Confederate History Month: Mississippi Learnings
Here is an interesting fact: Mississippi NEVER officially ratified the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution–you know, the one outlawing slavery.
This news is certain to help the Republican Confederate Party and their celebration of Confederate History Month.
In a post last night MattR pointed out that Mississippi did not ratify the 13th Amendment until 1995. That was a pretty amazing factoid on its own, but then as I did a little research on the subject today I came across a very interesting footnote on USConstitution.net a long time site dedicated to the history of the US Constitution (emphasis added):
* Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995, but because the state never officially notified the US Archivist, the ratification is not official.
The ‘recent’ drive to ratify the 13th Amendment in Mississippi was started by African-Americans like Jeremiah Blackwell who were outraged that Mississippi never signed onto a Federal Constitutional ban of slavery. Mr. Blackwell contacted his Mississippi State legislators and they introduced a Bill to ratify the 13th Amendment more than 130 years after the end of the Civil War. It was an interesting legislative battle and you can watch a news report on the the effort here. Even though this fight took place over 15 years ago the Confederates were making the same arguments against ratification that the Republican Confederate Party and their Teabagger sycophants make about most issues these days.
Leading the charge against ratification was Mississippi State Senator Mike Gunn. He was last in the news for gassing goslings to death in his bar-b-que grill and he is well known in wingnut circles for his quip against gun control: “If guns are outlawed, how can we shoot liberals?” I was surprised to read that he used to get mad when local political cartoonists depicted him in KKK robes (I would have thought that he would have embraced that with white pride).
Anyway, in the news report above Gunn is the person the story quotes for balance. He is the voice of anti-ratification (emphasis added):
Mr. MIKE GUNN (State Senator): We need to work on those things that bring racial harmony and reconciliation. Not those things that drive a wedge between the races, and this is one of those issues.
See outlawing slavery is one of those issue that drive a wedge between the races and the Confederacy was all about reducing that friction by fighting to keep slavery legal. Gunn, like Haley Barbour (and Sonny Purdue of Georgia and Bob Riley of Alabama) are just trying to ‘bring racial harmony and reconciliation’ by celebrating Confederate History without any mention of slavery. It is mighty white of them to be so considerate.
In 1995 Mississippi finally ratified the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. This grated on the “State’s Rights” folks because the State of Mississippi had passed their own law to ban slavery back in 1869 and they thought that should be enough. Like good Confederates the idea that they were part of a Union with Federal Laws that also had to be obeyed seemed to be a moral outrage to these racist deadenders. But in 1995 the media glare was on Mississippi and so they voted to ratify the 13th Amendment. The news was reported and the fact of the vote was noted as a ratification, but in order to be official the State of Mississippi had to send notice of the vote to the US Archivist. Somehow, over the last 15 years Mississippi has been unable to take that step and make their ratification of outlawing slavery official.
I guess Governor Barbour would call that a nit that is not worth a diddly. I think the fat bastard should send in the fucking paperwork and make it official. It would be a fine way to celebrate Confederate History month.
Cheers
ps: Gene Robinson has a great column up about Governor Diddly and his defense of celebrating the Confederacy without mentioning slavery.
I saw what you did there.
This pleases me.
As a resident of Alabama, let me say, yet again: Thank the FSM for Mississippi.
I’ll say. Altho it’s much more measured than I would be.
@Montysano:
But the FSM must have some mysterious plan to allow Mississippi exist. Perhaps it is only to allow the rest of the former Confederacy to feel hope.
Strange are his ways.
Isn’t Boss Barbour planning on running for President in 2012?
Yeah, that’s a winning idea.
@Max: Yeah, it makes Perry’s plan to run on secession look brilliant.
Ah, come on Dennis G., lay off of Mississippi. They haven’t ratified the 13th Amendment because they’re too busy inventing fake proms for the lesbians and learning disabled children of their state.
@SIA: That’s ‘Puff Diddly” to you northern types.
I find this news so amazing.
All these years; and Mississippi still…can’t…do it.
