150th Anniversary Of Lee's Surrender To Grant

150 years ago today CSA General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia after abandoning the Richmond-Petersburg area, headed west in an attempt to link up to the Confederate forces in North Carolina while pursued by Union forces under .Lt. Gen Ulysses S. Grant.

The Confederate retreat was cut off at Appomattox Court House, and Lee launched an attack that morning that sought to break through the Union force in front of him under the assumption it was just a cavalry unit.   When it turned out it was backed up by two Union corps size infantry units, Lee had no choice but to surrender, and did

The surrender of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant effectively ended the War To Perpetuate Slavery combat in Virginia.   But as word spread of Lee's surrender, it had seismic effects with the rest of the starving and disillusioned Confederate armies still in the field.

Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army in North Carolina on April 26 to Gen. William T. Sherman in Durham, NC.  Gen Edmund Kirby Smith surrendering the Trans-Mississippi Department near New Orleans and Nathan Bedford Forrest (the future KKK founder) surrendering in May. 

The last battle of the Civil War took place in Texas at Palmito Ranch on May 12-13, and the last sizable Confederate unit under Gem Stand Watie surrendered in Oklahoma on June 23.

It also meant that with the military defeat of the Confederacy, it mean the end of their traitorous armed insurrection against the US government, their attempt to win by force keeping slavery alive and the emancipation of my ancestors. 

The Confederate Flag Is A Racist Flag

Over the weekend a discussion started on the Facebook page of a Latino friend in which he expressed his disgust at seeing a Confederate flag in his neighborhood

He commented on it, and a white ally chimed in that maybe this person wasn't racist, but was expressing their Southern pride. 

That comment innocent as it was, still pissed off many of the non-white peeps on that thread who have experienced discrimination and hatred aimed at them from people who had it on their vehicles or as jacket patches. 

It led to me compiling this post and making the following comment in the thread.

***

'The Confederate States of America existed for one purpose: They were traitors who fought an armed rebellion against the United States government for the purpose of keeping my ancestors enslaved for perpetuity. Had they won the Civil War, my grandparents, parents and yours truly would probably be working on plantations and in big houses across the Confederacy   Texas would be under that flag, not the Stars and Stripes. 

That flag is as offensive to me as the Nazi swastika flag is to our Jewish friends. And it isn't an accident that the segregationists used that same confederate flag to symbolize their opposition to the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's and it's making a comeback at Tea Klux Klan rallies.

So no, there is nothing noble or warm and fuzzy about the CSA or that reprehensible flag.'

***

This blog wouldn't exist either had the Confederacy won.  


There was nothing noble about the Confederate States of America because they were on the wrong side of history and willing participants in a monstrous crime against my ancestor's humanity.  Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens clearly spells out what the main reason was for the secession and initiation of the War To Perpetuate Slavery was all about in his March 1861 'Cornerstone Speech'. 

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests 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 normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

And yes, the CSA states seceded over slavery and started the Civil War to keep my ancestors enslaved.  The causes of secession for the states of Georgia, Mississippi and Texas along with the comments of Southern politicians of the time clearly point that out.  

And I'm tired of people wanting to regurgitate that Southern revisionist 'happy darkie' bull feces, the war was about tariffs, the North started it, 'heritage not hate', or the lie that 'thousands of Black soldiers' fought for the CSA.  It's even more important the Southern revisionist history crap be debunked, especially as the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War continues through the rest of this year and through the April 9, 2015 date I may have to throw a party on.

What's that day you ask?  The day the CSA surrendered to end the Civil War. 

When I see the Confederate flag, I see the pain of 246 years of chattel slavery.  I see Jim Crow segregation.  I see a Freedom Rider bus burning.  I see the bombed 16th Street Baptist Church and four dead little girls who entered that building to attend church.  I see fire hoses and police dogs being unleashed on defenseless protestors in Birmingham.  I see 'Bloody Sunday' 

I see along with many African-Americans a racist flag from a failed nation state that fought a war to keep enslaving my ancestors, and there's no sanitizing that.   

150th Anniversary Of The Emancipation Proclamation

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

150 years ago today on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln and took effect.  


The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed all those enslaved in Confederate territory to be forever free, and ordered the Army and all of the Executive branch of the US government  to treat as free all those enslaved in the ten states that were still in rebellion.

