If we are "Proud Confederates"...

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 26, 2010 at 3:01pm

I see that you also feel Slavery is a good thing, since you invest such time discussing it. I think slavery was and is an abomination, and I am deeply displeased that it people are still so commonly traded in parts of Africa today.

I think that, besides the military advances that Pancho Villa noted in his thread, Southern cooking is dangerously delicious. Sunsets and sunrises are the envy of the world, the clouds disperse the light in fascinating ways, and Winters are tolerable.

Some Southern states are peopled by the most gentle and genteel of folk - honest and hard working, kindly and generous beyond what northerners can imagine. They have lived on their land for so many generations and are so connected that the welfare of their neighbors is as important as the welfare of their families.

No where in the world (and I have traveled it) have I ever seen such constant consideration and concern for others.

Permalink Reply by Van on July 26, 2010 at 3:12pm

My point was that portraying the Confederacy as noble is in fact defending slavery. As for your other points about the South, I agree with you. My mother is a fine southern cook and I think most southern people are good kindly people. But there is still a fair amount of racial prejudice and outright racism. Many of those people promote the idea of the Confederacy as a noble cause and slavery as a benign institution. I hope you and Pancho aren't among them.

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 26, 2010 at 4:45pm

There was nothing benign about slavery, there still is nothing benign about it. Slavery is a cancerous growth that drains a culture's humanity.

The point is that slavery was not solely an embarrassment of the Confederacy. New England traders are the ones who initiated the procurement, purchase and transportation of people as a marketable item. The onus is on ALL Americans, not solely those whose lineage traces to the warmer climes.

Racial prejudice is also not an ill exclusive to the South. Racism is a dirty mucky schism, and it's endemic all over these United States. The North hides it though, but still maintains racially divergent neighborhoods. Look at Harlem NYC, The East Side and the West side of Chicago, Roxbury, Boston, etcetera.

So please, the intent of this thread is to point out the fine things, those that make us proud to be Southerners.

More great points - institutions of higher learning. Well educated men and women were common, and still are. I resent though, the nearly universal idea held by much of the country, that if one speaks carefully and at a pace that works well on sultry summer nights, one must be an idiot.

Most of the classical American writers were born in the South. We have fine things, and plenty of which we can be proud.

I'm still waiting for you guys to add to this list.

Permalink Reply by Action Jeans on July 26, 2010 at 8:28pm

The problem isn't that you have southern pride or that you see many good things that have come out of southern culture. That's perfectly fine. I also love the South for its cultural diversity and for the generous spirit of its people.

The problem starts the moment you bring the confederacy in as a positive part of the southern legacy. The south and the confederacy are not the same thing. It actually can't be the same thing, because one still exists while the other is long dead. We live in the south and we are part of the UNION. See, because the civil war was fought and won to preserve that Union. Being in a pathological state of denial does not change that.

You say you hate slavery. Fine, that's great. The reason we are disagreeing is because you refuse to see the contradiction of supporting a dead movement whose driving force (in fact, very reason for existing) was the preservation of slavery.

If you truly despise slavery, you should be nothing but grateful that the confederacy lost the Civil War. There is a very real possibility that if they had not, we would still have slavery to this very day.

To answer your question about why people in this group seem not to be proud of the confederacy, it's because they aren't. Several of the people who joined this group did so only to make it known that they find the very notion of confederate pride in today's south perverse and despicable.

Try to see this from a perspective that is not your own. The confederacy is a symbol of the south's greatest shame. To glorify it is absolutely schizophrenic if you truly abhor the institution of slavery.

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 27, 2010 at 6:05am

I suppose that's true, if one heralds from slave states, like Alabama. Many Southerners come from areas where the population was too poor to own slaves. Our family, and most of those I know, are from middle tennessee, where poor folks eked a hard-scrabble existence from the rocky soil, worked their asses off to keep their families in the starving class, and could think no further than providing for the children who lived past birth. These early southerners are under-represented in you narrow definition of the Confederacy, and are also the progenators of community thinking, compassion for those without, generosity, respect and honor.

To neglect these people is unfair, biased or uninformed on your part.

But if your mind is so organized that it can only see things in black and white, I have pity for you. Either you suffer from closed mindedness or borderline personality disorder - neither conditions can possible lead to a good life.

Permalink Reply by Action Jeans on July 27, 2010 at 6:10pm

I completely understand that there were non-slave owners in the south. I realize there were poor, disadvantaged white southerners that were conscripted without the benefit of choice into the confederacy. Duped to fight and die by the rich southerners who did not care how many of the poor they would have to sacrifice to preserve their precious right to own and exploit other humans. It's absolutely unfair. I also know that the North had it's fair share of racism and still does. By no means do I see the country of the Civil War as pure good vs pure evil. You do me an unwarranted disservice by assuming me to be so simple minded.

That reality does not make the confederacy any more noble of a cause. It only makes it all the more tragic and wasteful. To blame the Union for their hardships and deaths would be misplaced and shortsighted in the extreme. It's the injustice of slavery and those that would preserve that injustice that you should blame. Because to abide it and to condone it any longer than they already had truly would have made the Lincoln and the Union worthy of your scorn.

Thank Lincoln, who had the courage as president to ignore countless death threats and do what he knew was right at the cost of his own life. If not, the yoke of slavery may still be around the necks of black Americans. Around all our necks.

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 28, 2010 at 5:44am

Yet you still can only see in black and white. That IS sad, and should be investigated.

I don't even understand how there can be dospute about slavery. Do you know anyone who is FOR it? I don't. And this thread is supposed to be about positives. Are you able to think of anything positive? if not, and you still want to particfipate, a simple, "I don't see anything positive" would suffice.

And that would be sad too.

How about trying for something good?

Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on July 28, 2010 at 6:26am

Mary, Clearly that buzzard is bi-polar, and you should not even waste your elogent words on him - all that he has on his mind is slavery - the Confederacy was a fact a part of history and few of it's soldiers fought for that cause, although I am sure that many of the officers and politicians were protecting their rice bowl just like they do today. I guess we're suppose to dishonor these men and our ancestors for their sacrafices and the injustices they bore with stoic and diginified pride. He makes me want to puke in his face if I could only get to that cowardly weasal's neck.

Permalink Reply by Action Jeans on July 28, 2010 at 11:02am

Let me simplify:

South, southerners = good

Confederacy = bad

I'm sure there were some nice fellas fighting for the Germans during WWII but I'm still glad they lost and I won't be building a shrine for them any time soon.

I don't believe in the cause they were fighting for.

I'm grieved that they died in vain but I'm not proud of what they died for. What is so hard to understand about that?

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