Debbie, this is funny, sad and true all at the same time. I at times feel if some foreign power would conquer this country (ala Red Dawn, the Soviet and the defunct Chinese version) and how much would this country would be changed.

Mario on April 13, 2011 at 7:20 pm

It is a very sad thing. There are no common or shared visions anymore. The particular and peculiar is elevated above all else, and this is especially true in the area of civil rights.

worry0 1 on April 13, 2011 at 7:34 pm

Well! We have one thing in common today with the Civil War of yesteryear. Both Presidents were/are from Illinois.

One of them is rolling over in his grave.

There is NO Santa Claus on April 13, 2011 at 11:43 pm

It is so depressing.

Sometimes I think that our only hope is in the Christian homeschooled children.

batyah on April 14, 2011 at 1:15 am

Unfortunately what most Americans know about the Civil War is myth. The primary conflict between the industrialized North and the agricultural South was an economic one. Similar to this day many Southerners were fed up with the Federal government which was controlled by Northern industrialists and which was overtaxing (through tariffs) the South. They simply wanted out of what was then considered a union of sovereign states.

Jerry on April 14, 2011 at 8:07 am

I think they’d REALLY be mad. So mad they’d act in ways todays society can’t relate. Todays society being like the one in the Stallone movie “Demolition Man”. They use to engage in duels over disrespectfulness. So you know they’d be just disgusted. The sure wouldn’t vote democrat.

samurai on April 14, 2011 at 8:15 am

The Confederate Flag (the Stars & Bars not the X Battle Flag that morons identify as the Confederate Flag) flies over the Wolf residence for the entire month of April, Confederate History Month. Contrary to popular opinion, the war was not fought over slavery. Slavery was practiced world wide for hundreds of years and would have ended soon, without the war. Hundreds of thousands of people from all races were enslaved over the history of the world. Yes there were white slaves, even in the United States. Slavery is wrong and immoral (just like abortions, which are still legally performed in the U.S.)

The Civil War was fought over State’s rights as defined in the Constitution. The Confederate states lost the war and ALL the states lost their rights. All fifty states are now controlled by the central federal government in Washington D.C. The Confederate States of America believed in the Constitution as written by the founding fathers of the United States of America.

Bonzer Wolf on April 14, 2011 at 9:22 am

I just watched a show on the History channel.

Civil War…Camp Douglas, ILLINOIS
Lincoln starved & “slaughtered” thousand’s.

Dansmith1954 on April 14, 2011 at 9:26 am

One little known historical fact is that during the war, Abraham Lincoln went on a bender, drinker all afternoon and well into the night. The next morning, he woke up and exclaimed, “I FREED WHO???”

Oh, and when it comes to reparations, it seems the blacks in this country should be paying the former slaveowners, because they have life a lot better here, than they would have in Africa, where they were slaves to more evil taskmasters..the Muslims.

Jonathan E. Grant on April 14, 2011 at 11:24 am

I think one of the reasons I support Israel is that it’s ingrained in me from family history that trying to take a land away from its people is wrong, wrong , wrong! My great-grandfather was a 2nd Lt. in the Confederate Cavalry out of Tennessee. He and his 3 brothers all signed up on the same day. After the war their lands and property were taken away for taxes and the family relocated to Texas to start over again. From the lovely big white home, they were forced to live in a log cabin. They never forgot what they lost (not only personally but as citizens), and they made sure succeeding generations never forgot either. People who think the war was a long time ago and best forgotten are those who didn’t live with the consequences of Reconstruction. In many ways that same boot is on our necks today. I don’t believe my ancestors would approve any more than they did in 1861.

PortiaElizabeth on April 14, 2011 at 11:47 am

RE: FLAGS

http://www.usflag.org/confederate.stars.and.bars.htm

I have lived in both Texas and Florida and, except for the Northerners who come to those states and try to make them “Northern”, I find that Texans, especially, have no objections to being wealthy, to being free of big government, and to being individuals when it comes to lifestyles. (Thanks PortiaElizabeth – you are correct about TEXICANS disliking boots on their necks.)

Detroit radio personality, Mark Scott – rest in peace – always noted the War between the States was about State’s Rights. Bonzer Wolf, above, is correct in that Slavery would have shortly ended as it was economically bankrupting vs. Machines cost-effectiveness. Slave states, even now, cannot compete against high-tech, robotics-driven mass production.

WAKE-UP ALL MICHIGANDERS! Your “progressive”, Keynesian leaders have enslaved you with high taxes, P-C ideas, massive regulations, and a “Give Back” (of what YOU EARNED!) mentality.

HISTORY REPEATS…unless you educate yourself and evolve.

