The Cross and the Confederate Flag

autigeremt · June 23, 2015

jeff....AUUSN scoffs at anything contrary to what he likes. Maybe he doesn't have a heritage of any kind.

Or maybe he doesn't have a need to scratch a deep-seated inferiority complex by celebrating his Southern "heritage" like many do.

That is hardly the truth. Far from it.

Well, it seems to me that one's reverence for "Southern heritage" - at least as expressed by the flag - is inversely proportional to one's socio/economic/educational status. In short, the bigger the loser, the stronger the tie to "heritage".

For example, you will generally see a lot more expressions of "Southern heritage" on a rusted out pickup that you will on a Mercedes or Lexus.

Just a casual observation.

So it's socioeconomic and not racially driven? I know A LOT of upper middle class people who would argue with you but I believe a lot of it stems from the poor. I'd also state that a lot of them do not use the flag or see the flag as a racial symbol but something that gives them a sense of "pride"...misguided or not.

It is sometimes - maybe often - both. But I think it has more to do with people who feel suppressed or oppressed economically and socially. Many of these people are also racists. But virtually all racists feel suppressed or oppressed.

So what exactly is it about a flag of the confederacy that would bestow pride? I submit it's defiance.

Who needs to express defiance? People who feel oppressed.

It happens in all people who feel oppressed. You see, a lot of people are raised in believing it stands for states rights and liberty. A LOT more than on the racial side but the rhetoric will tell you otherwise. It won't be an easy road in SC for those who vote to bring it down. At least in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not.

And I agree the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds will not be easy. It will take a 2/3 majority, which was deliberate. It's certainly not a done deal.

"Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not."

^^^^^ This is hard to tell someone who doesn't see it that way!

autigeremt · June 23, 2015

And people wonder why Sunni and Shia can't just get along. Southern Heritage, give me a freaking break.

No kidding, there are people scoffing at others for believing in "southern heritage,"

I believe that what they are scoffing at is, the idea that the rebel flag is an appropriate symbol southern heritage.

has been for years. I have t shirts from southern pride and I'm not a racist bigot. Far from it.

Your view is fine,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,for you. However, there are others who should be considered. How do you think that flag makes a black American feel? I can only guess but, I believe that if I were black, I would view the rebel flag about like I would someone sticking their middle finger up, and waving it in my face.

I don't wear shirts that looks like it came out of the confederate catalog lol. I do wear shirts from southern proper. If I was wearing a confederate flag shirt, I would expect the African American to refrain from infringing on my right to wear it. The tee shirt is not "fighting words" so I could wear it if I wanted. I'm not taking their shirts off their backs. I expect the same in return.

Make no mistake, I am not questioning your right to wear the flag on a tee shirt. I am questioning your reasoning, judgement, and character.

Not sure that is fair. At the end of the day we should "try" to understand another persons position and work to develop an understanding of "why' a person might have a deep affection for one thing or the other and actively open dialogue with them before going straight to judgement. It's a tough task I know, but it's fair.

I used to have the flag hanging in my bedroom growing up. My adopted uncle gave it to me and I thought it was cool because it came from him. Throughout my young life my adopted parents and my church taught me to love everyone and not to discriminate. Still, I never saw the flag as nothing more than a symbol of southern "heritage". When I left the house to join the military I encountered a lot of people from a lot of backgrounds and it was there that I realized that some people had a true offense to it and I adjusted accordingly. There are a lot of people in the south with a similar story and to them it means something very different than what the KKK and other groups used it for and we need to understand that and try to educate them as to why it has a much deeper meaning than the one they were raised with.

And if you are not from the south or an area where it was displayed or revered you don't understand this and enjoy jumping on the bandwagon.

I understand what it means to some white southerners. However, weighed against what it stands for to racists and, what it stands for to black Americans, doesn't it seem reasonable that parading it around would call someone's judgement and character into question?

There are aspects of my own southern heritage that I am proud of. However, I think it is dishonorable, hypocritical, and morally reprehensible to unconditionally embrace all of that heritage and, ignore what that heritage means to others. I think there are much better ways to express who we are as southerners and, individuals.

As I have said before, anyone who truly revered this flag should have done more to protect whatever meaning they associate with it from those who use it as a symbol of evil.

I agree but I am looking at it from those who don't have the education or ability to see it another way....and the very same thing can be said of other people on other issues related to race, gender and demographics. It's a very hard nut to crack.

homersapien · June 23, 2015

jeff....AUUSN scoffs at anything contrary to what he likes. Maybe he doesn't have a heritage of any kind.

Or maybe he doesn't have a need to scratch a deep-seated inferiority complex by celebrating his Southern "heritage" like many do.

That is hardly the truth. Far from it.

Well, it seems to me that one's reverence for "Southern heritage" - at least as expressed by the flag - is inversely proportional to one's socio/economic/educational status. In short, the bigger the loser, the stronger the tie to "heritage".

For example, you will generally see a lot more expressions of "Southern heritage" on a rusted out pickup that you will on a Mercedes or Lexus.

Just a casual observation.

So it's socioeconomic and not racially driven? I know A LOT of upper middle class people who would argue with you but I believe a lot of it stems from the poor. I'd also state that a lot of them do not use the flag or see the flag as a racial symbol but something that gives them a sense of "pride"...misguided or not.

It is sometimes - maybe often - both. But I think it has more to do with people who feel suppressed or oppressed economically and socially. Many of these people are also racists. But virtually all racists feel suppressed or oppressed.

So what exactly is it about a flag of the confederacy that would bestow pride? I submit it's defiance.

Who needs to express defiance? People who feel oppressed.

It happens in all people who feel oppressed. You see, a lot of people are raised in believing it stands for states rights and liberty. A LOT more than on the racial side but the rhetoric will tell you otherwise. It won't be an easy road in SC for those who vote to bring it down. At least in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not.

And I agree the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds will not be easy. It will take a 2/3 majority, which was deliberate. It's certainly not a done deal.

"Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not."

^^^^^ This is hard to tell someone who doesn't see it that way!

Agreed.

Some people simply can't handle the truth.

They will never be "free" as the saying goes.

alexava · June 23, 2015

Pardon my ignorance Jeff, but you mentioned you did not wear a Confederate Flag shirt, but rather a Southern Heritage shirt. What exactly are we talking about here? Can you provide an example?

certainly not jeff and not sure if what he is referring to is the same as this. 10-12 years ago had an aunt enter the family by marriage. At Christmas that side draws names because there are dozens of people. They drew me and got me a couple nice caps, Ducks Unlimited i think. And a shirt. Being an avid duck hunter it was a very nice shirt. Had a Labrador retriever pile of decoys, duck calls, camo waders maybe on a porch or in a boat don't remember exactly but it was a nice print on a high quality shirt but the back drop of the whole thing was a rebel flag. The text across it read "Southern Heritage ".It rested in my closet for 4 or 5 years tags still on it. My wife spotted it and asked why i don't wear it and i said i just can't wear a rebel flag. She didn't understand. She was from a 99.9% white school and only saw black folks on tv or at the mall. A few weeks later she had a yard sale and wanted to put it out there but i didn't even want strangers to walk up and associate me with it. She eventually gave it to her redneck brother who don't have enough sense to comprehend why i wouldn't wear it. Before this i didn't think much about it. I just couldn't put the shirt on.

AU_Tiger_88 · June 23, 2015

Just a question for yall,

America wasn't the only country that used slavery so why is it that America has culturally had integration problems that other countries didn't have? Many countries voluntarily gave up slavery after all. So what did we do wrong beginning with Lincoln?

I haven't read enough of how slavery ended in every other country, but I know that at least with England, when Wilberforce pushed for the abolition of slavery you didn't have half the country rebel and a civil war break out over it. But also, most of England's slavery didn't occur in the country of England. It was in their various colonies around the world. In other words, they didn't have to integrate a huge population of former slaves into the fabric of the nation as much. They stopped the slave trade and it mainly just set slaves free in the Caribbean, Africa, and other places far removed from England proper.

That's kind of inaccurate, Lincolns plan was to set in motion the eventual abolition of slavery. It was a 100 years plan, putting slavery ending in the 1960's. The reasoning behind that was he (and most others of the time) were afraid of crashing the economy if slavery was abolished overnight. EDIT: It's a bit early, but it's one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates where he talks about it a bit... interesting reads.

There's also the fact that abolitionists were also extremely racist, but that might have been the same in other countries... not sure.

