Article about a United Daughters of the Confederacy project to have a "Mammy" monument in Washington, D.C.

Interesting article at The Atlantic magazine website about a project to have a monument to slave women who were "mammys" in Antebellum times. It actually passed the U.S. Senate.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-mammy-washington-almost-had/276431/

David Frum reviews and recommends James McPherson's book "Battle Cry of Freedom" in column at the "Daily Beast"

David Frum reviews and recommends James McPherson's book "Battle Cry of Freedom" in a column at the "Daily Beast." It is a good book, I read it in 1990 or 91. If you are looking for a book to introduce yourself to the Civil War this is one of the best if not the best. 

The review is at this link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/23/david-s-bookclub-battle-cry-of-freedom.html

The second edition is shorter than the first edition. I read the first edition and you might find it on the used book markets.

Frum discusses the Confederacy's refusal to exchange prisoners of war that were African American.

Lee refused. "[N]egroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition." 

This refusal ended the negotiations, for (as Grant wrote), the United States "is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due as soldiers." 

From time to time, we hear denials of the centrality of slavery to the Civil War. That's apologetics, not history. Slavery was always, always there: the war's fundamental cause, the war's shaping reality.

"New York Times" editorial against U.S. Military bases being named after Confederates

The New York Times has an editorial against U.S. military bases being named after Confederates. You can read it at this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/misplaced-honor.html?_r=0

A quote from the article:

Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable;

The editorial is of course correct. It is outrageous that we name bases after Confederates. 

However, Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory is not happy with this editorial. 

http://cwmemory.com/2013/05/25/misplaced-memory-on-memorial-day-weekend/

His blog is a sort of flailing in logic. A sort of grasping for straws. 

However, this blog and some others are showing his banal white nationalism. (www.templeofdemocracy.com/breaking.htm). As public remembrance the Civil War truly starts moving into a mentality of the post-Civil Rights Era and leaves the pre-Civil Rights Era, the era of Paul Buck's "Road to Reunion" we will see in the reactions of Levine and others like him their true colors as they react against this change. 

Juvenile Racism of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans

The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has an official Facebook page.

The link is:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sons-of-Confederate-Veterans-Official/149308815083112?fref=ts

On the Official SCV Facebook page there is a picture with Lincoln carrying a boombox on his shoulder next to his ear and listening to it. You can see the picture and the comments for the picture at this link while it still lasts.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=414660708547920&set=a.174153455931981.46693.149308815083112&type=1&relevant_count=1

These pictures aren't posted by contributors but by the Official SCV Facebook page itself. In the following link There are other juvenile pictures posted by the SCV on their Facebook page. Lincoln and Sherman are shown devils in hell in the picture at the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=201023003245026&set=a.174153455931981.46693.149308815083112&type=1&relevant_count=1

The Sons of Confederate Veterans thinks is it clever and derogatory to portray Lincoln as an African American and commentators at the SCV Facebook page picture pick up the message of the photo.

Mike Edmonds comments, "I dont care what Bill Clinton says, Abe was our first black president."

By the way Clinton didn't say it, someone else did.

Matt Fischer comments, "yeah the hand behind his back is hidin the fried chicken."

Reubin Mauldin comments, "The first Snoop Dog ..."

Don Hulsey comments, "hes got a crackpipe in the other hand."

Butch Jackson comments, "Tru Dat !!!"

The editor of the Official SCV can remove inappropriate comments but hasn't removed these comments and has let these comments stay since April and May 2012.

I think this tells you what type of people make up the Sons of Confederate Veterans and their real attitudes when they are not before the media.

If you want to see these photos go right away, the SCV will likely pull them since it contradicts their public message that it is "Heritage not Hate."

Sons of Confederate Veterans Chief of Heritage Defense condemns Charles Darwin and modern cosmology.

Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) Chief of Heritage Defense Gene Hogan in the May/June 2013 issue of Confederate Veteran, official publication of the SCV condemns Charles Darwin on page 11. In the article evolution, cosmology, Lincoln, the right of secession is all mixed together.