@Dennis G.:
Well, the contradiction is that despite the
occasionalfrequent horror, I love the Deep South. My work takes me down a lot of blue highways, and I never get tired of it.Word.
OT – but did you see this thing buried in the unemployment benefits extension thingy that the Repubs are currently trying to hold up (but failing) it also cuts off Federal Flood insurance, right before Hurricane season starts! WTF! If the link doesn’t work it is cause I got it from Twitter.
http://ow.ly/1xFTU
As a gay liberal I am sure I could be near the top of his list, but still that turn of phrase made me smile for a bit.
Goddess help me.
Hilarity ensues as candidate Barbour gets his ass handed to him by a black guy in 2012…..
Gene Robinson’s column runs in the Times-Picayune. I simply cannot wait to read the response in the Letters to the Editor. It should be barf-inducing.
@Montysano:
Louisianians also say “thanks!”
@Montysano:
I think the Drive By Truckers may have captured it best in this intro and song about the duality of the Southern Thing
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yep. Those of us who remember Katrina are quite pleased with this turn of events. Ain’t nothing like the roulette wheel excitement of not knowing of your flood insurance is going to be in force as hurricane season approaches. Woo hoo!!
@Max:
Well Max, putting oneself into to the shoes of a non Phi Kappa GOPer, the idea is a winner.
They feel Obama is already wounded and bleeding and if the economy stays slow enough, Barak is an easy out.
So which ever true blue (?) bagger nitwit wins the GOPer nomination, it’s all flowers and candy, BABY!
That’s what they think…..honest.
@Keith G: I say, let ’em keep on thinking it.
As Wesley Snipes says… always bet on black.
I heart Eugene Robinson.
Dengre @ Top:
You know how, in MN, the Democrats are the DFL, for Democrat-Farm-Labor?
Maybe we need to do that for the GOP. They can become the RFC, Republican-Fox-Confederate Party.
.
Translation: When black people refuse to shut up about slavery it makes it difficult for me to pretend I don’t hate black people. I’m sure everyone else agrees.
@Dennis G.:
Great stuff!
You know, during the Civil War, Winston County, Alabama toyed with seceding from everything and starting their own country. Winston County is hill country, and had no plantations, so they had no dog in the fight.
One excuse I keep hearing is that people today shouldn’t have to answer for what people did 150 years ago, i. e. “nobody alive today was a slave or owned slaves.” Fair enough. Nobody alive today fought in the civil war either, so let’s forget about honoring those ancestors.
just for cultural completeness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....eature=fvw
Dammit, I’m in moderation for referencing a certain game of chance. Could someone cut me loose?
@eric: Ha! Hey, I live in GA, and I too am grateful for MS, SC, & AL.
On that Mississippi state law outlawing slavery in 1869, it wasn’t out of some sort of lesson-learned by Mississippi politicians — it was one of the conditions for readmission to the Union under military Reconstruction. Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia were the last to carry out this readmission step.
The good news for the neo-Confederates is that the Southern elites swiftly went to work attacking the political and economic equality granted by the post-Civil War amendments and federal Reconstruction, returning the South by violence and legalized corruption to complete white supremacist rule by the end of the 1890s.
Another fun trick for Mississippi Neo-Confederates to do Reconstruction/Redeemer era dog-whistling is to don red shirts because, heh heh, you know, the Mississippi Red Shirts were the white paramilitary force which slaughtered black Republicans and white Republicans alike.
Mississippi is a depressing state. They’re sitting on a veritable treasure chest of musical history–the blues began in that state, fergodsake, but they do nothing to publicize this. Memphis and NOLA value their musical heritage. But Mississippi? Pfffffft! They could, at the very least, be making lots of money in tourism. But with Hayley Barbour as governor, there’s no way they’re going to promote music made by a bunch of black folks.
@Montysano: North Carolina had the highest number of draft dodgers and deserters from Confederate forces in the war, and for men who opposed the Confederate cause (either on the practical or higher level) and couldn’t buy their way out, it was a brave and moral choice.