No it's not inaccurate. Regardless of Lincoln's plans, the South rebelled against the idea of ending slavery, of restricting slavery in future states and territories and ultimately were willing to secede from the Union to preserve their right to keep slavery for the foreseeable future. That situation simply did not play out in England for instance. You didn't have the northern half of the England decide to take their ball and go home or start a war with southern England when Parliament took steps to abolish slavery.

And England did not have many African slaves working inside the country at the time. So they didn't have quite the same obstacles to integration that we had here.

Did you mean to respond to someone else?

Nope meant for you, and I said kind of inaccurate because it's just the way you worded it that made it seem a little off.

The CW would have started even if Lincoln had not been against slavery, any republican candidate winning the election would have likely set off the CW. The democratic south all voted for the democrat, the north all voted for the republican. The republican won, so the ruling aristocracy decided to secede. They saw their power structure waning and took extreme steps to keep it intact, slavery was a big part of it as it is how that aristocracy had built their power.

It's confusing to a lot of people because one cause fed the other for the war. It's why people argue over the reason of the CW.

The reason people argue over the reasons for the CW is some combination of ignorance, pride and denial regarding slavery.

The idea that slavery was a side issue was propagated by Southern historians who were not willing to admit the truth.

Historians who publish almost always seek the truth by hunting out old documents, etc...in fact there are many Historians that won't read other people's work if they didn't do research at certain places. For instance, if one was writing about the Gettysburg battle then they would naturally go to the AHC up in Carlisle, PA to do research, if they don't then they wouldn't be taken seriously. Please back up your claim about Southern Historians. You ask others to do the same so it is reasonable to present evidence of your statement and cite their works. You are quick to disregard other peoples opinions with quips but since you stated this as a fact then please back it up with a few facts or say that it is your opinion.

aujeff11 · June 23, 2015

Pardon my ignorance Jeff, but you mentioned you did not wear a Confederate Flag shirt, but rather a Southern Heritage shirt. What exactly are we talking about here? Can you provide an example?

certainly not jeff and not sure if what he is referring to is the same as this. 10-12 years ago had an aunt enter the family by marriage. At Christmas that side draws names because there are dozens of people. They drew me and got me a couple nice caps, Ducks Unlimited i think. And a shirt. Being an avid duck hunter it was a very nice shirt. Had a Labrador retriever pile of decoys, duck calls, camo waders maybe on a porch or in a boat don't remember exactly but it was a nice print on a high quality shirt but the back drop of the whole thing was a rebel flag. The text across it read "Southern Heritage ".It rested in my closet for 4 or 5 years tags still on it. My wife spotted it and asked why i don't wear it and i said i just can't wear a rebel flag. She didn't understand. She was from a 99.9% white school and only saw black folks on tv or at the mall. A few weeks later she had a yard sale and wanted to put it out there but i didn't even want strangers to walk up and associate me with it. She eventually gave it to her redneck brother who don't have enough sense to comprehend why i wouldn't wear it. Before this i didn't think much about it. I just couldn't put the shirt on.

I was talking about shirts that didnt look like a confederate flag with the flag and the hideous colors dominating the shirt but there was still an implied southern heritage. I also have a shirt from pointers with a pointer inside a neutral colored confederate flag. Probably similar to Alex's.

icanthearyou · June 23, 2015

jeff....AUUSN scoffs at anything contrary to what he likes. Maybe he doesn't have a heritage of any kind.

Or maybe he doesn't have a need to scratch a deep-seated inferiority complex by celebrating his Southern "heritage" like many do.

That is hardly the truth. Far from it.

Well, it seems to me that one's reverence for "Southern heritage" - at least as expressed by the flag - is inversely proportional to one's socio/economic/educational status. In short, the bigger the loser, the stronger the tie to "heritage".

For example, you will generally see a lot more expressions of "Southern heritage" on a rusted out pickup that you will on a Mercedes or Lexus.

Just a casual observation.

So it's socioeconomic and not racially driven? I know A LOT of upper middle class people who would argue with you but I believe a lot of it stems from the poor. I'd also state that a lot of them do not use the flag or see the flag as a racial symbol but something that gives them a sense of "pride"...misguided or not.

It is sometimes - maybe often - both. But I think it has more to do with people who feel suppressed or oppressed economically and socially. Many of these people are also racists. But virtually all racists feel suppressed or oppressed.

So what exactly is it about a flag of the confederacy that would bestow pride? I submit it's defiance.

Who needs to express defiance? People who feel oppressed.

It happens in all people who feel oppressed. You see, a lot of people are raised in believing it stands for states rights and liberty. A LOT more than on the racial side but the rhetoric will tell you otherwise. It won't be an easy road in SC for those who vote to bring it down. At least in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not.

And I agree the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds will not be easy. It will take a 2/3 majority, which was deliberate. It's certainly not a done deal.

"Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not."

^^^^^ This is hard to tell someone who doesn't see it that way!

Agreed.

Some people simply can't handle the truth.

They will never be "free" as the saying goes.

Yes and, in some way I think it goes back to Weeg's post about the Japanese. The Japanese people took responsibility for their actions. They humbled themselves to the TRUTH that, they were on the wrong side of the war. Maybe, as southerners, we haven't been as humble and responsible in defeat as we should have been. Maybe, some of that southern heritage is a pride that will not allow us to humble ourselves to the truth. Perhaps we can not move forward as far, or as fast, as we would like until, we have humbled ourselves to that truth. If the best of our culture is to be revered, perhaps we have to once and for all, absolutely acknowledge, condemn, and be done with the worst of it. In that spirit, removing that flag as any sort of public symbol, seems way overdue.

In some strange way, part of the richness of our culture involves "putting on a happy face" while ignoring the reality of the ugliness around us. In a sense, we have been "putting a fresh coat of paint on rotten wood" for years. It's time to stop and, fix the problems sincerely and earnestly.

I'm not even sure we need to go all the way back to the war. However, I do believe we need to acknowledge what segregation and institutional racism did to black America. I think we need to acknowledge that while better, it has not been totally wiped away. In order to do that, I think we do have to remove the flag as a public symbol and, we need to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards racism. I know some of you believe that we do not owe black America anything. I disagree. I believe we owe them the respect that can only be shown by humbly apologizing by doing what is right, not refusing to recognize what is/was wrong.

Proud Tiger · June 23, 2015

homer....your claim that slavery was a side issue propagated by southern historians displays your ignorance. Slavery became an issue early in the war but was NOT the primary cause in the beginning. The best CW history I ever read was by a guy in Massachusetts. And my wife as taught the facts in elementary school in California.

couldn't care less what you choose to believe but I have studied the CW extensively, both the history and emotions involved. I have spent hours in Lee's BR at the Custis-Lee Mansion and lived for several months in the house where the Sec. of War for the Confederacy gave the order to fire on Ft. Sumter starting the war.

aujeff11 · June 23, 2015

jeff....AUUSN scoffs at anything contrary to what he likes. Maybe he doesn't have a heritage of any kind.

Or maybe he doesn't have a need to scratch a deep-seated inferiority complex by celebrating his Southern "heritage" like many do.

That is hardly the truth. Far from it.

Well, it seems to me that one's reverence for "Southern heritage" - at least as expressed by the flag - is inversely proportional to one's socio/economic/educational status. In short, the bigger the loser, the stronger the tie to "heritage".

For example, you will generally see a lot more exp<b></b>ressions of "Southern heritage" on a rusted out pickup that you will on a Mercedes or Lexus.

Just a casual observation.

So it's socioeconomic and not racially driven? I know A LOT of upper middle class people who would argue with you but I believe a lot of it stems from the poor. I'd also state that a lot of them do not use the flag or see the flag as a racial symbol but something that gives them a sense of "pride"...misguided or not.

It is sometimes - maybe often - both. But I think it has more to do with people who feel suppressed or oppressed economically and socially. Many of these people are also racists. But virtually all racists feel suppressed or oppressed.

So what exactly is it about a flag of the confederacy that would bestow pride? I submit it's defiance.

Who needs to express defiance? People who feel oppressed.

It happens in all people who feel oppressed. You see, a lot of people are raised in believing it stands for states rights and liberty. A LOT more than on the racial side but the rhetoric will tell you otherwise. It won't be an easy road in SC for those who vote to bring it down. At least in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not.

And I agree the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds will not be easy. It will take a 2/3 majority, which was deliberate. It's certainly not a done deal.

"Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not."

^^^^^ This is hard to tell someone who doesn't see it that way!

Agreed.

Some people simply can't handle the truth.

They will never be "free" as the saying goes.