He opens his article explaining that he was invited to give a speech and in preparation for his speech he developed an idea which he is going to share in his "Forward the Colors" column as Chief of Heritage Defense which he does as follows:

It's been said a person's creation belief system will determine their world view. If you believe that the universe just, by chance, popped into existence and that, eventually single-cell organisms emerged from the primordial ooze, grew more complex, became vertebrates, began to walk upright ... here we are, billions of years after the process began, then a corresponding world view will follow, one of randomness ... purposelessness ... hopelessness. 

On the other hand, if you believe in the Genesis account, that an Eternal God spoke this universe into existence, formed us, the highest of His creations, in His image and in due time came to dwell as one us, died at our hands, rose again and stands ready to redeem us, it will profoundly affect your world view ... it will be much different than that of the adherent to the previous theory. 

After an erroneous recounting of the formation of the individual states in American history, he gets back to his topic of modern science leading people astray. Opposition to secession was due to a philosophy of Political Darwinism. Constitutional scholars who say that it is a "living breathing document," are influenced by evolutionary theory.

He points out that Lincoln and Darwin where born on the same day and "These boys would become men who would choose wrong idea, and those ideas would take them down the wrong path."

Hogan calls on his readers to resist "Reconstruction of the Mind," modernity, by being like their Confederate ancestors.

It is a free country. If you want to believe the earth is flat, because the Bible refers to the four corners of the world, you can. Also, I don't want to argue about his conceptualization of evolutionary or cosmological theories. I don't know why believing in evolution or modern cosmology would lead to "randomness," "purposelessness," or "hopelessness."  Or why one theory would necessary preclude the other.  I will leave this to Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy http://www.slate.com/authors.phil_plait.html to debate.

This article is of interest in that it shows that the SCV has become a religious right organization and right with a capital R.

League of the South and the International Afrikaner Society

The announcement for the 20th Annual League of the South (LOS) National Conference has as their speakers Mr. Hannes Louw, President of International Afrikaner Society (IAS) and Mr. Thomas J. Ferreira, former mayor of Boksburg, South Africa. The following is a link to the conference announcement.

http://dixienet.org/rights/2012/league_of_south_2013_conference.php

There is a link to a LOS page on Louw.

http://dixienet.org/rights/2013/conference_speaker_Hannes_Louw.php

This is the facebook page for the International Afriikaner Society. https://www.facebook.com/AfrikanerSociety

According to the LOS page on Louw he is working to find a new homeland for Afrikaners. According to the LoS.

Louw had a keen interest in Conservative politics from an early age, and became increasingly concerned with the plight of the Afrikaner in South Africa and the Afrikaner Diaspora. Believing that current Afrikaner party politics holds little promise he answered the call to utilize his experience, skills and international network to transform and unify Afrikaners, and work with other groups to establish a new Homeland for the Afrikaner people.

I don't pretend to know the politics of South Africa and there has been a lot of criticism of the South African ruling party by many, mostly over the issue of corruption. A lot of this criticism comes from Black Africans. It is a country with a lot of problems. 

However, there seems to be some agenda among some right wing white Afrikaners that there is an upcoming genocide. 

What I think is interesting is that the League of the South is having these speakers here. Why does the League of the South feel that these individuals have something relevant to say to them? The Council of Conservative Citizens www.cofcc.org has an agenda of alarm over South Africa and white genocide and maybe the LOS is planning on adopting this agenda. The LOS also has a program to teach all its members how to use effectively guns. Maybe they are evolving into some armed group expecting an apocalypse of some sort.  

Texas Frontier Heritage & Cultural Center and Grady McWhiney and the League of the South

Grady McWhiney was one of the founding members of the board of directors of the League of the South. He is also an author of books and articles advancing ideas about a Celtic South and Celtics in general that scholars of Celtic studies find laughable.

This is the New York Times obituary for Grady McWhiney discussing his membership in the League of the South (www.dixienet.org) and (www.facebook.com/leagueofthesouth).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/us/30mcwhiney.html?_r=0

This is the biography of Grady McWhiney at the McWhiney History Education Group.
http://www.mcwhiney.org/founder.html

You will notice in the online McWhiney History Education Group biography web page of McWhiney that his involvement in the League of the South is entirely omitted. Also, his Celtic South writings are held up as some form of academic accomplishment rather than the ludicrous writings that they were.