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Wow, you speak fluent Confederate. Nice translation.
Gosh, I just can’t understand why people think Republicans are racists. It’s a complete mystery.
Fuck the south. Long and hard. It’s where I was raised and escaped/ For the handful of decent pasty types still living there, you can watch.
As the good lady sang.
I really like the point of the shared rhetoric. One of the things that has struck me looking into the history of so many movements is how antagonistic rhetoric to various movements tends to be recycled.
White power statements moved to anti-gay statements, confederate praising statements like this recycled for Republican stonewalling on health care and any other bill they can, etc…
It’s worth paying attention to the rhetoric, because it almost invariably comes from an old battle and really drives home where the “new” people are coming from. They are merely the collected losers of the last battle finding some new part of history to stand athwart and yell “NO” to.
They don’t hate them. They hate not owning them.
Dennis – Thanks for fleshing this out. I had absolutely no idea. I kinda wonder if this hubbub might presure Barbour to finally notify the US Archivist (Ha, yeah right)
I’m as much of a DFH as anybody, but I think this is overblown. There’s plenty of actual bad stuff they’re doing that we can complain about, as LittleBritDifferent said in #12.
If you really want to get Southern neo-Confederates riled up, tell them you want to propose a month honoring the achievements of federal occupation & Reconstruction of the South.
@Scamp Dog: If they don’t want people calling them backwards racists they could just, you know, agree that owning people is bad and shouldn’t be allowed.
@El Cid:
That’s the part that doesn’t really hang together. If the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, what was the brutality and cruelty that went on for the next hundred years about?
Taxes?
Weirdly ineffective and extremely brutal TAX PROTEST, wouldn’t you say?
Just random, unfocused, completely arbitrary hatred of a certain group of people, but NOT because those people were former slaves or descendants of slaves who had been freed?
What was that all about, then, I wonder?
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: They hate that those people can vote now. And hold office. Often without their homes being firebombed or anything.
I think we should be sensitive to the cultural differences and not impose our secular abolitionist culture on people who are proud of their heritage of stupidity, torture, murder, and chumpness. After all, who are we to say that being a mean-spirited dumbfuck is bad? Maybe it’s the best that Haley Barbour can be.
If the United States was a body, Mississippi would be the anus.
The people who insist that slavery had nothing to do with southern states’ seceding from the Union might want to listen to the reasons those states gave.
Haley Barbour, in particular, might want to check out the reasons Mississippi’s political leaders gave for their decision to secede:
It’s not really that subtle — for Mississippi, or for the rest of the seceding states.
@El Cid: The last time mississippi had a decent senator was when Hiram Revels was in the Senate.
@rootless-e:
I guess grading on an inverted bell curve is the only way to give Haley the benefit of the doubt, but then again, why bother….
Some state should declare a “Union History Month” celebrating the righteous military victory over the treasonous confederacy.
@Scamp Dog: Look at it this way.
I had ancestors on both sides of the line. The difference was that the ones in grey were fighting to put some of the ones in blue back in chains.
And to put me in them, too.
I take that kind of, you know, personally. Wouldn’t you?
It’s easy. All Mississippi has to do is claim that no blacks have legitimate birth certificates and start parading with signs that say they were all born in Kenya….
@Comrade Kevin:
If we have to pick one, I believe Sherman marched through Georgia in December.
During the 1970s, Atlanta had a hippie newspaper called the Great Speckled Bird. Their motto “Where is General Sherman, now that we need him”.
@kay: It’s the reconquest of the South by Redeemer violence — and we’re talking flat out death squad paramilitary assassinations, like Colombia’s right wing paramilitary death squads supporting the conservative legislature over the past 10 years or so — to destroy post-Civil War political and economic rights for blacks and non-Democratic / non-elite whites which so clearly puts the lie to the bullshit about how the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and its related inherent vision of the inferior status of people of African descent.
The Civil War is already remembered and honored. Nobody much gives a shit about Reconstruction and the Redeemer violence decades. I don’t know of a touching PBS documentary for which throngs show up to buy the soundtrack and mementos.