Yes and, in some way I think it goes back to Weeg's post about the Japanese. The Japanese people took responsibility for their actions. They humbled themselves to the TRUTH that, they were on the wrong side of the war. Maybe, as southerners, we haven't been as humble and responsible in defeat as we should have been. Maybe, some of that southern heritage is a pride that will not allow us to humble ourselves to the truth. Perhaps we can not move forward as far, or as fast, as we would like until, we have humbled ourselves to that truth. If the best of our culture is to be revered, perhaps we have to once and for all, absolutely acknowledge, condemn, and be done with the worst of it. In that spirit, removing that flag as any sort of public symbol, seems way overdue.

In some strange way, part of the richness of our culture involves "putting on a happy face" while ignoring the reality of the ugliness around us. In a sense, we have been "putting a fresh coat of paint on rotten wood" for years. It's time to stop and, fix the problems sincerely and earnestly.

I'm not even sure we need to go all the way back to the war. However, I do believe we need to acknowledge what segregation and institutional racism did to black America. I think we need to acknowledge that while better, it has not been totally wiped away. In order to do that, I think we do have to remove the flag as a public symbol and, we need to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards racism. I know some of you believe that we do not owe black America anything. I disagree. I believe we owe them the respect that can only be shown by humbly apologizing by doing what is right, not refusing to recognize what is/was wrong.

No thanks. I like my 1st amendment rights too much. Not that I am or would be racist.

TitanTiger · June 23, 2015

homer....your claim that slavery was a side issue propagated by southern historians displays your ignorance. Slavery became an issue early in the war but was NOT the primary cause in the beginning. The best CW history I ever read was by a guy in Massachusetts. And my wife as taught the facts in elementary school in California.

couldn't care less what you choose to believe but I have studied the CW extensively, both the history and emotions involved. I have spent hours in Lee's BR at the Custis-Lee Mansion and lived for several months in the house where the Sec. of War for the Confederacy gave the order to fire on Ft. Sumter starting the war.

That's bull.

Almost every state's articles of secession explicitly listed slavery as one of the reasons for seceding from the Union and forming the CSA. The primary state right they wished to preserve was the right to keep slavery and for slavery to be an option for future territories and states. It is utter madness to pretend that it was some side issue or a later issue for the Southern states.

autigeremt · June 23, 2015

jeff....AUUSN scoffs at anything contrary to what he likes. Maybe he doesn't have a heritage of any kind.

Or maybe he doesn't have a need to scratch a deep-seated inferiority complex by celebrating his Southern "heritage" like many do.

That is hardly the truth. Far from it.

Well, it seems to me that one's reverence for "Southern heritage" - at least as expressed by the flag - is inversely proportional to one's socio/economic/educational status. In short, the bigger the loser, the stronger the tie to "heritage".

For example, you will generally see a lot more expressions of "Southern heritage" on a rusted out pickup that you will on a Mercedes or Lexus.

Just a casual observation.

So it's socioeconomic and not racially driven? I know A LOT of upper middle class people who would argue with you but I believe a lot of it stems from the poor. I'd also state that a lot of them do not use the flag or see the flag as a racial symbol but something that gives them a sense of "pride"...misguided or not.

It is sometimes - maybe often - both. But I think it has more to do with people who feel suppressed or oppressed economically and socially. Many of these people are also racists. But virtually all racists feel suppressed or oppressed.

So what exactly is it about a flag of the confederacy that would bestow pride? I submit it's defiance.

Who needs to express defiance? People who feel oppressed.

It happens in all people who feel oppressed. You see, a lot of people are raised in believing it stands for states rights and liberty. A LOT more than on the racial side but the rhetoric will tell you otherwise. It won't be an easy road in SC for those who vote to bring it down. At least in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not.

And I agree the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds will not be easy. It will take a 2/3 majority, which was deliberate. It's certainly not a done deal.

"Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not."

^^^^^ This is hard to tell someone who doesn't see it that way!

Agreed.

Some people simply can't handle the truth.

They will never be "free" as the saying goes.

Yes and, in some way I think it goes back to Weeg's post about the Japanese. The Japanese people took responsibility for their actions. They humbled themselves to the TRUTH that, they were on the wrong side of the war. Maybe, as southerners, we haven't been as humble and responsible in defeat as we should have been. Maybe, some of that southern heritage is a pride that will not allow us to humble ourselves to the truth. Perhaps we can not move forward as far, or as fast, as we would like until, we have humbled ourselves to that truth. If the best of our culture is to be revered, perhaps we have to once and for all, absolutely acknowledge, condemn, and be done with the worst of it. In that spirit, removing that flag as any sort of public symbol, seems way overdue.

In some strange way, part of the richness of our culture involves "putting on a happy face" while ignoring the reality of the ugliness around us. In a sense, we have been "putting a fresh coat of paint on rotten wood" for years. It's time to stop and, fix the problems sincerely and earnestly.

I'm not even sure we need to go all the way back to the war. However, I do believe we need to acknowledge what segregation and institutional racism did to black America. I think we need to acknowledge that while better, it has not been totally wiped away. In order to do that, I think we do have to remove the flag as a public symbol and, we need to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards racism. I know some of you believe that we do not owe black America anything. I disagree. I believe we owe them the respect that can only be shown by humbly apologizing by doing what is right, not refusing to recognize what is/was wrong.

"I disagree. I believe we owe them the respect that can only be shown by humbly apologizing by doing what is right, not refusing to recognize what is/was wrong."

I agree, but they must see that the current generation only owes them the respect they earn while apologizing for what past generations did to them (or their past generations).

I lost a few long time friends to this debate and my openness about my current viewpoint. Yesterday I was a little hurt by it. Today, I don't give a damn.

TitanTiger · June 23, 2015

Reminding revisionists about the facts of the civil war, part 1
Fact 1# Slavery was the core cause of the American civil war.

The reason for Confederate secession has been a source of much heated debate surrounding the American civil war over the years. It seems to be obvious to any objective historian researching this matter over what that motivation really was, but to many others, there are different reasons. To put it straight, the core grievence for Confederate secession surrounded that of the institution of Slavery. While the preservation of “States rights” is the term used by many to explain the motivation for secession of the Confederate States, that “States right” in question goes right back to the institution of Slavery.

So the question then becomes, how do we know that Slavery was the core reason for Southern secession? Well let’s go back in time and ask those very same people who pushed for secession from the Union in the first place. A great place to start is with the ordinances of secession and Declaration of immediate causes from those States whom declared secession between 1860-1861:

Texas ordinances of secession on February 2nd, 1861:

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquillity and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time

http://www.lsjunctio...cs/secesson.htm

South Carolina declaration of immediate causes, December 24th, 1860:

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

http://avalon.law.ya...csa_scarsec.asp

Mississippi declaration of immediate causes:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

http://avalon.law.ya.../csa_missec.asp

Note that slavery and/or slaves are mentioned first as a grievence for secession and mentioned a total of 7 times. “Non-slaveholding States” are mentioned a total of 7 times . Tariffs are mentioned a total of “0” times and “taxes” are mentioned a total of “0” times.”Black race” is mentioned once.

Georgia declaration of immediate causes, 29th January 1861

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

http://sunsite.utk.e...ns.html#Georgia

Alabama ordinance to dissolve the Union, 11th January 1861

Be it further declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in Convention assembled, That all powers over the Territory of said State, and over the people thereof, heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America, be and they are hereby withdrawn from said Government, and are hereby resumed and vested in the people of the State of Alabama. And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South,

http://www.civil-war...s_secession.asp

Below is a letter sent by Alabama Commissioner, Stephen Hale, directed toward the then Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin, 27th December, 1860, concerning the stance of the CSA In the civil war:

“Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party,

the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions — nothing less than an open declaration of war”

http://teachingameri...p?document=1959

So what about Florida, Louisiana, Virgina, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee?

They don’t mention slavery in either of their ordinances or immediate causes? Well the fact of the matter is that not every Confederate State came up with their own declaration of immediate causes. Some Confederate States used declarations of Immediate causes and ordinances to voice out their grievences while others merely allowed their delegations to speak about those grievances among their State legislators. We can only refer to the comments and accounts of and from the governors and the southern representatives of those States at that time on how they viewed what the motivation for secession was:

Louisiana Governor Thomas Moore, 1860-1864:

“I do not think it comports with the honor and respect of Louisiana, as a slaveholding state, to live under the government of a black Republican”

http://www.knowla.or...try.php?rec=937

Florida Governor Madison Starke Perry, 1857-1861

“A President has recently been elected, an obscure and illiterate man without experience in public affairs or any general reputation mainly if not exclusively on account of a settled and often proclaimed hostility to our institutions and a fixed purpose to abolish them.