Dennis on April 14, 2011 at 12:21 pm

I agree with General Longstreet who said “We should have freed the slaves and THEN succeeded from the Union”.

Most people don’t understand that it was less than 10% of Southerners who owned slaves. In addition, most of this group didn’t fight the War–they could pay to get out it. This is where the phrase “It’s rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” comes from. Most Southerners were fighting against what they thought was an overbearing Federal government and believed that the States’ sovereignty overrode the Federal governments. After the Civil War (since the State’s Rights movement was crushed), we saw the start of a very powerful Federal government and weak State governments along with the Imperial Presidents that we have today.

As much as things change, they stay the same.

jimmyPx on April 14, 2011 at 12:28 pm

The true hated of this country can be traced to the multicultural movement. All societies are the same, we’re all the same, blah, blah, blah. There are serious conferences going on for teachers and students in Minnesota discussing how evil White Men are. What hope do we have? Our history is being lost right before our eyes. It will only take two or three generations of kids being brainwashed about our history to make it disappear. Luckily, I will not be alive to see the death of the country I love. Very sad.

JeffT on April 14, 2011 at 12:48 pm

While I am ultimately happy that the Union won the war, Lincoln used some unsavory tactics during the war, and has made some rather interesting remarks about blacks in his speeches back then.

Suspension of habeas corpus, turning Union soldiers on american citizens in NYC during draft riots, etc…

US history has taught me many things and one of them is that each president has their good things and bad things, it is mainly which one we choose to ignore. As for Obama, I honestly have not seen a good thing. I suppose the same could be said of Carter.

DonkeyDonk on April 14, 2011 at 1:47 pm

“It is not safe .?.?. to trust $800 million worth of negroes in the hands of a power which says that we do not own the property .?.?. So we must get out .?.?. ”
— The Daily Constitutionalist, Augusta, Ga., Dec. 1, 1860

“[Northerners] have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery ?.?.?. We, therefore, the people of South Carolina .?.?. have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and other States of North America dissolved.”
— from “Declaration of the Causes of Secession’’

“As long as slavery is looked upon by the North with abhorrence .?.?. there can be no satisfactory political union between the two sections.”
— New Orleans Bee, Dec. 14, 1860

“Our new government is founded 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.”
— Alexander Stephens, “vice president’’ of the Confederacy, March 21, 1861

Those quotes from Confederate leaders and newspapers tell me the Civil War was fought for economic reasons…the business of trading human beings. No matter how you feel about “Blacks” or how conditions are today, it is the ULTIMATE in hypocrisy for a nation founded on freedom to allow the trafficking and ownership of slaves. THAT’S why we had to go to war…

DonQue on April 14, 2011 at 2:24 pm

Here we go again with folks repeating Confederate propaganda 146 years after the war is over. After the war, the south would begin to spin grand, romantic fables of a “Lost Cause” that had been fought for “state’s rights” or constitutional principle, or any other reason it could invent, so long as it was not slavery. Jefferson Davis, who before the war had flatly declared “the labor of African slaves” the cause of the rebellion, would write after the war that slavery had nothing to do with it. Yeah, right….

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/09/2159376/the-civil-war-a-conspiracy-of.html#ixzz1JWVeq6ws

Michael B. on April 14, 2011 at 2:29 pm

Jonathan E. Grant and your ilk:

Blacks will pay reparations to Confederates when Jews pay reparations to Egypt. Sound fair? It does to me! The war was over slavery. I defy any of you Confederate apologists to post a link to the Confederacy’s constitution. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t even regard slavery as necessarily, unconditionally wrong.

Look, folks, the proof of the pudding is how atrociously southern whites treated blacks after the Civil War. Ask any honest historian; southern whites treated blacks worse in the decades after the Civil War than they did during slavery itself. That was the main reason why so many blacks left the south for the north … to get away from not only the KKK, but the paterollers, who were far worse than the KKK.

So, why did southern whites treat the newly emancipated blacks worse than they did when they were slaves? BECAUSE THEY LOST THE WAR! The war was over slavery, the southern whites lost, so out of bitterness they went after the former slaves on whose behalf the war was fought. Now if you disagree with me, then you explain the vicious treatment of southern whites against blacks after the Civil War. That southern whites were a bunch of racist murderers from the beginning?

Well that isn’t the case, because whites and blacks generally got along during slavery. Despite what the media and the history books portray, while there certainly was a good number of evil slave owners, most slaveowners were professed Christians who generally obeyed the Bible’s commands concerning the treatment of slaves, and while certainly desiring freedom as most any man would, the vast majority of slaves respected – and many even loved and were devoted to – their masters.