This is a concluding section of a letter by Berthoff to the American History Forum criticizing a Confederate Celtic article that had been published in it. After tearing the article apart Berthoff writes:

But why harp on what anyone with the least interest in such matters will recognize as a hopeless muddle? Unfortunately, three of our leading journals have now placed their editorial imprimatur on it. Even newspapers feature writers have been more skeptical (Houston Chronicle, November 30, 1980, sec. 2, p. 10). But, then, perhaps the display of proverbial indolence in research and impetuosity in publication by two Southern historians is itself a demonstration of their thesis. 

The following article in Scottish Affairs published by Edinburgh University explains how Celtic scholars found McWiney and others to be laughable and also details how this idea of the Celtic South is neo-Confederate ideology.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/ScottishAffairs.htm

So in this specific way the McWhiney History Education Group works to perpetuate neo-Confederate ideology. It isn't necessary for an institution to support all the elements of neo-Confederate ideology. If one institution supports one element and another institution supports yet another element of neo-Confederate ideology, the sum of these efforts is a possibly effective support of a continuing neo-Confederate ideology.

I recently got a letter from the McWhiney History Education Group and so I looked up the website www.tfhcc.com and sent them the following email on 5/12/2013:

Dear Texas Frontier Heritage & Cultural Center:

Grady McWhiney was a founding director of the League of the South which was white supremacist from the beginning. He is also one of the leading writers who started the neo-Confederate mythology of the Celtic South. 

The idea of naming any education or historical group after him is absurd. It would be like having a Lysenko Institute of Genetics, or a Velikovsky Institute of Astronomy. 

Plus he was a damn racist who helped found and gave credibility to an organization whose goals were to undo the modern civil rights movement. 

Your adopting his name for any institute, program, group, etc. really is a comment on the problems perhaps with Texas Frontier studies and the people who compose this effort. 

As for your claim that the McWhiney History Education Group will “stem the rising tide of historical illiteracy,” I would say better to be uniformed than misinformed. 

Your organizations tolerance for McWhiney’s white supremacist activities says something severely negative about yourself. 

Sincerely Yours, 

Edward H. Sebesta

The officers of the McWhiney History Education Group and others who are supporting an institution named after a white supremacist are:

Governing Board

President/CEO: Donald S. Frazier

Robert F. Pace
Josh Winegarner
Stephen L. Hardin
Stephen Dodd
Dallas Cothrum
Rose M. Burks

Local Advisory Board

Chair: George Nichols

Vice-Chair: Judy Wyse

Secretary: Kathy Phillipp

Katie Alford
Ariel Boggess
Eric Dodd
Carolyn Edmison
Debra Hulse
Anita Young Lane
Jeff Luther
Tommy McAlister
Raymond McDaniel
Rhonda Moore
David Perry
Tom Perini
Paul Thames
Dorothy Thompson
David Wyse

I fully expect Kevin M. Levine to come to their defense.

Celebrate Juneteenth as an Anti-Confederate holiday

Juneteenth is on June 19th every year. It originally started out as a holiday to celebrate the abolition of slavery in Texas. However, it has become a national holiday of emancipation.

This year do something to celebrate Juneteenth as an anti-Confederate holiday.

1. You might read a an article or book about the struggle against slavery during the Civil War or the struggle for racial equality during the Civil War. You might read about the African American troops who fought against the Confederacy. I recommend Dudley Cornish's "The Sable Arm." It is a classic book. You might just buy a book about these topics on Juneteenth.

Mention the book or article your read or buy by tweeting on it or mentioning it on your facebook page or elsewhere on the Internet.

2. You might do a blog posting relevant to Juneteenth and the Civil War and the struggle against the Confederacy. Or write up something as a Facebook posting.

3. If you are in D.C. visit the African American Civil War Memorial.

4. If the local municipality or state you are in celebrates the Confederacy write a letter to your elected representatives asking them not to celebrate the Confederacy. It might be a monument, a flag, a symbol, a holiday about or incorporating the Confederacy. Post your letter online or tweet about it.

There must be many things you might do to have an anti-Confederate observance of the day. Let me know what ideas you might have and I will consider post them.

Dubious Medical advice at Lew Rockwell webpage

It always amazes me what is passed off as sound medical advice at www.lewrockwell.com. Very frequently there are various articles putting forth various medical claims that are laughable.