It is denied that it is the purpose of the party soon to enter into the possession of the powers of the Federal Government to abolish slavery by any direct legislative act. This has never been charged by any one. But it has been announced by all the leading men and presses of the party that the ultimate accomplishment of this result is its settled purpose and great central principle.

”

http://civilwarcause...florida-dec.htm

Virginia Governor John Letcher, 1861-1865

“The Northern States must strike from their statute books their personal liberty bills, and fulfill their consitutional obligations in regard to fugitive slaves and fugitives from justice. If our slaves escape into non-slaveholding states, they must be delivered up”

http://civilwarcauses.org/letcher.htm

North Carolina Governor John Ellis, 1859-1861

“Such, gentlemen, are the parties to the contest. The issue between them should be clearly understood, especially here at the South. I assert, and shall maintain it with the proofs, that this issue is, whether African slavery shall be abolished here in the States, where it now exists? Let us not be deceived upon this point. Men may talk about our rights in the territories, but depend upon it they are not the questions now in issue. The abolition of slavery here at home is the design of our opponents. This is the bond that cements all the anti-slavery elements in one solid column against us.”

http://docsouth.unc....llis/ellis.html

Arkansas Governor Henry Rector, 1860-1862

“

Is it to be the Union without slavery,” he asked, “or slavery without the Union?”

“In answer to your requisition for troops from Arkansas to subjugate the Southern States, I have to that none will be furnished. The demand is only adding insult to injury. The people of this commonwealth are freemen, not slaves, and will defend, to the last extremity, their honor, lives and property against Northern mendacity and usurpation.”

http://wc.rootsweb.a...wheat&id=I04885

http://www.oldstateh...on/rector4.aspx

Tennessee Governor Isham Harris, 1857-1862 7th January, 1861

“The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizen; the rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely sectional party, whose bond of union is uncompromising hostility to the rights and institutions of the fifteen Southern States, have produced a crisis in the affairs of the country, unparalleled in the history of the past, resulting already in the withdrawal from the Confederacy of one of the sovereignties which composed it”

http://americancivil...ham_harris.html

What about the president of the Confederate States of America?

In 1861, Jefferson Davis, prior to assuming the role of president for the future Confederacy, made a farewell speech in front of the senate chamber on the 21st of January 1861. In that speech he made it clear that the motivation for secession was based on what he viewed as an attack on Southern Social institutions. Jefferson then narrowed down that specific social institution that was under attack by stating that:

‘our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men’ (1).

Just over 4 months after making that speech, by that time as president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis again made it clear what the civil war was about and what the motivation of Southern secession was about:

‘In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave’ (2).

So Jefferson made his view rather clear on what the core motivation for secession was.

Accusations against Lincoln and the Republicans of an abolitionist plot.

Even prior to the civil war, southern governors and representitives accused Lincoln and the Republican party of planning to enforce a Federal ban on slavery once they assume office. They warned that if Lincoln were to win the elections (which he eventually did) secession would be the only viable option given the abolishonist sentiment in that party:

The straw that broke the Southern camel’s back was the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican and avowed opponent of slavery

who was supported by many vocal abolitionists. Fearful that the North, which was richer, more populous, and industrial, would even more insistently impose its will against them, the Southern states felt they had no recourse but to pull away from the Union and form their own nation.

http://www.netplaces...r/secession.htm

Abraham Lincoln actually went on record prior to the elections stating that the institution of slavery would be preserved under his administration, however this could not quell the secessionist sentiment:

The Southern image of Lincoln began as a mere sectional stereotype, and Southern hostility to his presidential candidacy was largely impersonal. Secession, although undertaken in response to the outcome of the election of 1860, had nothing to do with the particular qualities and qualifications of the man elected. It was the “Black Republican party” that Southerners hated and feared, whoever might happen to be the party’s official leader.

http://quod.lib.umic...n;view=fulltext

What do the Historians have to say?

The vast majority of historians agree that slavery was the core grievence for Southern secession. In 2011 on a panel discussion held by PBS with three Civil War historians, Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, Edna Medford from Howard University and professor Walter Edgar at the University of South Carolina, all three agreed that the civil war was sparked over the issue of Slavery (3).

‘historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery.

And the kind of research that historians have undertaken, especially in the years since the centennial, when there has been so much interest in this question of the role of race and slavery in the United States, that research has shown pretty decisively that,

when the various states announced their plans for secession, they uniformly said that the main motivating factor was to defend slavery’

http://www.pbs.org/n...lwar_04-12.html

Ralph Mann is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado:

“The war was about slavery,” Mann says.

http://artsandscienc...over-civil-war/

Princeton professor James McPherson:

‘Everything stemmed from the slavery issue,’

David Blight of Yale:

‘No matter what we do or the overwhelming consensus among historians, out in the public mind, there is still this need to deny that slavery was the cause of the war.’

http://www.time.com/...l#ixzz2Ga5q2avc

So what can we conclude from all the evidence piled up above?

1. That slavery is clearly made the core grievence in the immediate causes of ordinances of secession.

2. That Southern Governors went on record both before and after the 1860 elections, citing slavery, and a fear of a black Republican party, as the core reason for secession. CSA president Andrew Jackson made slavery the key motivation as well.

3. That warnings were made of secession if Lincoln won the 1860 general elections due to his abolitionist support.

4. That the vast majority of historians have concluded that the cause of the American civil war was about the institution of slavery.

https://aliberalthin...ivil-war-again/

One may argue that the reason for going to war from Lincoln's perspective was first and foremost about preserving the Union and only later about abolition of slavery. One may argue that there were other issues for which the Southern states seceded. But what one cannot argue, honestly at least, is that the principle cause of the Southern states withdrawing from the Union and being willing to go to war wasn't slavery. You can say "states' rights" til the cows come home, but the main state right they wished to protect and were willing to die for was the institution of slavery. Period.

autigeremt · June 23, 2015

I guess their "right" to have slaves was infringed upon?

aujeff11 · June 23, 2015

I guess their "right" to have slaves was infringed upon? ;)/>

as it should...

icanthearyou · June 23, 2015

jeff....AUUSN scoffs at anything contrary to what he likes. Maybe he doesn't have a heritage of any kind.

Or maybe he doesn't have a need to scratch a deep-seated inferiority complex by celebrating his Southern "heritage" like many do.

That is hardly the truth. Far from it.

Well, it seems to me that one's reverence for "Southern heritage" - at least as expressed by the flag - is inversely proportional to one's socio/economic/educational status. In short, the bigger the loser, the stronger the tie to "heritage".

For example, you will generally see a lot more expressions of "Southern heritage" on a rusted out pickup that you will on a Mercedes or Lexus.

Just a casual observation.

So it's socioeconomic and not racially driven? I know A LOT of upper middle class people who would argue with you but I believe a lot of it stems from the poor. I'd also state that a lot of them do not use the flag or see the flag as a racial symbol but something that gives them a sense of "pride"...misguided or not.

It is sometimes - maybe often - both. But I think it has more to do with people who feel suppressed or oppressed economically and socially. Many of these people are also racists. But virtually all racists feel suppressed or oppressed.

So what exactly is it about a flag of the confederacy that would bestow pride? I submit it's defiance.

Who needs to express defiance? People who feel oppressed.

It happens in all people who feel oppressed. You see, a lot of people are raised in believing it stands for states rights and liberty. A LOT more than on the racial side but the rhetoric will tell you otherwise. It won't be an easy road in SC for those who vote to bring it down. At least in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not.

And I agree the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds will not be easy. It will take a 2/3 majority, which was deliberate. It's certainly not a done deal.

"Like I said earlier, the "states rights" claim relates specifically to the right to discriminate against blacks. In this case, it's a euphemism for racial discrimination whether the people using the phrase acknowledge it or not."

^^^^^ This is hard to tell someone who doesn't see it that way!

Agreed.

Some people simply can't handle the truth.

They will never be "free" as the saying goes.

Yes and, in some way I think it goes back to Weeg's post about the Japanese. The Japanese people took responsibility for their actions. They humbled themselves to the TRUTH that, they were on the wrong side of the war. Maybe, as southerners, we haven't been as humble and responsible in defeat as we should have been. Maybe, some of that southern heritage is a pride that will not allow us to humble ourselves to the truth. Perhaps we can not move forward as far, or as fast, as we would like until, we have humbled ourselves to that truth. If the best of our culture is to be revered, perhaps we have to once and for all, absolutely acknowledge, condemn, and be done with the worst of it. In that spirit, removing that flag as any sort of public symbol, seems way overdue.