At that moment, 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the US according to the 1860 census were freed, but it did not apply to the five slave states that remained in the union nor to most regions already controlled by the Union army.

Of course, the Confederates reacted with predictable outrage.  They pointed to the Emancipation Proclamation as proof they were justified in seceding and launching their armed rebellion against the federal government to preserve slavery because in their minds Lincoln would have abolished it anyway.

But conversely, Lincoln probably would have had a tougher time doing so had all the Confederate states not seceded and stayed in the union.  

The Emancipation Proclamation had been discussed in the Lincoln Administration as early as the summer of 1862 as a way to cripple the Confederacy, who was dependent upon slave labor to drive their engine of war and agreed to, but Lincoln felt he needed to do so after a Union battlefield victory.

The strategic Union victory at Antietam in September 1862 gave President Lincoln an opportunity to announce his plans to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and hinder the Confederacy's efforts to gain international recognition and aid from Great Britain and France.   Five days after Antietam, on September 22 1862 the preliminary proclamation was announced that ordered the emancipation of any slaves in the CSA states that didn't return to federal control by January 1, 1863.  When none did so, it took effect on that date.

There have been spirited arguments from 20th century African-American scholars such as W.E.B.Du Bois, James Baldwin, Julius Lester and Lerone Bennett over just how effective the Emancipation Proclamation was in terms of emancipating our ancestors.   Some called it a worthless piece of paper, while Bennett went even farther in his criticisms in this 2000 book Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.  Bennett asserted in the book that Lincoln was a white supremacist who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in lieu of the real racial reforms the radical abolitionists were pushing for.

In the short term it had several effects.  It converted the Civil War into not only a cause to reunify the country, but added the moral component of ending slavery.  

It put a permanent halt into Confederate efforts to get Great Britain and France, nations that had abolished slavery, into recognizing a treasonous group of American states trying to form a nation based on the principle of perpetuating slavery.

As Lincoln had hoped, as word of the Emancipation Proclamation spread throughout the South, slaves began to escape and headed to the Union lines in anticipation of freedom.  They enlisted in the US Colored Troops, providing a brand new source of manpower for the Union efforts while depleting the manpower of the slave labor dependent Confederacy. 

As the Union armies advanced into formerly CSA held territory, they were also freed.  Unfortunately in my home state of Texas, freedom didn't come for my ancestors until June 19, 1865, two months after the War To Perpetuate Slavery was over. 

The Emancipation Proclamation did not make slavery illegal in the United States.  It merely provided the legal framework for emancipation of slaves as the Union armies successfully advanced.  It also created the political conditions that led to the passage in Congress and ratification of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.

President Johnson referenced this during the 100th anniversary commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation's issuance during a Memorial Day 1963 speech at Gettysburg, PA and connected it to the ongoing Civil Rights movement activity.

"One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. ...In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake--it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision....Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.
 
President Johnson also referenced the proclamation again during a March 15, 1965 congressional speech announcing the introduction of the 1965 Voting Rights Act one week after Bloody Sunday. 

It seems fitting that 150 years later, we have an African-American president who is also an Illinois resident  issuing a proclamation of his own commemorating what President Lincoln did back in 1863.


But the Emancipation Proclamation was the precursor for the 'new birth of freedom' as Lincoln called it in his Gettysburg Address, although it came for African-Americans at a bloody cost and a 'with all deliberate speed' pace.

150th Anniversary Of First Battle Of Bull Run/Manassas

150 years ago today the first land battle of the War To Perpetuate Slavery, the First Battle of Bull Run happened near the town of Manassas, VA. 

The battle that was fought from July 21-24 is known by two different names because the Union and Confederacy used different conventions for naming Civil War battles.  The Union named them after the nearest body of water, and the Confederates for the nearest settlement or farm.

In the months after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter public opinion and political pressure had been building for a Union attack on the CSA capitol of Richmond, VA.  President Lincoln and politicians were clamoring for action because the Confederate troops were encamped a very uncomfortable 25 miles (40 km) from Washington D.C and they believed the capture of Richmond would bring a speedy end to the nascent war.

Because of the building political pressure, the unseasoned troops of the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia under the command of Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell advanced his 35,000 man force across a creek called Bull Run, a Potomac river tributary.   McDowell's intent was to launch a surprise attack against the equally unseasoned CSA Army of the Potomac force of 22,000 troops under the command of Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard near Manassas Junction.   