That period did just as much to shape national politics and economics for a generation as did the Civil War itself, yet it has pretty much vanished from consciousness, as I guess it’s more interesting to read about the railroads and McKinley’s open Imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines.
@El Cid:
This is an important point of the story. Of course the only reason they passed an anti-slavery law was that they had to have it on the books to get the Union troops out of the way so they could replace slavery with indentured servitude, Jim Crow laws and the terror of the night riders.
After 145 years I guess it is just a bit too much to ask Haley to give it up.
Cheers
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
This is for you, Stuck, to cheer you up:
New CNN Poll:
As you may know, President Obama and the President of Russia recently signed a treaty to reduce the number of nuclear weapons of each country, but the treaty will not take effect until the U.S. Senate votes in favor of it. Do you think the U.S. Senate should or should not vote in favor of that treaty?
Should 70%
Should not 28%
No opinion 2%
There’s that 28% again! It’s a magical number.
It comes up again and again.
Excellent idea. And how about reenacting Sherman’s march to the sea? We could stage an annual celebration throughout the deep south, sort of like the Orangemen in Northern Ireland commemorating the Battle of the Boyne.
Sure, Stalin sent a lot of people to labor death camps who happened to disagree with him, or seemed like they did, but he didn’t send them there because they disagreed with him. There were lots of other issues involved.
The Confederate Party.
The name kind summarizes today’s GOP in a nutshell: backwards racists, dead-enders. I like it!
And after listening to Republicans talk about the DEMOCRAT party all these years, here’s one to throw back at them.
I hope it catches on.
One thing these authoritarian racist jerks respond to is orders from above. Time to put pressure on them.
Mississippi has a string of transplant auto factories and the Japanese don’t give a crap about supporting the confederacy. Get rolling a boycott of MS-made products, scare off some foreign investment because of this rebel masturbation, and Barbour and company will quickly be told to STFU.
Via Digby:
The Redeemers are on the move! Finally, we got state-level conservatives with the gumption to seek elected officials’ and other elites to form paramilitary forces to block federal laws and claim a “states’ rights” agenda against redistributive reforms!
RED SHIRTS RIDE AGAIN!
Maybe they can have a Ryder Truck Parade — FOR FREEDOM!
@Texas Dem:
I think the way to drive the Teabaggers crazy will be to show up at their events and broadcast “Marching Through Georgia” over and over again though load speakers.
There are so many versions, like this combo that starts with a string band and moves into the Tennessee Ernie Ford version.
The final verses are as relevant today as they were in 1864 (emphasis added):
Cheers
Hey be fair everyone.
If they weren’t allowed to rewrite history all the time, how else would they hide the fact that they have reliably been on the wrong side of history every single time.
Do you know how hard they work at this? It’s almost as hard as rich people.
@Dennis G.: Or we could just stick to the tried and true, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
@The Truffle:
I’m not a real blues expert, but Dockery’s Plantation (Charley Patton, Robert Johnson) and Parchman Farm aren’t as attractive for tourists as the French Quarter and Beale Street. If there’s a part of Mississippi’s blues heritage that isn’t tied to indentured servitude or prison farms I agree it should be promoted.
To any tea party lurkers, my daughter needs to raise money for a school trip and is available for protest sign spell-checking for the big day on Thursday. She charges $2 per sign (a dollar surcharge if there are Hitler mustaches) and has been studying her unpopular forms of government, evil world leaders, and various racial epithets and has been flawless at spelling them correctly. She’s only 9 and cute as a button, so no profanity please.
There is. Unfortunately for them, Beale Street is located across the state line in Tennessee.
@frosty: There is a minimal museum at the crossroads, and a big guitar on a pole.
A good antidote to this Confederate bullshit is Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, where he told the nation
to go shoppingthat we had this coming:Politicians do not speak that way anymore.
@Martin: FTW
That me be the funniest thing I have read all month.