In some strange way, part of the richness of our culture involves "putting on a happy face" while ignoring the reality of the ugliness around us. In a sense, we have been "putting a fresh coat of paint on rotten wood" for years. It's time to stop and, fix the problems sincerely and earnestly.

I'm not even sure we need to go all the way back to the war. However, I do believe we need to acknowledge what segregation and institutional racism did to black America. I think we need to acknowledge that while better, it has not been totally wiped away. In order to do that, I think we do have to remove the flag as a public symbol and, we need to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards racism. I know some of you believe that we do not owe black America anything. I disagree. I believe we owe them the respect that can only be shown by humbly apologizing by doing what is right, not refusing to recognize what is/was wrong.

No thanks. I like my 1st amendment rights too much. Not that I am or would be racist.

I suppose I should have been more clear in stating flying the flag as government or public institution, racism practiced by public institution.

AU_Tiger_88 · June 23, 2015

homer....your claim that slavery was a side issue propagated by southern historians displays your ignorance. Slavery became an issue early in the war but was NOT the primary cause in the beginning. The best CW history I ever read was by a guy in Massachusetts. And my wife as taught the facts in elementary school in California.

couldn't care less what you choose to believe but I have studied the CW extensively, both the history and emotions involved. I have spent hours in Lee's BR at the Custis-Lee Mansion and lived for several months in the house where the Sec. of War for the Confederacy gave the order to fire on Ft. Sumter starting the war.

That's bull.

Almost every state's articles of secession explicitly listed slavery as one of the reasons for seceding from the Union and forming the CSA. The primary state right they wished to preserve was the right to keep slavery and for slavery to be an option for future territories and states. It is utter madness to pretend that it was some side issue or a later issue for the Southern states.

Which would have happened had they ratified the original 13th amendment but instead chose to leave the union. That amendment was first ratified by (I think) Ohio and then Illinois.

AU_Tiger_88 · June 23, 2015

Reminding revisionists about the facts of the civil war, part 1
Fact 1# Slavery was the core cause of the American civil war.

The reason for Confederate secession has been a source of much heated debate surrounding the American civil war over the years. It seems to be obvious to any objective historian researching this matter over what that motivation really was, but to many others, there are different reasons. To put it straight, the core grievence for Confederate secession surrounded that of the institution of Slavery. While the preservation of “States rights” is the term used by many to explain the motivation for secession of the Confederate States, that “States right” in question goes right back to the institution of Slavery.

So the question then becomes, how do we know that Slavery was the core reason for Southern secession? Well let’s go back in time and ask those very same people who pushed for secession from the Union in the first place. A great place to start is with the ordinances of secession and Declaration of immediate causes from those States whom declared secession between 1860-1861:

Texas ordinances of secession on February 2nd, 1861:

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquillity and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time

http://www.lsjunctio...cs/secesson.htm

South Carolina declaration of immediate causes, December 24th, 1860:

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

http://avalon.law.ya...csa_scarsec.asp

Mississippi declaration of immediate causes:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

http://avalon.law.ya.../csa_missec.asp

Note that slavery and/or slaves are mentioned first as a grievence for secession and mentioned a total of 7 times. “Non-slaveholding States” are mentioned a total of 7 times . Tariffs are mentioned a total of “0” times and “taxes” are mentioned a total of “0” times.”Black race” is mentioned once.

Georgia declaration of immediate causes, 29th January 1861

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

http://sunsite.utk.e...ns.html#Georgia

Alabama ordinance to dissolve the Union, 11th January 1861

Be it further declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in Convention assembled, That all powers over the Territory of said State, and over the people thereof, heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America, be and they are hereby withdrawn from said Government, and are hereby resumed and vested in the people of the State of Alabama. And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South,

http://www.civil-war...s_secession.asp

Below is a letter sent by Alabama Commissioner, Stephen Hale, directed toward the then Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin, 27th December, 1860, concerning the stance of the CSA In the civil war:

“Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party,

the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions — nothing less than an open declaration of war”

http://teachingameri...p?document=1959

So what about Florida, Louisiana, Virgina, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee?

They don’t mention slavery in either of their ordinances or immediate causes? Well the fact of the matter is that not every Confederate State came up with their own declaration of immediate causes. Some Confederate States used declarations of Immediate causes and ordinances to voice out their grievences while others merely allowed their delegations to speak about those grievances among their State legislators. We can only refer to the comments and accounts of and from the governors and the southern representatives of those States at that time on how they viewed what the motivation for secession was:

Louisiana Governor Thomas Moore, 1860-1864:

“I do not think it comports with the honor and respect of Louisiana, as a slaveholding state, to live under the government of a black Republican”

http://www.knowla.or...try.php?rec=937

Florida Governor Madison Starke Perry, 1857-1861

“A President has recently been elected, an obscure and illiterate man without experience in public affairs or any general reputation mainly if not exclusively on account of a settled and often proclaimed hostility to our institutions and a fixed purpose to abolish them.

It is denied that it is the purpose of the party soon to enter into the possession of the powers of the Federal Government to abolish slavery by any direct legislative act. This has never been charged by any one. But it has been announced by all the leading men and presses of the party that the ultimate accomplishment of this result is its settled purpose and great central principle.

”

http://civilwarcause...florida-dec.htm

Virginia Governor John Letcher, 1861-1865

“The Northern States must strike from their statute books their personal liberty bills, and fulfill their consitutional obligations in regard to fugitive slaves and fugitives from justice. If our slaves escape into non-slaveholding states, they must be delivered up”

http://civilwarcauses.org/letcher.htm

North Carolina Governor John Ellis, 1859-1861

“Such, gentlemen, are the parties to the contest. The issue between them should be clearly understood, especially here at the South. I assert, and shall maintain it with the proofs, that this issue is, whether African slavery shall be abolished here in the States, where it now exists? Let us not be deceived upon this point. Men may talk about our rights in the territories, but depend upon it they are not the questions now in issue. The abolition of slavery here at home is the design of our opponents. This is the bond that cements all the anti-slavery elements in one solid column against us.”

http://docsouth.unc....llis/ellis.html

Arkansas Governor Henry Rector, 1860-1862

“

Is it to be the Union without slavery,” he asked, “or slavery without the Union?”

“In answer to your requisition for troops from Arkansas to subjugate the Southern States, I have to that none will be furnished. The demand is only adding insult to injury. The people of this commonwealth are freemen, not slaves, and will defend, to the last extremity, their honor, lives and property against Northern mendacity and usurpation.”

http://wc.rootsweb.a...wheat&id=I04885

http://www.oldstateh...on/rector4.aspx

Tennessee Governor Isham Harris, 1857-1862 7th January, 1861

“The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizen; the rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely sectional party, whose bond of union is uncompromising hostility to the rights and institutions of the fifteen Southern States, have produced a crisis in the affairs of the country, unparalleled in the history of the past, resulting already in the withdrawal from the Confederacy of one of the sovereignties which composed it”

http://americancivil...ham_harris.html

What about the president of the Confederate States of America?

In 1861, Jefferson Davis, prior to assuming the role of president for the future Confederacy, made a farewell speech in front of the senate chamber on the 21st of January 1861. In that speech he made it clear that the motivation for secession was based on what he viewed as an attack on Southern Social institutions. Jefferson then narrowed down that specific social institution that was under attack by stating that:

‘our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men’ (1).

Just over 4 months after making that speech, by that time as president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis again made it clear what the civil war was about and what the motivation of Southern secession was about:

‘In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave’ (2).

So Jefferson made his view rather clear on what the core motivation for secession was.

Accusations against Lincoln and the Republicans of an abolitionist plot.

Even prior to the civil war, southern governors and representitives accused Lincoln and the Republican party of planning to enforce a Federal ban on slavery once they assume office. They warned that if Lincoln were to win the elections (which he eventually did) secession would be the only viable option given the abolishonist sentiment in that party:

The straw that broke the Southern camel’s back was the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican and avowed opponent of slavery

who was supported by many vocal abolitionists. Fearful that the North, which was richer, more populous, and industrial, would even more insistently impose its will against them, the Southern states felt they had no recourse but to pull away from the Union and form their own nation.

http://www.netplaces...r/secession.htm

Abraham Lincoln actually went on record prior to the elections stating that the institution of slavery would be preserved under his administration, however this could not quell the secessionist sentiment:

The Southern image of Lincoln began as a mere sectional stereotype, and Southern hostility to his presidential candidacy was largely impersonal. Secession, although undertaken in response to the outcome of the election of 1860, had nothing to do with the particular qualities and qualifications of the man elected. It was the “Black Republican party” that Southerners hated and feared, whoever might happen to be the party’s official leader.

http://quod.lib.umic...n;view=fulltext

What do the Historians have to say?

