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states:

Resolved: … That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

By “the established institutions of those states” the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery.

On March 2, 1861 – the same day the “first Thirteenth Amendment” passed the U.S. Senate – another constitutional amendment was proposed that would have outlawed secession (See H. Newcomb Morse, “The Foundations and Meaning of Secession,” Stetson Law Review, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 419–36). This is very telling, for it proves that Congress believed that secession was in fact constitutional under the Tenth Amendment. It would not have proposed an amendment outlawing secession if the Constitution already prohibited it.

Nor would the Republican Party, which enjoyed a political monopoly after the war, have insisted that the Southern states rewrite their state constitutions to outlaw secession as a condition of being readmitted to the Union. If secession was really unconstitutional there would have been no need to do so.

By Copyleft

February 22, 2008 10:33 AM | Link to this

Then how come we’re all smiles with the inevitable upcoming Democratic victories this fall, and conservatives are sniping and whining about how much they hate their own candidate?

I’m pretty sure slavery was mentioned once or twice during the Civil War era… but S.Girl is right: the union would be better off if those backward, bigoted fools of the Confederacy had stayed out of our country. America would be a better, more progressive society today without their constantly holding us back.

As we’re about to see in the next four years! Yahoooo! (smile)

By The Truth

February 22, 2008 10:42 AM | Link to this

Copyleft, It is race baiters like you and Sharpton that have given blacks a bad name. Show me evidence where conservatives have said anything negative towards Obamas skin color. You ignorant hack! W has appointed more blacks and hispanics than ANY other US president. Don’t know if you are capable of understanding english or not but Geldof, the liberal progressive rock star, said that George W Bush has done more for Africans than ANY other president in US history. You can take your urine hack comments and shove them up you 300 lb arse.

Here is the article. If you have half a brain then you will read it.

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/fishwrap/2008/02/bobgeldofin_rwanda.html

By Ann

February 22, 2008 10:51 AM | Link to this

Plainly Spoken and the Truth, wake up. It’s that Bubba in the governor’s mansion who is stirring up racial problems. AJC is simply reporting the facts.

Under your theory, the AJC should never report about rape because it stirs problems with sexes.

Get real and stop drinking the Rush Limbaugh kool-aid

By Blue_Kolla

February 22, 2008 11:03 AM | Link to this

Aw damn truth. I was with you until you said this ===> Blacks and liberals like to tread on this issue because their lives are full of despair and depression.

Totally not true. But I will agree that the Civil War was not about freeing slaves, but simple economics and the ability of the North to compete with the South in regards to labor costs & the potential of the South to throw a monkey wrench into the dream of Manifest Destiny. The issue of slavery was just the catalyst.

Trust me, the reception of you POV will be greatly enhanced when you omit vicious statements like the one above from your writings.

And on that note, I’ll end with, “Go Barack Obama! Bring on the change!”

By Blue_Kolla

February 22, 2008 11:11 AM | Link to this

Ann It’s that Bubba in the governor’s mansion who is stirring up racial problems. AJC is simply reporting the facts.

While I can’t argue with your first point, I must contest you on part 2. The AJC is notorious for their slanted news coverage and the spin that they put on things. But what else can you expect from a *down souf, no-competition-havin’, old-money-backed, conservative-based, piece-o-ish newspaper?!

Real news, half of the time, never even gets mentioned.

By Will Jones

February 22, 2008 11:13 AM | Link to this

The War was Rome’s Fifth Column take over of the Republic, threatened for a moment by reason and humanity when Lincoln’s orders to Grant at Appomattox - that his “Southern brothers be permitted to keep their sidearms for protection, sabers for honor, and horses for plowing” - signed his death warrant six days later assassinated by a team of Roman Catholics, dispatched from St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church on Capitol Hill.

White and Black Southerners fought under the symbol of “Protestantism Overseas,” the Cross of St. Andrew, and Jews, long the victims of Roman ritual persecution, came from all over the world to fight on the side of the Confederacy, besieged by Rome’s catspaw, the North, with its Army made up of immigrant German, Italian and Irish Roman Catholic generals and cannon-fodder.

It was Roman Catholic Union veterans who placed their anti-American victorious Mark of the Beast in the U.S. Capitol - Rome’s symbol, The Fasces - yet on the front wall of the House of Representatives. They must be removed for the People’s sovereignty over the state to be restored. The Fasces represents everything that is antithetical to the ideals of the Founding of the American Republic and the Founders knew it. So too must we.