@kay:
Thanks Kay. Idiot Lieberman has been running his mouth about not having the votes cause Obama doesn’t want to put a missile shield on Russia’s front porch. Someday these neocon fools are going to get us all killed.
Overall, I am not all that concerned that dems will lose either the House or Senate this fall. The wingnuts lack of any decent alternative policies will become evident when the campaign gets in full swing. Just opposing everything dems do can give the illusion of making a comeback by driving your opponents approval down, but when voting time comes, you also need ideas to make things better for average Americans, and the GOP is all out of those currently.
@Cerberus:
Perhaps a DJ to spin all the phat Union hits…
@MikeJ:
This spot was chosen mostly out of convenience. There are two top contenders for the real crossroads: one near the town of Rosedale and one south of Jackson (i.e. not in the Delta).
The Republican Party:
Slavery?
It’s a nit that ain’t worth diddly, y’all!
Now let’s do minority outreach, again!
I hate to paraphrase Larry Sabato, but he happens to be correct in this instance: by 2050 half of all voters will be minorities, and the Democrats get 75 percent of all minority votes. Do the math!
Glad to see the Mississippi quote I brought out yesterday start to make the rounds today. Can we have a concerted BJ fax machine protest sending that one out to any and all who are involved with Cracker History Month?
There’s one other great irony about the Teabaggers embrace of the South. Due to the demands of the war, the Confederacy ended up being rather collectivist. Richmond gradually asserted more and more control over the region’s limited industrial resources and transportation. By 1865, the unconquered portions of the south were essentially a state-run economy which wouldn’t have seemed out of place to the Soviets. It was definitely a prototype for what industrialized nations were going to do in the 1940’s.
Wonder what Barbour’s reaction would be to learn Jeff Davis was far more of a social – ist than Obama would ever dream of being?
For our pro-Union jukebox, here’s the best fighting song of them all.
Marching Song of the First Arkansas (Negro) Regiment
Words ascribed to Capt. Lindley Miller
Music: “John Brown’s Body”
1. Oh, we’re the bully soldiers of the “First of Arkansas,”
We are fighting for the Union, we are fighting for the law,
We can hit a Rebel further than a white man ever saw,
As we go marching on.
Chorus:
Glory, glory hallelujah.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
As we go marching on.
2. See, there above the center, where the flag is waving bright,
We are going out of slavery; we’re bound for freedom’s light;
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight,
As we go marching on! (Chorus)
3. We have done with hoeing cotton, we have done with hoeing corn,
We are colored Yankee soldiers, now, as sure as you are born;
When the masters hear us yelling, they’ll think it’s Gabriel’s horn,
As we go marching on. (Chorus)
4. They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin,
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin,
They will have to give us house-room, or the roof shall tumble in!
As we go marching on. (Chorus)
5. We heard the Proclamation, master hush it as he will,
The bird he sing it to us, hoppin’ on the cotton hill,
And the possum up the gum tree, he couldn’t keep it still,
As he went climbing on. (Chorus)
6. They said, “Now colored brethren, you shall be forever free,
From the first of January, Eighteen hundred sixty-three.”
We heard it in the river going rushing to the sea,
As it went sounding on. (Chorus)
7. Father Abraham has spoken and the message has been sent,
The prison doors he opened, and out the pris’ners went,
To join the sable army of “African descent,”
As we go marching on. (Chorus)
8. Then fall in, colored brethren, you’d better do it soon,
Don’t you hear the drum a-beating the Yankee Doodle tune?
We are with you now this morning, we’ll be far away at noon,
As we go marching on. (Chorus)
@cs:
One does not allow facts in the fever dreams of the lost cause. It would be a buzz-kill.
@cs:
Time for a mix tape…
I’ve been to Mississippi, and man it’s like a third world country over there. Still the folks were nice; they need a better diet though.
cain
Folks, there is a reason that in Arkansas we say “Thank God for Mississippi”.
The AP has an interesting story on Mississippi’s refusal to address slavery in their ‘Confederate History Month.’