The vast majority of historians agree that slavery was the core grievence for Southern secession. In 2011 on a panel discussion held by PBS with three Civil War historians, Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, Edna Medford from Howard University and professor Walter Edgar at the University of South Carolina, all three agreed that the civil war was sparked over the issue of Slavery (3).

‘historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery.

And the kind of research that historians have undertaken, especially in the years since the centennial, when there has been so much interest in this question of the role of race and slavery in the United States, that research has shown pretty decisively that,

when the various states announced their plans for secession, they uniformly said that the main motivating factor was to defend slavery’

http://www.pbs.org/n...lwar_04-12.html

Ralph Mann is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado:

“The war was about slavery,” Mann says.

http://artsandscienc...over-civil-war/

Princeton professor James McPherson:

‘Everything stemmed from the slavery issue,’

David Blight of Yale:

‘No matter what we do or the overwhelming consensus among historians, out in the public mind, there is still this need to deny that slavery was the cause of the war.’

http://www.time.com/...l#ixzz2Ga5q2avc

So what can we conclude from all the evidence piled up above?

1. That slavery is clearly made the core grievence in the immediate causes of ordinances of secession.

2. That Southern Governors went on record both before and after the 1860 elections, citing slavery, and a fear of a black Republican party, as the core reason for secession. CSA president Andrew Jackson made slavery the key motivation as well.

3. That warnings were made of secession if Lincoln won the 1860 general elections due to his abolitionist support.

4. That the vast majority of historians have concluded that the cause of the American civil war was about the institution of slavery.

https://aliberalthin...ivil-war-again/

One may argue that the reason for going to war from Lincoln's perspective was first and foremost about preserving the Union and only later about abolition of slavery. One may argue that there were other issues for which the Southern states seceded. But what one cannot argue, honestly at least, is that the principle cause of the Southern states withdrawing from the Union and being willing to go to war wasn't slavery. You can say "states' rights" til the cows come home, but the main state right they wished to protect and were willing to die for was the institution of slavery. Period.

I think this site makes your point more clear http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/secession/ it also provides graphics.

TitanTiger · June 23, 2015

Thanks! That is more nicely formatted.

homersapien · June 23, 2015

<p>

Just a question for yall,America wasn't the only country that used slavery so why is it that America has culturally had integration problems that other countries didn't have? Many countries voluntarily gave up slavery after all. So what did we do wrong beginning with Lincoln?
I haven't read enough of how slavery ended in every other country, but I know that at least with England, when Wilberforce pushed for the abolition of slavery you didn't have half the country rebel and a civil war break out over it. But also, most of England's slavery didn't occur in the country of England. It was in their various colonies around the world. In other words, they didn't have to integrate a huge population of former slaves into the fabric of the nation as much. They stopped the slave trade and it mainly just set slaves free in the Caribbean, Africa, and other places far removed from England proper.
That's kind of inaccurate, Lincolns plan was to set in motion the eventual abolition of slavery. It was a 100 years plan, putting slavery ending in the 1960's. The reasoning behind that was he (and most others of the time) were afraid of crashing the economy if slavery was abolished overnight. EDIT: It's a bit early, but it's one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates where he talks about it a bit... interesting reads.There's also the fact that abolitionists were also extremely racist, but that might have been the same in other countries... not sure.
No it's not inaccurate. Regardless of Lincoln's plans, the South rebelled against the idea of ending slavery, of restricting slavery in future states and territories and ultimately were willing to secede from the Union to preserve their right to keep slavery for the foreseeable future. That situation simply did not play out in England for instance. You didn't have the northern half of the England decide to take their ball and go home or start a war with southern England when Parliament took steps to abolish slavery.And England did not have many African slaves working inside the country at the time. So they didn't have quite the same obstacles to integration that we had here.Did you mean to respond to someone else?
Nope meant for you, and I said kind of inaccurate because it's just the way you worded it that made it seem a little off.The CW would have started even if Lincoln had not been against slavery, any republican candidate winning the election would have likely set off the CW. The democratic south all voted for the democrat, the north all voted for the republican. The republican won, so the ruling aristocracy decided to secede. They saw their power structure waning and took extreme steps to keep it intact, slavery was a big part of it as it is how that aristocracy had built their power.It's confusing to a lot of people because one cause fed the other for the war. It's why people argue over the reason of the CW.
The reason people argue over the reasons for the CW is some combination of ignorance, pride and denial regarding slavery.The idea that slavery was a side issue was propagated by Southern historians who were not willing to admit the truth.
:bs:/> Historians who publish almost always seek the truth by hunting out old documents, etc...in fact there are many Historians that won't read other people's work if they didn't do research at certain places. For instance, if one was writing about the Gettysburg battle then they would naturally go to the AHC up in Carlisle, PA to do research, if they don't then they wouldn't be taken seriously. Please back up your claim about Southern Historians. You ask others to do the same so it is reasonable to present evidence of your statement and cite their works. You are quick to disregard other peoples opinions with quips but since you stated this as a fact then please back it up with a few facts or say that it is your opinion.

Frankly I thought the "Lost Cause" revisionist turn of Southern historians was more or less common knowledge. But here's a little background for those who are not familiar with it.

"This Mighty Scourge ‑ Perspectives on the Civil War" by James M. McPherson (excerpts)

Jefferson Davis, a large slaveholder, justified secession in 1861 as an act of self‑defence against the incoming Lincoln administration, whose announced policy of excluding slavery from the territories would make "property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless...thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars".

The new vice president of the Confederate States of America, Alexander H. Stephens, said in a speech at Savannah on March 21 1861, that slavery was "the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution" of Southern independence. The old confederation known as the United States, said Stephens, had been founded on the false idea that all men are created equal. the Confederacy, in contrast, "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 normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

After the war, however, Davis and Stephens changed their tune. By the time they wrote their histories of the Confederacy, slavery was gone with the wind ‑ a dead and discredited institution. To concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause.

Over the years since the war, many Southern whites have preferred to cite Davis's and Stephens's post‑1865 writings rather than their claims of 1861. When Ken and Ric Burns's popular PBS documentary on the Civil War was first broadcast in 1990, it provoked a hostile response from Southerners who did not like the portrayal of their Confederate ancestors as having fought for slavery. 'The cause of the war was secession" declared a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, "and the cause of secession could have been any number of things. This overemphasis on the slavery issue really rankles us." Among the "any number of things" that caused secession, according to the descendent of a soldier who served in the 27th South Carolina infantry, were "states rights, agrarianism...., aristrocracy, and habits of mind including individualism, personalism toward God and man, provincialism and romanticism" ‑ anything but slavery.

During the first half of the twentieth century the argument that slavery had little to do with the growing polarization between the North and South that led to secession found a great deal of support among professional historians. The "Progressive school" dominated American historiography from the 1910s to the 1940s. "Merely by the accidents of climate, soil, and geography," wrote Charles A. Beard, doyen of the Progressive school, "was it a sectional struggle" ‑ the accidental fact that plantation agriculture was located in the South and industry mainly in the North. Nor was it a contest between slavery and freedom. Slavery just happened to be the labor system of plantation agriculture, as wage labor was the system of Northern industry. The *real* issues between the North and the South in antebellum politics were the tariff, government subsidies to transportation and manufacturing, public land sales, financial policies, and other types of economic questions on which industrial and planting interests had clashing viewpoints.

This interpretive analysis, so powerful during the second quarter of the twentieth century, proved a godsend to a generation of mostly Southern‑born historians who seized upon is as proof that slavery had little to do with the origins of the Confederacy. The Nashville Fugitives, an influential group of historians, novelists, and poets who gathered at Vanderbilt University and published the famous manifesto "I'll Take My Stand" in 1930, set the tone for the new Southern interpretation of the Civil War's causes. It was a blend of the old Confederate apologia voiced by Jefferson Davis and the new Progressive synthesis created by Charles Beard.

An offshoot of this interpretation of the Civil War's causes dominated the work of academic historians during the 1940s. This offshoot came to be known as revisionism. Revisionism tended to portray Southern whites, even the fire‑eaters, as victims reacting to Northern attacks; it truly was a "war of Northern aggression".