The inexperienced showed as the Union Army clumsily executed the attack, but still had the advantage over the Confederate units on the scene until a brigade of Virginians under the command of a then unknown colonel and instructor at the Virginia Military Institute name Thomas J. Jackson  stood their ground against the Union attack and earned him his 'Stonewall Jackson' nickname.

Jackson's stand combined with the arrival of reinforcements via train from the Shenandoah Valley under the command of Brig Gen. Joseph E. Johnston swung the course of the battle in favor of the Confederacy as they launched a strong counterattack that forced a Union withdrawal under pressure.    The Union withdrawal turned into a rout as some of the troops panicked and fled in the direction of nearby Washington D.C.       

The First Battle of Bull Run was at that time the largest and bloodiest battle in US history, with Union casualties totaling 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312 missing or captured.   On the Confederate side the victory came with a cost.  In addition to losing Brig. Gen. Barnard Bee and Col  Francis Bartow, their casualties were 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13 missing

The First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas also caused both sides to realize that this would be a long, drawn out and nasty war with far bloodier battles to come and they began to act and think in those terms in the aftermath of this first clash of the war.   

More Pimp Slapping of the Black Confederate Soldier Myth

"No black rebel units ever fought Union forces, although many slaves fought alongside their owners, and thousands more were compelled to labor for the Confederacy, rebuilding rail lines or construction fortifications."    Professor Henry Louis Gates


Panel discussion with Bruce Levine that continues to pimp slap the Black Confederate soldier myth

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Professor Truman Clark Houston Chronicle article.

A review of Levine's book Confederate Emancipation by David Bight.


The Myth Of The Black Confederates Persists

Pimp Slapping The Black Confederate Soldier Myth

As we get closer to the 150th anniversary of the first land battle of the War To Perpetuate Slavery, the First Battle of Bull Run (or Battle of Manassas as the CSA peeps called it) on July 21-24, one myth that needs to be blown up along with the Big Lie that the Confederates weren't fighting to preserve slavery is the myth of the Black Confederate soldier.

According to that getting increasingly debunked myth, anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 free and enslaved Southern blacks served voluntarily, loyally, consistently and as fully fledged combatants in the South.   The lie is so pervasive that it found its way into Virginia elementary school textbooks.

The lie is also used by Southern 'Lost Cause'  history revisionists to promote the even bigger lie that Southern Blacks supported the Confederacy.

Yeah, right.  If  thousands of Blacks served in the Confederate armies, wouldn't the CSA not only have used that for propaganda purposes to counter what the North was telling the world, but photographic evidence of these Black Confederate units in combat or dead on various battlefields during the war prove it?

Umm hmm.  And don't even try Confederate apologists to use the Louisiana Native Guards as an 'example' of Black Confederate troops.  The only fighting they did was on the side of the Union.

But we have plenty of examples and documentation of the 175 African American units and 200,000 men that fought for the Union in the United States Colored Troops such as the 54th Massachusetts Regiment depicted in the movie Glory.

There isn't any on the Confederate side because CSA President Jefferson Davis repeatedly rejected the idea when one of his generals suggested they emancipate and arm slaves at the start of the war.   They even made it national policy that only white men could become Confederate soldiers.

And Confederate defenders, the CSA leaders blow up your myth for me.  According to historians, John Beauchamp Jones, a high-level assistant to the CSA secretary of war confirmed as much in his diary. "This is utterly untrue," he wrote. "We have no armed slaves to fight for us."

When Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon was asked to double check that assertion, he confirmed that "No slaves have been employed by the Government except as cooks or nurses in hospitals and for labor."   


In the wake of mass numbers of Black men from the North and South  enlisting in the USCT after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Lincoln, the Black troops idea was proposed by CSA Major General Patrick Cleburne in 1863 and shot down by Davis once again.


Only when the handwriting was on the wall in 1865 and the CSA was weeks from being defeated did they relent, but it was too late.  

It's ludicrous to believe that a government founded on the proposition that Black people were inferior to whites and was fighting an armed rebellion against the federal government to continue enslaving them would employ them in combat roles that they claimed in their ideology we were not capable of assuming.    It's also the height of idiocy to believe that the Confederate traitors would give Blacks the tools to throw off the yoke of slavery by arming them.

So no, the myth of the Black Confederate soldier is about as accurate as the BS the revisionists peddled that the South seceded over tariffs.