This was a letter I sent when Gettysburg College was having the” lynching of the Confederate Flag”,of course the President never answered,that would have required moral courage, commodity rarely used by College Presidents. It expresses what many think of the assault on the south. Now you might be surprised to hear I do not favor the flag on government buildings save those that in some way are war memorials. However all over the South and even in the west we face a constant stream of vandalism and hatred. My parents were proud dixiecrats but I will be damned if I will votre a or support pepole who want to destroy the graves adn monuments of my ancestors.

I am saddened and dismayed by the choice of your College to host this
> art exhibit by John Sims, that denigrates a symbol that represents to
> many of us the ultimate sacrifice of our ancestors for their beliefs
> and way of life.Yet a short walk from where this exhibit will be held
> thousands lay sleeping who gave in Lincoln’s words the last full
> measure of their devotion. Among those sacred dead I have ancestors
> who fell on both sides. My great-grandfather’s first cousin William
> was mortally wounded on July the first and was returned to Virginia
> where he died. Following him in death was my great uncle also named
> William was killed within eyesight of my great-grandfather at the
> Battle of second Winchester. None of my family were slave owners and
> in fact they did not approve of slavery, my great great grandfather
> having been an indentured servant himself from Scotland who suffered
> the lash and did not forget it. Most of the members of my family
> stayed out of the war until Virginia was invaded and Fredericksburg
> despoiled by Union Troops. It then became not a war of principles
> only,but a war of survival against an aggressor who was percieved as having had no regard for
> civilians, and felt his right to destroy and loot their property was
> God given
>
>
>
> These are the facts that caused my family to join the Confederate
> army. If the bloodshed of war was not enough the burning of the
> Shenandoah Valley by Sheridan’s troops led to the death of several
> children in our family due to starvation and disease. That is why I
> find this exhibit offensive not only because of the exhibit itself but
> because of its location. I would assume that Gettysburg College has
> an educational mission and it somehow this exhibit falls within that
> mission. I would like to know how, certainly the reproductions of
> flags in different colors and a mock lynching of one, would not
> require any more artistic expertise than a good middle school art
> student could exhibit and is about as profound and original as one
> would expect from a child.
>
> The artist obviously has a political agenda, one only needs to look
> at his other works in which he displays Israeli flags, Palestinian
> flags, under an exhibit called Amerika Uber Alles. Mr Sims is a
> quintessential black nationalist, with all the prerequisite
> anti-Semitism, anti European bias that is common to them. Now if this
> exhibit were held in Harlem, Chicago, New York or any other place
> other than the final resting place of brave men I would have no
> quarrel with it. I am a big first amendment man,but not here not
> here.
> Sims “Art” is but one of a long litany of “political art’ mere
> political cartoons dressed up with oil paints, fabric or bronze and
> presented as some sort of meaningful message. All of these efforts
> are nothing more meaningful and enduring than a candle in
> a maelstrom. . When I was in graduate
> school I remember a fellow in the art department who painted a picture
> of the American flag and then created a miniature Molotov cocktail and
> blew the whole thing up. This is the same sort of puerile nauseating
> narcissism That one would expect from the 1960s.
>
> Of course you also have included a lecture by someone from an
> African-American studies department that bastion of Afrocentrism
> where ancient grievances are cultivated like grapes in Bordeaux.
> For these folks their Holy Grail is the slavery experience they clutch
> it to their bosom, as well as the image of the image of a demonic absolute pure
> evil that was the South. Without this icon they would be forced to
> deal with the problems of contemporary black society, and the criminal
> subculture of the ghetto. Not a day goes by the some poor young black
> man or woman is not murdered at the hands of another.
> The killer does not fly the Southern Cross, (he battle flag of
> Northern Virginia,) his flag is a bandanna or piece of sports attire
> that is blue, red or green. This abomination has been
> going on for decades and the NAACP and its race warriors fear
> the issue, totally paralyzed, unable to speak out .
> Instead they’re busy trying to remove the Confederate flag from
> some park or building in the Old South. And for what intelligent
> reason would the College participate in this nonsense? This is not a
> political statement or an educational discussion and it certainly
> is not art,it is merely ultra liberal triumphalism,
> Merely an attempt to denigrate the memory of our ancestors and to defile
> their sacrifice within shadow of that suffering that was Gettysburg
, This is what this is really about, not education nor Art it
> it does not qualify. as such.
>
> There is no more art or truth in this exhibit then there was in Nazi demonic
> Rockwell like representations’ of Blond Ubermenschen, and depictions
of the hated Juden as rat like The soldiers that died and suffered at Gettysburg are not
> the cartoon Simon Legrees Mr. Sims,and the
> reparationists and African American Studies groups would lead you to
> believe. These were real live human beings 90 percent of which did
> not own slaves, and if there records and letters are to be believed
> were not fighting for slavery at all, but for other states and their
> homes. Professor McPherson’s book Why They Fought illustrates that
> clearly. If Mr Sims had chosen to protest the use of the Confederate
> flag as a symbol of racism, and held his exhibit in say Selma or
> Montgomery I could not argue with him, for I to much more than he
> despise the use of that flag by Racial lunatics.
>
> However the venue he is chosen at Gettysburg is not appropriate it
> dishonors both the soldiers of the North and South, its dishonors the
> sacrifice of our ancestors.
> One of the things you won’t hear and arguments about the
> Confederate flag and the confederacy is the fact that the
> grandfathers’ of those Confederate soldiers were the Southern founders
> of our nation Jefferson, Washington, Patrick Henry. Furthermore their
> children and grandchildren have shed their blood on every American
> battlefield from Iwo Jima to todays Iraq. To the highest ranking
> Generals in World War Two that were killed in combat were Nathan
> Bedford Forrest the third, and Lieutenant-General Simon Bolivar
> Buckner, the namesakes of their famous Confederate grandfather and
> father. The most decorated man in Marine Corps history with five Navy
> Crosses Lewis B. Chesty Puller, the grandson of a Virginia officer, a
> man who led our armored divisions to victory in Europe General George
> S. Patton grandson of a Virginia patriot and cavalry officer.
.If you allow this exhibit to go on the desecrate the memory of every
> Southern boy who sacrificed his life for your freedom. Indeed my father and
his brothers shed their blood and tears on the Beaches of Europe,and in the Pacific oh how they held that flag dear ,the flag of their grandfather.The bare foot bedraggled Sergeant who fought many battles, was paroled at Appomattox, and starved at Fort Delaware .A man who fought so gallantly with the Bloody 27th the Stonewall Brigade. Who saw his children die of malnutrition his beloved brother and cousin fall at gettysburg and second Winchester,. All for his beloved Virginia.
>
> Let Mr. Sims carry his campaign of hatred of Southern Whites, and black
> nationalism where the winds are not haunted by memories of
the sighs of those slain,North and South.
Where the trees and valleys have not hugged the mortal
> forms of young men in their final moment, looking for God and crying
> for their mothers and sweethearts.Where the dew of the morning is not a glistening tear
of youth crushed and hope exhausted. Weigh this Ms. President against the
> advantage and merit of an” art “without grace or mastery, whose temporality
is as perishable as seasonal couture.
Do not add mix the tears of those who hold this place sacred with the the blood of
our grandfathers,. I beseech you do not open again the wound of so long ago now scarred over,to flow a new with hatred and discord.
For their memory the gallant men of Virginia and Alabama, the brave lads or Wisconsin and Maine, is our sacred trust, their sacrifice, our burden forever, their courage and glory our birthright, the birthright of the whole American People. Our eternal custodianship is their flags,
all those pennants that fly from the ramparts and trenches of eternity
and the memory of all who fell Blue or Grey on those July days so long ago..
>