While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the states‑rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose? States rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle. In the antebellum South, the purpose of asserting state sovereignty was to protect slavery from the potential hostility of a national majority against Southern interests ‑ mainly slavery.

But even so, state sovereignty was a fallback position. A more powerful instrument to protect slavery was control of the national government. Until 1861 Southern politicians did this remarkably well. They used that control to defend slavery from all kinds of threats and perceived threats. They overrode the rights of Northern states that passed personal liberty laws to protect black people from kidnapping by agents who claimed them as fugitive slaves. During forty‑nine of the seventy‑two years from 1789 to 1861, the presidents of the United States were Southerners ‑ all of them slaveholders. The only presidents to be reelected were slaveholders. Two‑thirds of the Speakers of the House, chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, and presidents pro temp of the Senate were Southerners. This domination constituted what antislavery Republicans called the Slave Power and sometimes, more darkly, the Slave Power Conspiracy.

Southern politicians did not use this national power to buttress state's rights; quite the contrary. In the 1830s Congress imposed a gag rule to stifle antislavery petitions from Northern states. The Post Office banned antislavery literature from the mail if it was sent to Southern states. In 1850 Southerners in Congress plus a handful of Northern allies enacted a Fugitive Slave Law that was the strongest manifestation of *national* power thus far in American history. In the name of protecting the rights of slaveholders, it extended the long arm of federal law, enforced by marshals and the army, into Northern states to recover escaped slaves and return them to their owners.

Senator Jefferson Davis, who later insisted the the Confederacy fought for the principle of state sovereignty, voted with enthusiasm for the Fugitive Slave Law. When Northern legislatures invoked *their* states rights against this federal law, the Supreme Court with its majority of Southern justices reaffirmed the supremacy of national law to protect slavery (Ableman vs. Booth, 1859). Many observers in the 1850s would have predicted that if a rebellion in the name of states rights were to erupt, it would be the North that would rebel.

The presidential election of 1860 changed that equation. Without a single electoral vote from the South, Lincoln won the presidency on a platform of restricting the future expansion of slavery.

Slaves were the principal form of wealth in the South ‑ indeed in the nation as a whole. The market value of the four million slaves in 1860 was close to $3 billion ‑ more than the value of land, of cotton, or of anything else in the slave states, and more than the amount of capital invested in manufacturing and railroads combined for the whole United States. Slave labor made it possible for the American South to grow three‑quarters of the world's marketed cotton, which in turn constituted more than half of all American exports in the antebellum era. But slavery was much more than an ecomomic system. It was a means of maintaining racial control and white supremacy. But with 95 perent of the nation's black population living in the slave states, the region's scale of concern with this matter was so much greater as to create a radically different set of social priorities.

These priorities were bluntly expressed by the advocates of secession in the winter of 1860‑61. That is the principal finding of one of the most important books on the secession movement to have appeared in recent years, "Apostles of Disunion" by Charles B. Dew. Growing up in the South of the 1940s and 1950s, Dew bought the state's‑rights interpretation of Civil War causation lock, stock, and barrel. Ancestors on both sides of his family fought for the Confederacy. His much‑beloved grandmother was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In his dormitory room at a prep school in Virginia he proudly hung a Confederate flag. and he knew "that the South had seceded for one reason and one reason only: states rights.......Anyone who thought differently was either deranged or a Yankee.

Later, however, as a distinguished historian of the antebellum South and the Confederacy, Dew was "stunned" to discover that protection of slavery and white supremacy was the dominant theme in secession rhetoric. "Apostles of Disunion" is a study of the men appointed by seceding states as commissioners to visit other slave states to persuade them also to leave the Union and join together to form the Confederacy. "I found this in many ways a difficult and painful book to write," Dew acknowledges, but he nevertheless unflinchingly concludes that "to put it quite simply, slavery and race were absolutely critical elements in the coming of the war....Defenders of the Lost Cause need only read the speeches and letters of the secession commisioners to learn what was really driving the Deep South to the brink of war in 1860‑61."

==================================================

Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. A Nation Divided: New Studies in Civil War History. by Charles B. Dew.(excerpts)

.........For the book's primary audience ‑‑ non academics and beginning students ‑‑ the author's intent clearly is to disabuse them of the (incredibly) still popular notion that secession was not about preserving slavery and racial subordination (and the southern culture based on them), but rather to assert some sort of abstract commitment to states' rights. Academic historians, of course, have long‑since concluded that states' rights was the means, not a primary motive, for secession and war. Dew's principal target is the somewhat shadowy "Neo‑Confederate" movement, including the League of the South and the patrons of "Neo‑Confederate web sites, bumper stickers, and T‑shirts".

........Another of the book's strengths is Dew's effective juxtaposition of comments made by the same men before and after the war. Through the words of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, J. L. M. Curry, John Smith Preston, and others, the author demonstrates that ex‑Confederates created the myth of states' rights causation when they wrote Lost Cause memoirs. Before and during the war these men framed arguments for independence and Confederate nationalism in terms of slavery and racism. After the defeat, however, they sang a different tune. Stephens, of course, delivered his famous "cornerstone" speech in March, 1861, and Dew presents a thorough discussion of his remarks. In his 1868 memoirs, however, Stephens insisted that the war "was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other." Slavery "was but _the question_ on which these antagonistic principles" finally collided. After the war Preston defended the Confederacy as a noble defense of "true constitutional liberty," a far cry from his antebellum characterization of Republican "canting, fanatics, festering in the licentiousness of abolition and amalgamation".

===========================================================

http://www.cwbr.com/...s&Submit=Search

Understanding how students of the Civil War era have grappled with these ideas and sought to explain them in a coherent narrative explain how we understand the coming of the war today. The irrepressible conflict argument originated before the war with the famous pronouncements of men like William Seward and Abraham Lincoln and reemerged with the work of historian James Ford Rhodes in his seven-volume work The History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (1893-1906). To Rhodes and his students, slavery alone caused the breakdown of American politics in the 1850s and led to the Civil War. Rhodes emphasized the moral aspects of the slavery question as well as the institution's social and cultural impact on the divergence of North and South by the 1850s. To Rhodes and a generation of scholars trained in his work, the inevitability of the Civil War seemed remarkably apparent.

By the late 1920s, however, a new generation of scholars began to challenge the self-evident inevitability of the war and the primacy of slavery as its cause. Inspired in part by Charles and Mary Beard's economic determinism, which emphasized slavery as an economic institution and a source of labor, and by a general post-World War I disillusionment with war, politics, and ideology, a group of historians—who would become known as the revisionists—challenged the theme of an irrepressible conflict. For a generation, the revisionist historians argued that the Civil War was a repressible conflict. A paucity of pragmatic leadership had led to a crisis of governance; compromise failed as abolitionists and proslavery fanatics (and the revisionists appropriated most of their blame to the former) divided the political system and the nation over the issue of slavery. The revisionists tended to dismiss the moral strictures of the abolitionists as fanaticism, while lauding those willing to compromise on the slavery question as pragmatists.The revisionists, most notably represented by James G. Randall and Avery Craven, responded to the moral condemnation of slavery by arguing instead that a blundering generation of leaders had failed to achieve sectional harmony, thereby leading the nation into a civil war that could have been avoided if northerners had acted more diplomatically. The revisionists seemed incredulous that the politicians of the 1850s were so shortsighted as to brook disunion over what, for the revisionists themselves, seemed like issues ripe for compromise. They sought to explain the superheated rhetoric of the 1850s in psychological terms by blaming the disintegration of politics and compromise on a small group of fanatics who frenzied politicians and citizens in Washington and across the nation.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the revisionist school had collapsed amidst the resurgence of the civil rights movement and America's grappling with race as a paramount political issue. A new generation of historians sought to reaffirm the primacy of slavery and its moral implications for American society and politics by refuting the revisionists' claims that slavery really had not caused the war in the first place. In some respects, students of the Civil War era returned to a moral interpretation akin to Rhodes. That said, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, scholars looked for new ways to explain the erosion of the American political system and the coming of the Civil War. Some saw the fall of the Whig Party, the disintegration of the Democrats, and the creation of the Republican Party as a watershed moment of instability at a time in which Americans desperately needed stability. But whereas some historians identified slavery as the cause of the collapse, others looked to "ethnocultural" factors such as immigration, nativism, and other cultural differences in an increasingly growing and diverse nation.

==================================================================

https://coffeeshopth...1950s-part-two/

The Civil War interpretations from 1900 to 1950 embraced many new passions in history including progressivism, Southern vindication, and revisionism. The progressive era in the United States gave rise to the idea of "The Second American Revolution," embraced by Charles Beard and Algie Simons. These historians wanted to write a new history with a progressive mindset focused on social reform and national progress for a better future. The economic factors of the Civil War were reanalyzed, and the search for reformist solutions to the Civil War problems was top priority.