Their success is manifest, from creation of the Vatican-banker Rockefeller Oil Monopoly now known as BIG OIL/Saudi Aramco, finance by Rockefeller and his lieutenant Prescott Bush of Rome’s military catspaw Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust through papal baron Fritz “The Rockefeller of Germany” Thyssen, their Knight of Malta-led Roman Catholic CIA’s assassination, led by Prescott Bush tool Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, of John Kennedy six weeks after his NSAM263 ordered us out of Rome’s latifundial estate of Vietnam, the organized promotion of illegal immigration enunciated in the Roman Catholic Council of Bishop’s “National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry,” and 9-11 by the homosexual draft-dodger cheated into the White House by only the Roman Catholics’ unconstitutional votes on the Supreme Court’s “Bush v. Gore.”

The conflict in all history is between Rome and everyone else: Whig Theory. White and Black Whigs created America in opposition to caesaropapism’s Old Sectarian Order of King and Pope. Rome was the “Wall Street of Slavery” for 2,000 years.

Mr. Jefferson and the Whig Founders ended that institutionalized despotism and their Light from the West “ignited a volcano under the thrones of Europe.”

Barack Obama represents a new hope of the Jeffersonian Whig Revolution in the land of its birth. All Americans must now unite as the prophesied One Nation lead by Truth and Righteousness that Justice rule.

Rome must be openly rebuked and defeated. Its fascists, pedophile priests, assassins, lying, murdering thieves, and traitors must be recognized and removed from our society that The Republic stand with honor and pride once more.

It is not enough to let the viper sleep beneath us for a time…it must be extirpated that *Annuit Coeptis” guide the generations again, and expropriated to free us of the debt bondage it foisted off on us, that constitutional money be restored.

By The truth

February 22, 2008 11:14 AM | Link to this

Ann, You just hate people with southern accents. Get over it. Georgia got tired of democrats years ago and threw them out.

Blue_Kolla, I have no problem with a black guy in the white house. Just not that one. He has no policy other than “change” and I don’t know what that means. Marx and Hitler brought change and millions of people died as a result. I love people like Michael Steele, JC Watts, Bill Cosby and Clarence Thomas. All have overcome problems and created a name for themselves without playing the race card.

By two cents

February 22, 2008 11:17 AM | Link to this

Blacks and liberals like to tread on this issue because their lives are full of despair and depression.

Seriously think so?

If you Cee or listen to what most blk Civil War say about this time great-grands you probably would state different.

By Blue_Kolla

February 22, 2008 11:25 AM | Link to this

Will Jones Man, that is one helluva manifesto!!!

By Craig

February 22, 2008 11:25 AM | Link to this

Not about slavery? I tell you what history buffs. Go do some research on the ordinances of secession on the southern states. Note slavery as the key issue. Note the Confederate constitution. One of the key differences in this constitution and the US one is making slavery concretely constitutional. Tell me those slave owners gathered at those conventions were not concerned about their economic well being all because of the slaves they owned. Yes, non-slave owning southerners fought for the Confederacy. But look to those in charge and see what their motivation was. Also keep in mind that many non-slave owning southerners PROUDLY remained unionists and were hanged and shot for just simply wanting to remain loyal to the Stars and Stripes. Oh what freedom they had. Many of those southern patriots even signed up to join the Union army and risked their lives, the lives of their families, and their lands all because they had loyalties to the national government.

By Copyleft

February 22, 2008 11:30 AM | Link to this

If you can point to an example of Obama “playing the race card,” I’ll be impressed.

But your claim that Obama has no policy ideas is simply false. The only question is, are you ignorant or deliberately lying? It’s easy to find Obama’s plans and policy ideas—just as easy as it is to find Clinton’s and McCain’s.

By charles corley

February 22, 2008 11:32 AM | Link to this

gooooooooooood morning/ saw a sign in the median that said wanna know who yo daddy is ? call this #. DNA has proved that there is some wood pile in all of us starting with thomas j. and strom t. and my quess is that billy g. will be next. DNA finds out that al s. is dick c. ist cousin. man i can,t think of anything worse than being kin to dick c. unless it was franklin g. if you were broke down on the side of the road and could only stop one car. would you stop a white person or a black person ?

By Will Jones

February 22, 2008 11:45 AM | Link to this

If I were broke down on the side of the road I’d fix it myself or count on G-d’s grace to see me through, whether Black or White was His angel.