So, only a small percentage of black slaves ever tried to escape (and when they did, it was usually from the minority of cruel and exploitative slave masters) and EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT to provoke slave insurrections against their masters generally failed. And why did they fail? Because slaves, desiring to protect their masters, informed the authorities of the plans of the rebellious slaves, and in many cases even participated in their capture! Nat Turner, John Brown, Denmark Vesey and their ilk would have slaughtered countless southern whites had the black slaves only joined their murderous plots, but the slaves not only refused, but opposed them! Again, this is not to say that most blacks WANTED to be slaves, but they did not want their freedom to come through illegitimate means (i.e. sedition and murder) and antagonistic relationships between blacks and whites often depicted in movies and history books is mostly fiction.

That is, until the south lost the Civil War, at which time the behavior of southern whites towards blacks turned viciously malevolent because they blamed blacks for the war that they lost. For instance, Jim Crow wasn’t established as a logical extension of the slave/slaveowner legacy, as is commonly thought. Instead, during slavery, it was very common for blacks and whites to intermingle socially, and also blacks and whites were economic partners (in an odd sense). Jim Crow was enacted in bitterness over the war to get back at blacks, and justified using claims of black inferiority/white supremacy that virtually no southerners expressed before the war.

That is the best evidence that this whole “it was over economics/states rights/big government” nonsense is exactly that. If that were true, the KKK and the paterollers would have gone after Washington, D.C. (basically the plot of that horrible, utterly ahistorical Will Smith movie “Wild Wild West”), federal officials and northern industrialists instead of going around lynching blacks and burning their farms and churches.

So, are you going to accuse me of getting my history from “Roots” again? Because, though I never read the book or watched the movie, I will hazard a guess that “blacks and whites for the most part got along as fine as can be expected during slavery” wasn’t depicted in it.

There is nothing wrong with admitting that the war was over slavery. Slavery was legal at the time, and just a few decades earlier had been practiced all over the Union and was widely accepted. The worst part about slavery was the manstealing from Africa, and the Middle Passage, but that barbarism had long been outlawed before the Civil War. The north changed their minds when they accepted humanist Enlightenment philosophy (or, should I say, social liberalism) but the south resisted because of economic reasons. Nothing wrong with admitting that: the Union/U.S. slaughtered the Native Americans and took their land because of the same.

If anything, denying that the war was over slavery makes southern whites look WORSE, because it provides no context, no reason for the brutal treatment of southern whites against blacks after the civil war other than mere racial hatred. If you have an alternative reason for it other than anger over the lost war, I’d sure like to know what it is. Of course, it won’t be the truth, because history is just that: history. But I’d be curious to know what the neo-Confederate fantasy land attributes the paterollers and Jim Crow to.

Gerald on April 14, 2011 at 3:34 pm

Well, Gerald, I don’t know where you learned that skewed version of history, but I can tell you a little story about my family that just might – if you’re truly looking for explanations – give you a better perspective.

My family are Scots. My ancestors were proud Highlanders who supported Bonnie Prince Charlie and thus were punished by the British. Have you ever heard of the Highland Clearances? The British wanted to make sure there were no more uprisings by Scots loyal to their own sovereign. There were killings, burning of homes and banishment for defying the king. My ancestors were made prisoners who were shipped to America and sold as indentured servants after their lands were confiscated by England. Indentured servants were basically slaves, as you may know if you study history.

When they finally earned their freedom, they settled in S. Carolina and Tennessee, worked to buy land and farm it. By the time 1861 arrived, they were prosperous and claimed many acres of good land. After the war, the lands they’d owned for generations were taken away by a Reconstruction govt. for taxes.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “Forty acres and a mule”. Where do you think those 40 acres came from? They were taken from people like my family to give to people who hadn’t worked for them and didn’t deserve them over my family. NOW do you see why there could be animosity against blacks by whites?

I would never claim that secession had nothing to do with slavery. It was an integral part of the South and its economy. There are no simple explanations for the reasons a nation divided and came to war. But just as we can’t say it was only about states’ rights, it’s dishonest to say the motivation was to prolong slavery.

My family were fighting to protect and defend what they’d worked so hard for and wanted to keep. They knew firsthand what slavery was; they only wanted to hold onto all they’d managed to earn. Not so different from the way I’m feeling today at the mention of Obama’s tax hikes on the people who already pay more than half.

PortiaElizabeth on April 14, 2011 at 6:10 pm

I’m curious as to what Sean R. has to say about Jonathan E. Grant’s comments.

Should be an interesting response.

Gerald on April 15, 2011 at 12:01 am