Incident at an Antique Store

[J. Beckert]

(08-07-2014 11:01 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Frankly, I hope Roger will close this thread. It's given me a sick headache just reading through it.

It's the "elephant in the room", Toia. It happens every time this sensitive subject comes up. I'd bet my last dollar that not one person of Southern feeling on this forum feels that slavery was a good thing, but the current political atmosphere that demands apologies and endless weeping over an issue that ended years ago seems to prevail. We've become a nation of whiners - and that's just my personal opinion.

[LincolnToddFan]

We have become a nation of whiners, but I don't think I can agree that it's a current or recent phenomenon. I was born at the very end of the Baby Boom, and as much as I cringe to have to admit it, it's a generational trait.

It's tempting to try pin it on the current atmosphere, but for as long as I can remember some group or another has had an axe to grind and a finger to point...whether it's the Establishment vs. the hippies and the counterculture, the so called Silent Majority vs. the Black Power and Civil Rights movement, the Christian Majority vs. the Liberal Establishment, the Tea Party vs. immigrants, now it's Left vs. Right...on and on and on.

I'm sick of it all, and dangerously coming to the point of not caring anymore.

[RJNorton]

Toia, at least for now I am going to keep it open. IMO, the discussion, at this point, has not taken the degree of turn that has led me to close a few like threads in the past. Your one sentence is key to me - " I keep my own views, try to see the other side, and don't take any of it personally." The idea of the forum when founded over two years ago was to allow the expression of all ideas. Inherent in that goal is the possibility of strong disagreement on topics. I do not expect nor would I want all forum members to have my personal love/admiration for President Lincoln. When I titled the forum Lincoln Discussion Symposium it was purposely different from a now defunct forum titled "Friends of Lincoln Mailbag." I wanted people of all opinions to feel welcome here.

[Gene C]

(08-08-2014 12:02 AM)J. Beckert Wrote:  It's the "elephant in the room", Toia. It happens every time this sensitive subject comes up. I'd bet my last dollar that not one person of Southern feeling on this forum feels that slavery was a good thing, but the current political atmosphere that demands apologies and endless weeping over an issue that ended years ago seems to prevail. We've become a nation of whiners - and that's just my personal opinion.

Well said Joe, plus (as Laurie, BettyO and others mention) we use our current political and social values to try and understand a problem that was a dominant issue over 150 years ago. I like BettyO's signature " The past is a foreign country...they do things differently there"

[Wild Bill]

For Jim Crow beginning in the North, see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange career of Jim Crow (orig 1955, various eds and pubs since), pp. 17-21.

[LincolnMan]

(08-07-2014 09:08 PM)Rsmyth Wrote:  Well, well, well Wild Bill, surely southern pride and heritage are not defined by four years, four years when the confederate flag was flown. Please do not accuse me of attacking the south. I love the south, the food, the scenery, the people. I vacation in the south. I am sure there are many things southerners can proud and could display as a symbol for the area they love. I just cannot understand why anyone would support and defend a symbol that stood for oppression and is distasteful to a large number of Americans today who feel it is a racist symbol. Please tell me the justification for displaying this flag.

That is my position also. I'm glad that we here at the Forum can freely express our opinions- which was the issue that I mentioned when I retold the incident at the antique store. As it used to be said: "To each his own."

[Linda Anderson]

The past may be a different place but I agree with William Faulkner, Nobel Prize winning author from Oxford, Mississippi.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." Requiem for a Nun.

Sadly, Bill's experience in the antique shop and the posters' response bear witness to that.

[BettyO]

Amen, Linda!

[LincolnToddFan]

(08-08-2014 08:28 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  For Jim Crow beginning in the North, see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange career of Jim Crow (orig 1955, various eds and pubs since), pp. 17-21.

Bill,

Thanks for the suggestion. I am normally reading about 3-4 books at a time, and I will get Mr. Woodward's book from the library next week.

Linda, I also love that Faulkner quote and I agree with it completely!

Roger,

Of course you are right as usual. There is no need to close a thread because things become a little heated. I have mentioned before the dysfunction of my upbringing and how as a result any hint of quarreling can throw me into a kind of panic.

The Civil War is and will always be a potent subject. AL is and will always be a fascinating figure. The astonishing cottage industry of books about him 150 years later attests to that.

I am puzzled by remarks about "fawning" over him here when I see just as many posters excoriating him. I have browsed at several other Civil War sites that are devoted to the Southern view, and I can assure you that both sides are not nearly so well represented as they are here.

Thanks again.

[L Verge]

Like Betty, I am proud of my Southern background and resent the fact that the popular feeling continues to be that the South caused the Civil War by their refusal to end slavery and then had the audacity to kill the greatest president who ever lived. However, IMO, the whole issue has escalated drastically over the past few decades due to the prevailing demand for "political correctness" and the seemingly endless growth of big government sticking its nose into every aspect of daily life. Shades of 1860?! And, I'll take the help offered by a redneck any day compared to a bureaucrat in a three-piece suit...

My husband and I did Civil War reenactments for nearly ten years back in the 1970s - and we portrayed a Confederate private and an officer's wife (soon learned hoop skirts kept one from having to stir the stew around the campfire). During those encampments, it was very rare to see any trash-talking between the two sides as to who was right and who was wrong in 1860. It was fun for those who liked to fire black powder and educational for those equipped to talk good history from various perspectives. I am out of the reenactment loop now, so I have to wonder if the social and political culture of today has changed things.