Why the Southern Pride? I think some of it was due to carpet bagging, and the devastation throughout the South caused by the Civil War. These caused the people and places of the Civil War to take on mythic proportions, and ingrained them into Southern Culture. More recently I think some of this pride is a reaction to pop-culture’s portrayal of the average southerner. The white southerner seems to be one of the few groups of people it is entirely acceptable to make fun of. These cultural attacks contribute to a ‘circle the wagons’ mentality. Attacks on the Confederate flag add to the perception that Southern culture is under attack, and causes the flag’s supporters to dig their heels in even further.

This week’s CotV is hosted by Fresh Politics, a student-run political blog based out of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

School’s out - I finished finals yesterday… …

I think it unfair to compare southern soldiers to the nazis…not because both ideologies where evil but because the southerners were, after all, Americans and not part of a different country. Isn’t that why we fought the war in the first place?

Second: I think Kentuckians and Missourians would give you an argument about remaining in the union voluntarily. I think the presence of tens of thousands of federal troops in those two states may have had something to do with that.

And didn’t Lincoln bemoan the opposition to compensation in border states in 1864 while the 13th amendment was being debated in Congress?

Ever wonder how much money goes out of your pocket and into the clutches of the government at the gas pump? Ironman at Political Calculations has the tool to find out.

Dave at Logical Meme writes about re-reading Madison’s Federa…

First, you make an excellent distinction between being pro slavery and actually taking part in the atrocity. It’s a subtle yet important difference.

Second, the ante bellum Republican party was indeed composed of soft and hard anti slavery men. Lincoln made it pretty clear prior to his innauguration in that famous letter that if he could save the union without touching slavery, he would. In the sense that he was adamantly opposed to the spread of slavery, we can call him anti-slavery.

Suppose however he had been able to limp along like Buchanan had for four years, steering clear of controversy while keeping his mouth shut about slavery and turning the other way while a few southerners migrated to the territories with slaves? If you love history, you probably like counterfactuals so I’ll give you a “what if” question.

What if Lincoln hadn’t tried to resupply Sumter and in fact had ordered the fort abandoned? Some were uging him to do so making the argument that the secessionists would be overwhelmed in the next state elections if Lincoln did nothing to provoke a southern response.

There is the possibility that indeed the hot heads would have been defeated and those seceded states coaxed back into the union.If that happened, I dare say it would have saved the union but probably destroyed the Republican party. Even so, Lincoln’s overarching goal of keeping the country together would have been achieved.

So much for “what if”…but my point is that Lincoln could very well have turned out like Buchanan; a weak sister whose administration would have done precious little to end slavery.

One more word on “heritage” and the southern soldier…The letters and diaries of the time make it clear that this was a “People’s War” (Page Smith). While we can blame the attitudes and beliefs of political leaders who as you say panicked when Lincoln was elected, never before or since has a war been fought where the politics of the common man played such a large role.