Charles Beard is the most famous historian of the early twentieth century. Beard, an avid progressive, pioneered the interpretation of the Civil War from a purely economic standpoint. He did not include social and political pressures as previous historians had done. Beard considered the Civil War to be a revolution because it was the conflict of two economic ideologies which could not function together. The South was forced to break off in order to maintain economic independence.%2

homersapien · June 23, 2015

homer....your claim that slavery was a side issue propagated by southern historians displays your ignorance. Slavery became an issue early in the war but was NOT the primary cause in the beginning. The best CW history I ever read was by a guy in Massachusetts. And my wife as taught the facts in elementary school in California.

couldn't care less what you choose to believe but I have studied the CW extensively, both the history and emotions involved. I have spent hours in Lee's BR at the Custis-Lee Mansion and lived for several months in the house where the Sec. of War for the Confederacy gave the order to fire on Ft. Sumter starting the war.

You know squat about what led to the Civil War.

You ought to be ashamed of your ignorance. There's no excuse for it.

alexava · June 23, 2015

homer....your claim that slavery was a side issue propagated by southern historians displays your ignorance. Slavery became an issue early in the war but was NOT the primary cause in the beginning. The best CW history I ever read was by a guy in Massachusetts. And my wife as taught the facts in elementary school in California.

couldn't care less what you choose to believe but I have studied the CW extensively, both the history and emotions involved. I have spent hours in Lee's BR at the Custis-Lee Mansion and lived for several months in the house where the Sec. of War for the Confederacy gave the order to fire on Ft. Sumter starting the war.

You know squat about what led to the Civil War.

You ought to be ashamed of your ignorance. There's no excuse for it.

I don't think it is ignorance. maybe voluntary denial.

homersapien · June 24, 2015

And for those who take pride in the Southern heritage, here's some interesting information from a historian who was an Auburn grad:

(My personal notes)

"Bitterly Divided - The South's Inner Civil War" by David Williams*

*(obtained his PhD degree in history at Auburn University)

Williams shows in this extensively documented work that from the Confederacy's very beginning, white Southerners were as likely to oppose secession as support it. He makes a compelling case that this was basically a rich man's war that was undertaken against the will of the majority of Southern residents, 3/4's of whom owned no slaves. In fact, he makes the case that a major driving force for the secession movement by slave holders was a fear that poor whites would come to realize that slavery kept them poor and an abolitionist movement would arise in the South.

He also describes the acute class divisions in the South. Anyone owning 20 or more slaves were exempted from the draft. Men of wealth could also avoid military service by paying an exemption fee. Meanwhile poor men were subject to conscription, often having to leave their wives and children to fend for themselves on subsistence level farms. And because growing cotton and tobacco were much more profitable the rich planters favored those crops instead of growing food crops. This resulted in outright famine for poor throughout the South.

As a consequence the desertion rate from the Confederate army was tremendous. In 1864 Jefferson Davis admitted that 2/3 if Confederate soldiers were absent, most of them without leave. Many of these deserters went on to serve in the Union army. Southerners, including ex- slaves, who served in the Union military totalled nearly half a million, or about a quarter of federal armed forces.

Large geographical areas of the South resisted secession and supported the Union. Many of these areas were in the mountainous regions of northern Alabama and Georgia and eastern Tennessee and North Carolina.

While I have always known that there was considerable resistence to the Confederacy in the South, I certainly did not realize that this was a war that was brought on by a relatively small minority of rich planters. For someone raised in the South and has had a long term interest in the Civil war, this book was a paradigm shifter. I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in the Civil War.

It also puts any theories of how the South may have won (militarily) the Civil war into perspective. The Confederacy was destined to be defeated, if not by the North then by Southerners themselves.

autigeremt · June 24, 2015

Dr. Williams is correct! I've been trying to get this through the minds of my "former" friends but they are ardent in their beliefs.

aujeff11 · June 24, 2015

And for those who take pride in the Southern heritage, here's some interesting information from a historian who was an Auburn grad:

(My personal notes)

"Bitterly Divided - The South's Inner Civil War" by David Williams*

*(obtained his PhD degree in history at Auburn University)

Williams shows in this extensively documented work that from the Confederacy's very beginning, white Southerners were as likely to oppose secession as support it. He makes a compelling case that this was basically a rich man's war that was undertaken against the will of the majority of Southern residents, 3/4's of whom owned no slaves. In fact, he makes the case that a major driving force for the secession movement by slave holders was a fear that poor whites would come to realize that slavery kept them poor and an abolitionist movement would arise in the South.

He also describes the acute class divisions in the South. Anyone owning 20 or more slaves were exempted from the draft. Men of wealth could also avoid military service by paying an exemption fee. Meanwhile poor men were subject to conscription, often having to leave their wives and children to fend for themselves on subsistence level farms. And because growing cotton and tobacco were much more profitable the rich planters favored those crops instead of growing food crops. This resulted in outright famine for poor throughout the South.

As a consequence the desertion rate from the Confederate army was tremendous. In 1864 Jefferson Davis admitted that 2/3 if Confederate soldiers were absent, most of them without leave. Many of these deserters went on to serve in the Union army. Southerners, including ex- slaves, who served in the Union military totalled nearly half a million, or about a quarter of federal armed forces.

Large geographical areas of the South resisted secession and supported the Union. Many of these areas were in the mountainous regions of northern Alabama and Georgia and eastern Tennessee and North Carolina.

While I have always known that there was considerable resistence to the Confederacy in the South, I certainly did not realize that this was a war that was brought on by a relatively small minority of rich planters. For someone raised in the South and has had a long term interest in the Civil war, this book was a paradigm shifter. I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in the Civil War.

It also puts any theories of how the South may have won (militarily) the Civil war into perspective. The Confederacy was destined to be defeated, if not by the North then by Southerners themselves.

Nice notes. Doesn't do much for me though. Especially the class divisions. Just from what I read previously, I wasn't surprised the army lacked the discipline or organization to effectively defeat the north. Fact of the matter is the Confederate Government was supported by the wealthy and catered to the interests of the wealthy.

WarEagle1983 · June 24, 2015

Devil's Advocate question:

Since the CF is considered racist and oppressive, and believed by many that it should be taken down, if you have a neighbor from Japan that had relatives die in Nagasaki or Hiroshima, and the American flag is a symbol that brings them the same amount of bad feelings that the CF does to my darker skinned brothers and sisters, should you take it down as well out of respect for our Japanese brethren?

It's about local and state and government not what my neighbor has on his front lawn. If my "darker skinned brothers and sisters" as you state think something like that can be controlled or should be controlled....that's wishful thinking. It's plain and simple remove it from gov't institutions. To have it raised next to the USA flag on gov't grounds is a pure insult. This is something that happened on USA soil. I don't expect to control what my neighbor does no matter what he believes; as long as he or she is not a threat to the public. This is really not that complicated.

Sign In

The Cross and the Confederate Flag

Recommended Posts

autigeremt 6,688

Link to comment

Share on other sites

autigeremt 6,688

Link to comment

Share on other sites

homersapien 11,446

Link to comment

Share on other sites

alexava 6,973

Link to comment

Share on other sites

AU_Tiger_88 417

Link to comment

Share on other sites

aujeff11 6,243

Link to comment

Share on other sites

icanthearyou 4,463

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Proud Tiger 4,261

Link to comment

Share on other sites

aujeff11 6,243

Link to comment

Share on other sites

TitanTiger 20,510

Link to comment

Share on other sites

autigeremt 6,688

Link to comment

Share on other sites

TitanTiger 20,510

Link to comment

Share on other sites

autigeremt 6,688

Link to comment

Share on other sites

aujeff11 6,243

Link to comment

Share on other sites

icanthearyou 4,463

Link to comment

Share on other sites

AU_Tiger_88 417

Link to comment

Share on other sites

AU_Tiger_88 417

Link to comment

Share on other sites

TitanTiger 20,510

Link to comment

Share on other sites

homersapien 11,446

Link to comment

Share on other sites

homersapien 11,446

Link to comment

Share on other sites

alexava 6,973

Link to comment

Share on other sites

homersapien 11,446

Link to comment

Share on other sites

autigeremt 6,688

Link to comment

Share on other sites

aujeff11 6,243

Link to comment

Share on other sites

WarEagle1983 2,185

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Archived

Members Online