By Blue_Kolla

February 22, 2008 12:00 PM | Link to this

Charles if you were broke down on the side of the road and could only stop one car. would you stop a white person or a black person ?

I’m stopping the tooth fairy, if he’s the first one to drive by.

By RJ

February 22, 2008 12:37 PM | Link to this

The truth, as I understand your response to my question is that the purpose of the civil war was to stop the secession movement. If my understanding is correct your answer prompts another question…what was driving the succession movement?

Please excuse the question I just noticed that Craig has already answered it. Do you agree with his answer?

Dialogues about these kind of subjects can be informative so long as they do not turn into diatribes.

By The truth

February 22, 2008 12:45 PM | Link to this

RJ, Northern aggression and lack of cough syrup. Also, the north would not let the south drink orange juice on Sundays. Chewbacca also came down from Tatoine to help Jaba the hut kill off the grizzly bears.

By South Will Rise Again

February 22, 2008 1:06 PM | Link to this

I think the USA would have been better off if the south had won the Civil war and seceded, and took Texas with them. Then we’d have the USA as a world power, and the CSA as a third world country.

By charles corley

February 22, 2008 1:35 PM | Link to this

blue_k “i’m stopping the tooth fairy if he is the first one to come by”. where do you get the “he” idea. wait untill you find out that God is a woman and the bible really is a novel written by homo sapiens better known as human beings.

By Frank Gillispie

February 22, 2008 3:36 PM | Link to this

The War for Southern Independence was a tax war, just as was the War for American Independence. The Southern states were paying about 80% of all federal taxes, while 75% of the money was being spent to build infrastructure in the North. And Lincoln promised to double the taxes.

By Will Jones

February 22, 2008 10:44 PM | Link to this

“Popery and Black Republicanism” was the battle cry of the offended Protestant Jeffersonian South. “Black” meaning corrupt….and the South knew, following Jefferson’s Letter of Protest commissioned by the Virginia House of Burgesses, the pattern of injustices being perpetrated in the North were Roman “organized crime” letting contracts to cronies for public works projects…Halliburton’s predecessors.

By Stephan Brainard

February 23, 2008 1:07 PM | Link to this

You know it never surprises me anymore…the black people in this country want a seperate black month…they are all voting for Baraak Obama…based on what??? Maybe because he is a black man…seems racist to me.

It is too bad that all the changes this country has been through that the races cannot get along better than they do. The AJC has a way of bringing out the worst in people and that is why I never subscribe to the trash.

By zdmalpass

February 24, 2008 10:17 AM | Link to this

Though slavery was an issue because of the economics involved, it was a minor one in comparison to the tariff issue. A quote by Karl Marx seems to validate the point, “Karl Marx, like most European socialists of the time favored the North. In an 1861 article published in England, he articulated very well what the major British newspapers, the Times, the Economist, and Saturday Review, had been saying: “The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war, is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for power.”

On the question of race relations,I would direct your attention to the autobiography of Booker T. Washington,”Up From Slavery”. I would encourage all to read it if you haven’t done so. I would submit for your consideration two quotes in his book. They sum up nicely his view of Southerners as well as the plight of the Negro in being brought to this country as slaves. He also gives his view of a certain group of “coloured
people” who work to embitter and divide the races for money. The second quote though written in 1911, sounds like something you would read in 2008.

I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles,they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker T Washington, 1911 Up From Slavery

By GodHatesTrash

February 24, 2008 10:30 AM | Link to this

The The War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery. And Santa Claus climbed down the chimney on your trailer last Christmas.

You silly redneck morons.

Trash.

By GodHatesTrash

February 24, 2008 10:39 AM | Link to this

Instead of Yopp, why not “honor” Stepin Fetchit, or Buckwheat, or “Uncle” Clarence Thomas, or some other sellout?

You rednecks are trash.

By Monk

February 25, 2008 8:32 AM | Link to this

The North did not fought the Civil War to free slaves. The South used slave ownership as a motivating factor to engage in the war. Subsequently the issue has been used for political gain and as we have seen on this forum there are still those who are using the issue to gain political mileage. The idea of States rights centered on the South’s desire to do what they want (including owning fellow humans as if they were cattle) when they want. We do not know why many Southern Blacks chose to fight on the side of the Confederacy. However, the idea of freeing slaves motivated thousands of blacks to fight on the side of the North. Do not tell me that slavery was not one of the many reasons over which the Civil War was fought.