However, this article caught my attention, "Might Electron Deficiency Be An Underlying Factor in Most Chronic Disease."

http://lewrockwell.com/mercola/mercola281.html

The lead in to it from the lewrockwell.com page is "Are you Suffering from Excessive Electricity?" Someone is confusing "Excessive" with "Deficiency."

It is hilarious reading.

What attracted me to read a little of the article, was that you don't hear much anymore about electricity in dubious medical devices and treatments. It is like something out of the 30s or 40s.

If Lew Rockwell thinks that this article is credible, he really lacks intellectual capacity or judgement.

I don't see the ad that can frequently be seen on the website offering to sell plans for a machine that generates electricity without any fuel or electrical input. In short a perpetual motion machine. What is interesting is the sales pitch, listening to it you really learn something about the audience for www.lewrockwell.com.

If you tend to think anyone in charge of anything is likely to be part of a conspiracy, whether the school crossing guard, president of your aunt's bridge club, or something you thought you saw in the woods, then www.lewrockwell.com is for you.

It is astounding that so many university professors affiliate with Lew Rockwell when his website propounds these dubious medical theories. They must utterly be without a sense of embarrassment.

Confederate Veteran author advocates white supremacy to avoid being like Latin America

Latin America is referred to in Confederate Veteran articles as a racial demographic to be avoided.

This is an extract from an article is from the Confederate Veteran, Vol. 11 No. 9, September 1903, pp. 407. Introduction to article which clearly explains the meaning of the “Faithful” slave stories. The Confederate Veteran was the official publication of the United Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Confederated Southern Memorial Associations, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Our forefathers of the forties and fifties and sixties believed that if slavery were abolished, unless the black race were deported from the American States, there would result in the Southern States just such a condition of things as had resulted in San Domingo, in the other West Indies Islands, and in the so-called republics of Central and South America—namely, a hybridization of races, a lowering of the ethical standard, and a degradation, if not loss, of civilization.

The article is about African slavery. You can read it here.

http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=139:qconfederate-veteranq-article-titled-qfaithful-old-slaves-degenerate-progenyq-includes-commentary-about-latin-americans&catid=37:the-nadir-of-race-relations&back=yes

Article on Neo-Confederate Thomas E. Wood

Thomas E. Woods was a contributor to Southern Partisan, and to the Southern Patriot, the official publication of the League of the South. His full neo-Confederate career you can read about at www.templeofdemocracy.com/ThomasEWoods.htm.

One of his Southern Partisan article condemns the 18th century Enlightenment as an attack on the south. That puts a Capital R in reactionary.

Wood's webpage avoids his neo-Confederate past. http://www.tomwoods.com/articles/

This blog posting was brought to my attention this morning:

http://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/thomas-e-woods-jr-and-the-neo-confederate-catholic-right/

It is a liberal Catholic website.  People are beginning to figure it out Wood's neo-Confederate ideology from his policy positions, though it doesn't seem this blogger or others know of his neo-Confederate origins.

NRA, Neo-Confederate Rifle Association? New President attracts national attention over his neo-Confederate statements

Jim Porter II, attorney from Birmingham, Alabama has been elected president of the NRA. Some of the statements he made in a speech has gotten national attention.

This is the video of his speech:

Interesting section starts at 4:20.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opjdxnag3TE&feature=youtu.be

Some of the statements, which are online in numerous media articles are:

“Now y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ down South.”

And he claimed that the NRA was, "started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the ‘War of Northern Aggression."

This is a significant mainstreaming of neo-Confederate ideology. As a major figure in politics and head of an organization which has considerable influence with the Republican Party, his opinion on the Confederacy will have influence. 

Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens talks about conquering sections of Latin America

This is a speech by Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens from before the Civil War. There are two interesting topics in the speech. One is about re-opening the African Slave trade. The other is about acquiring more sections of Latin America. This is from pages 637-651, of the book, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private, with Letters and Speeches, Before, During, and Since the War, by Henry Cleveland, National Publishing Company, 1866.

