Basic Facts About the War for Southern Independence

I often encounter neo-Yankees on Twitter or this  site or elsewhere who want to argue about the causes of the so-called Civil War, the legality of secession, who was responsible for slavery, who started the war, ad infinitum.  Instead of having to argue the same defenses over and over again, I have decided to summarize the Southern arguments here, where I can point to a link and invite the Southern-adverse to read it.

Here is a list of subjects that I will cover, subject to change:

1.  The meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag.
2.  Fort Sumter:  How Lincoln deliberately started the Civil War.
3.  Lincoln's reasons for starting the war.
4.  The war was not about ending slavery.
5.  The North was equally responsible for slavery in America.
6.  The North never put forth any plan for peacefully ending slavery.
6.  The North cared nothing for the slaves, before or after emancipation.
7.  Secession was and is legal and Constitutional.
8.  The North was wrong and the South was right.
9.  Northern atrocities against Southern civilians.
10.  POWs and Andersonville Prison; how a Confederate officer was framed and murdered by a Northern kangaroo court.

More on this later.

Support the Confederate Flag: DON'T BACK DOWN

Note to those who support the Confederate flag: DON'T BACK DOWN.

Don't be tepid or tentative in your support of the flag. Our opposition to Northern cultural bigotry and historical (and hysterical) ignorance must be firm and unflinching. We are right, and they are wrong. View the issue with the moral clarity it deserves.

Anti-Southern bigotry is possibly one of my biggest triggers.  I wrote about that some time ago, in a previous post from 2010.  In that post I noted that the Civil War was then, and this is now.  I said that I wanted to work with Northerner conservatives in our modern political struggles, and not refight a war of 150 years ago.  However, I noted that the Civil War (better described as The War for Southern Independence) tapped deep emotions in me, and had the power to make me hate.  I stated that I don't like to hate and seek to avoid that emotion whenever possible, because happiness and hate cannot coexist.  This week, however, I feel the negative emotion returning.  

Why?  Because Yankees, liberals and Southerners ignorant of their own history keep re-invading the South.  They buy into the Northern Myth.  Intellectually lazy, they go along with the popular mythology that casts the Confederates into the role of villain.  They dishonor our Confederate ancestors and grossly misrepresent their cause.  Now they want to finish the wishes of General Sherman to exterminate all Southerners completely, by insisting that the Confederate flag be relegated to museums, viewed only as a dishonorable artifact.

"We must show manners to those who find the flag objectionable," they write.  Why is it that we must show manners but they do not?  Why do their feelings count but not ours?  

Arm yourselves with knowledge of Southern history.  I suggest you can do that by reading a previously posted article by Professor Donald Livingston of Emory University, "Why the Civil War Was Not About Slavery."

Major Heritage Attack: Demands to Remove Lee and Jackson from the National Cathedral in Washington

Always on Watch, one of my favorite blogs, has a post on the latest attempt to eradicate Southern heroes from the public. It's called "Objectionable Windows." AOW writes:

The Washington National Cathedral's stained class windows incorporate many different themes and subjects. Upon the recent death of Nelson Mandela, objections have now arisen to two of the stained glass windows — two separate windows depicting General Stonewall Jackson and General Robert E. Lee, both of them officers in the Confederate Army.

Read it all here.