Towards the end of the story is a rather unique version of the ‘on-the-one-hand, on-the-other’ style of reporting.
Was slavery the primary cause of the civil war?
Arguing NO!: a bunch of modern tea-baggers from Mississippi
Arguing YES!: The Mississippi Declaration of Secession
It’s a great set of quotes, but seriously, isn’t there a history PhD somewhere in the U.S. we could ask?
@Martin: Your snark-fu shall never cease to amaze me. Good show sir, good show.
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Oh Brave Sir Kommrade, I am pretty sure your translation won the Internets tonight.
@cs: Would love to have this sung at a Confederate History celebration.
@Max:
Passenger 57 FTMFW!
@demimondian:
To be more specific, I’m not terribly worked up over the failure to notify the National Archivist.
I’m glad to see things like the Mississippi Declaration of Secession as a smackdown of the “States’ Rights” nonsense. And thoroughly enjoyed hearing “Marching Through Georgia.” So I’m enjoying the thread.
Time to replace “Ïn God we trust” with “General Sherman forevah!”
[…] h/t dengre; see it at Balloon Juice “I didn’t know,” however, was Barbour’s “excuse.” It is not much believed. […]
In light of all this, and the new radical twist that the Sons of Confederate Veterans have taken, you’ll be thrilled, no doubt, to know that the SCV-owned “Jefferson Davis Presidential Library” — at whose rededication and ground breaking Gov. Haley Barbour was a featured speaker — was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
But not to worry. Its rehabilitation is being paid for with FEMA funds. Your tax dollars at work.
Grand re-opening is scheduled for spring 2011.
http://wp.me/p5dEo-208
@TR:
Thanks for the link.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Don’t forget the sister-raping. They really miss the sister-raping, which was the national sport of the slave owning class. It is arguable that the whole edifice of racial oppression was just a necessary system to allow full expression of their misogyny.
@Dennis G.: Re: ‘Marching Through Georgia’ — For reasons of good taste, and otherwise, it is advisable to skip the stanza that has ‘turkies’ rhyme with ‘darkies’.
We would do well to remember that while the Confederacy existed to defend slavery, racial enlightenment and brotherly feeling did not motivate most of the Yankees. Even Stowe had to send her free black characters to Montreal and Liberia because it was unthinkable to have them living among white people once they were free and fully redeemed from slavery.
Breitbart caught once again backing a video which supposedly disproved that a bunch of neo-Confederate TeaTards were screaming ‘n*****’ at Civil Rights struggle veteran John Lewis but which in reality was not even fucking from the same time period:
A Democratic Congressman claims that a bunch of anti-HCR TeaTards called him n*****. Those present agree that this happened, including other Congressmen, including white Congressmen opposed to HCR.
Conservatards immediately claim this is made up and that libruls faked it all. They offer a YouTube video which has passed through rigorous conservatard research, which apparently consisted of a guy telling them that there was a YouTube video which proved none of it happened, and, VOILA.
Does Breitbart do anything video-related which isn’t just a lie?
Where’s the $100K Andy? Where’s your $100K donation to the UNCF?
Whoopsies! Seems SOME Southern Governor forgot about slavery, hisownself.
Miss. Confederate History Month ignores slavery
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press Writer – Mon Apr 12, 6:50 pm ET
JACKSON, Miss. – Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour drew criticism for proclaiming April as Confederate Heritage Month without mentioning slavery, the second governor this month to come under fire for the omission…
“The War Between the States was fought for the same reasons that the tea party movement today is voicing their opinion. And that is that you have large government that’s not listening to the people, there’s going to be heavy taxation,” [Cecil Fayard, chaplain in chief for the national Sons of Confederate Veterans] said Monday from his home in Duck Hill, Miss. “And the primary cause of the war was not slavery, although slavery was interwoven into the cause, but it was not the cause for the War Between the States.”
[…]
@Hart Williams: It’s a very subtle difference that you Southern-hating libruls just don’t get.
You see, the Confederates weren’t fighting for slavery; they were just fighting for everything that slavery provided for the plantation owners.