The flag issue to me is an outward sign of an inward anger over lingering issues with our society, culture, and politics. I did not appreciate the flags of black power fists that appeared a lot during the 1970s Black Panther movement. I dislike the Mexican flags being waved today (indicating to me a rejection of American values). Don't even get me started on flags of our enemies being hoisted in public places or traffic being stopped on our city streets for mid-day prayers. I used to have a Catholic priest friend (now deceased), who expressed his views on life by admitting that he was "an equal opportunity bigot." I may fall into that category if I feel that the country envisioned by the Founding Fathers is being threatened.

As for views on Mr. Lincoln, I admit to being one of those who sees him as a pure politician who had good points and bad points and knew when to use situations to his advantage. I also think the amount of folklore and legend that has grown up around him does a disservice to legitimate studies of the man. For example, "let 'em up easy" is a very generous thought after he knew that the Feds had defeated the South. He didn't show any compassion, however, while Grant was waging total war with the help of Sherman in Georgia and Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley destroying infrastructure and natural resources as well as homes and livelihoods that would be needed after the war. Did it win the war faster? Most likely, it did - but was total destruction necessary by 1864?

And one more personal note of my feelings on "racism" and "cultural diversity:" I am actually required to attend classes on embracing cultural diversity, as are all employees of the agency that I work for. I go and I participate - and I often wonder why. Truthfully, I have personally had an African American gynecologist for over twenty years, an East Indian internist and cardiologist for nearly thirty years, a Muslim gastroenterologist for ten years (complete with prayer rug hanging on a rack in his office), a Jewish dentist for about twenty years, and was married to a man who was second generation Italian on his father's side and second generation Russian on his mother's.

I think I have a pretty good idea of what cultural diversity is all about. It's having it shoved down my throat that makes me mad. That likewise goes for the issues of the South being the cause of the Civil War and trouble ever since.

I should probably add that I am on the board of advisers of The Lincoln Forum, was on the board of advisers to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission appointed by President Clinton, and I'm a member of the Lincoln Group of D.C. I am not anti-Lincoln - I just enjoy learning about what he did wrong as well as what he did right.

My rant has ended - carry on...

[L Verge]

Source: Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait, Herbert Mitgang, editor, UGA Press, 1989, pp.256-257; excerpt from original editorial in Bangor, Maine, newspaper and reprinted in the New York Evening Day-Book of 18 April 1861:

DEMOCRATS OF MAINE! The loyal sons of the South have gathered around Charleston as your fathers of old gathered about Boston, in defense of the same sacred principles of liberty -- principles which you have ever upheld and defended with your vote, your voice, and your strong right arm. Your sympathies are with the defenders of the truth and the right. Those who have inaugurated this unholy and unjustifiable war are no friends of yours -- no friends of Democratic Liberty. Will you aid them in their work of subjugation and tyranny?

When the Government at Washington calls for volunteers or recruits to carry on their work of subjugation and tyranny under the specious phrases of "enforcing the laws," "retaking and protecting the public property," and "collecting the revenue," let every Democrat fold his arms and bid the minions of Tory despotism [to] do a Tory despot's work. Say to them fearlessly and boldly in the language of England's great Lord, the Earl of Chatham, whose bold words in behalf of the struggling Colonies of America in the dark hours of the revolution, have enshrined his name in the heart of every friend of freedom, and immortalized his fame wherever the name of liberty is known -- say in his thrilling language: "If I were a Southerner, as I am a Northerner, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms - never, never, NEVER!"

While abolitionists drew most of their support from New England, this editorial shows the politics involved (at least early in the war) with Democrats preaching against the actions of their own government. BTW: After this editorial appeared, a pro-Lincoln mob burned the news offices and printing presses of the paper.

Seldom cited political infighting within the North during the war...

[Gene C]

I think I'm just going to avoid going to an antique store for the next week or two.

[Rsmyth]

"I find your hateful opposition to the South as distasteful as you find the Rebel flag."
Where in any of my posts did I say that? And I do not find the Rebel flag distasteful. I just believe it needs to be relegated to museums and history books, not flown in the faces of those that think it is offensive. I have one questions for you Mr. Bill... "How would you feel if you saw a bumper sticker on a car in San Antonio, Texas that said 'Remember the Alamo." I would love to know if you would find that offensive to certain peoples that populate that area or not and either way, your reasoning.

[LincolnToddFan]

[My ancestors fought for that flag and for the constitutionality it represented - it did NOT then or now represent the KKK or any other subversive organization - that mind-set, if you will, was perpetuated upon the flag by subversives who have therefore ruined it's meaning]// quote

I have been thinking hard about this statement by BettyO because it's a point of view I never considered, and I think it's very important. When the leaders of the Confederacy adopted the Stars and Bars it had not yet been co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan to mean something much darker, much more twisted than just States rights and Constitutional liberty(their view of it at least). It had not yet been associated with visions of cross burnings, lynching and violence.

But that is exactly what did happen. And while I genuinely sympathize with people like Betty and Laurie who see the flag as the banner under which their ancestors went into war to fight for the land they lived on against the Northern invader, I also know that the Stars and Bars was one of the last things that victims of the KKK saw before they were lynched by them. What should be an emblem of unsullied regional pride-kind of the way I feel about my beloved black, white, red and gray OSU football jersey-has become something much more sinister for many people.

And it is through no fault of Southerners who do not identify with Klan philosophy or beliefs.

[Wild Bill]

I find "Remember the Alamo" just fine and screw those who don't. Shocking, huh?