You can read more of the speech here:

http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118:farewell-speech-of-honah-stephens-delivered-in-augusta-georgia-on-saturday-july-2-1859-wishes-to-reopen-the-slave-trade-with-africa-and-carve-more-slave-states-out-of-latin-america&catid=41:the-gathering-storm&back=yes

The following is an extract:

Legislators in this country, in the main, are but the embodied reflection of the characters and principles of those who elect them. As matters now stand, so far as the sectional questions are concerned, I see no cause of danger, either to the Union, or southern security in it. The former has always been with me, and ought to be with you, subordinate to the latter. But on the present basis of governmental action, recognized in all its depart­ments, on those questions vital to the South, I see nothing likely to arise from it calculated to endanger either her safety or secu­rity: hence, nothing to prevent the hope and earnest desire that a still greater, wider, and higher career is before us, for many long years to come, than that yet attained. There is nothing in the diversity and dissimilarity of the institutions of the different States inconsistent with this—nothing in any increase or addition of States; nothing in the future enlargement of the limits of the republic, by further acquisition of territories, as, in the event of continued union, there, doubtless, will be. Already, we are looking out toward Chihuahua, Sonora, and other parts of Mexico – to Cuba, and even to Central America. Where are to be our ultimate limits, time alone can determine. But of all these acquisitions, the most important to the whole country is that of Cuba. She lies geographically in the natural line of extension and acquisition. The natural course for all national extension is on lines of longitude, rather than lines of latitude — from North to South, or from South to North, rather than from East to West—so as to bring within a common juris­diction the products of different climes. As yet, we embrace no portion of the tropics. Cuba, besides, her commanding position in the Gulf, and all other advantages, would fill up this defi­ciency.


On this subject, however, I will say that I am not much in favor of paying any great sum of money to Spain for that island. If the people of Cuba want to come under our jurisdiction, it is their right to come, and ours to receive them, without let or hindrance from Spain. She holds the island by no tenure but that of conquest and force. The more appropriate policy would be to repeal all our own laws which make it penal and criminal for our own citizens to go and help them achieve their independence: Instead of offering Spain thirty or more millions of dollars for it, I would simply quit spending other millions in keeping watch and guard, for her to oppress and rob, I would simply quit holding while Spain skins. A million or two might be well spent to obtain so great a result without difficulty, if Spain saw fit to receive it―not much more.

Though Stephens doesn't directly state that these territories will be acquired to establish additional slave states, later in the speech he says, "Wherever climate and soil suit, there slavery can and will go to the extent of population."

Prior to the Civil War slaveholders talked about acquiring territory in Latin America to make more slave states and there was a problem with illegal filibustering expeditions by Americans to take over territories in Latin America. Fortunately they fail, but not for want of effort. I recommend the standard classic on the subject, "Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire," by Robert E. May.

You can search www.confederatepastpresent.org with different key words and find other interesting items regarding the Confederacy, Neo-Confederacy, and Latin America and Latinos. 

Jefferson Davis on racial superiority of whites over Latin Americans. Another item to consider for Cinco de Mayo

I am going to be posting items about the anti-Latino attitudes of the Confederates and neo-Confederates for Cinco de Mayo.


This link has a speech by Jefferson Davis in Portland, Maine before the Civil War:

http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=115:speech-of-jefferson-davis-at-the-portland-democratic-convention-praising-his-audience-for-maintaining-white-racial-purity-in-contrast-to-latin-americans-who-he-denigrates-for-being-racially-mixed&catid=41:the-gathering-storm&back=yes

“Speech of Jefferson Davis at the Portland Convention,” from Jefferson Davis Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, collected and edited by Dunbar Rowland, Volume III, pages 284-288, printed for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi, 1923.

Essentially Jefferson Davis praises his listeners in Maine for remaining racially pure unlike Latin Americans who he thinks are inherently incapable of a republican form of government due to their racial composition.  An extract form the speech:

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days’ government ape the rules of the earth. Even now the nearest and strongest of these American Republics, which were fashioned after the model of our own, seems to be tottering to a fall, and the world is inquiring as to who will take possession; or, as a protector, raise and lead a people who have shown themselves incompetent to govern themselves.

Regarding the anti-Latino attitudes of neo-Confederates go to http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/ and put Latino, Mexican, or Hispanic into the search engine and you will have more than enough to read.