It’s a really subtle difference, but it’s good enough for the Neo-Confederate Redeemer community.
@El Cid
Jeepers. I stand keerected.
But it’s nice to know that the South were, in fact, tea partiers, fighting for the same ideeeeels.
Methinks Haley the Barbourian might just be findin’ hisself in a whole mess ‘o trouble.
Maybe he should have granny whip him up a mess ‘o vittles.
Oh, wait. It looks like he already did.
You mean their celebration of Treasonous History Month.
@Hart Williams:
Ah. Now I get it. They were lynching black people over federal taxation.
Sure. Makes perfect sense. Taxes too high? Head out on a murdering rampage and kill a certain group of powerless people. But not the people in power who had anything to do with levying taxes.
It’s not that they’re idiots that’s so insulting and disturbing. It’s that they assume everyone else is also an idiot.
@bob h:
True, if you want to get technical about it, but it is also a Treason they celebrate 24/7 and 365 year after year after year
@frosty: There are other ways to promote the blues: festivals, a museum, etc. Really, there’s a lot of ka-ching! potential there.
@Mark S.: they do here in Virginia. Only now it’s usually about girls trying to get birth control or same sex marriage.
@Platonicspoof:
My pleasure. Spread that page far and wide.
All the neo-Confederates insisting that secession had nothing to do with slavery should be forced to read those declarations where the real Confederates made it crystal clear that it had everything to do with slavery.
Especially since these are generally the same people who insist we need to divine the Founders’ intent to understand the Constitution. Well, folks, the Confederate Founders wrote stuff too, and it’s plain as day.
HEY IF YOU DON’T LIKE MISSISSIPPI GET THE HELL OUT WE DON’T NEED YOU
Also, if it had nothing to do with enslaving citizens of African descent, why did Southern states spend 1870 – 1965 re-enslaving them as much as possible and undercutting the 13th and 14th amendments?
My daddy was from Mississippi and I have spent a fair amount of time there. When it was time to go to college I could have gone to Ole Miss and gotten a discount because he graduated from there. I was like HELL FUCKING NO!!! I hate that fucking state (but not as much as I hate Texas).
I am sure there are some lovely people but I am also quite sure that some of my grandfathers friends wore white robes. Glad I was too young to know about that shit and question it. Too many stupid and uneducated people living for yesterday and displaying their ignorance proudly.
@Comrade Kevin:
I volunteer one of the New England States…or maybe a state just North of the Mason Dixon line.
@Kay
Ah. Now I get it. They were lynching black people over federal taxation.
No. They were lynching people over TARIFFS. I heard somebody write it his self and spelled most of the words all keerect.
And It’s not that they’re ofttimes stupid. It’s that they’re so goddamned PROUD of it.
@ Jimmy
HEY IF YOU DON’T LIKE MISSISSIPPI GET THE HELL OUT WE DON’T NEED YOU
Was that what you yelled at books? Because, just so’s you know, it seems to have worked.
@Jimmy:
And if you don’t like America, with its crazy black commie fascist president and all these hippie liberal hordes, feel free to get the hell out yourself.
Go ahead, secede once more. Now that we don’t need the cotton and you suck up more of our federal tax money than you contribute, we’ll happily let you go this time.
Take Alabama with you, and we’ll throw in the gas money.
@TR
ROTF ( etc. )
I’ll chip in on the gas money.
Reading this thread gives me ideas.
Someone should design a T-Shirt for General Sherman’s March. It’d be fun to heckle the Teabaggers with a shirt that commemorates the Good General.
Maybe not good…but effective. That said, General Sherman and Reconstruction were always portrayed negatively in my history textbooks growing up.
The influence of the Texas Board of Education, perhaps?
@Jimmy:
“HEY IF YOU DON’T LIKE MISSISSIPPI GET THE HELL OUT WE DON’T NEED YOU”
Actually Jimmy, you do need us. Mississippi gets about $2 from the federal government for every tax dollar we get from you.
Mississippi is the welfare queen of the 50 states.