abcnews.go

I was unable to see the video, so thanks for posting the lyrics, Perrie. Racism is ugly, but we have to move away from the past and build a present and a future - one without the colors of the past. It is never easy to forget history from the victims' perspective and due consideration must be given to that in so far as displays of symbols of racism are concerned. Will we ever reach a place where we see a person for the brightness of his/her ideas, the colors of his/her imagination, the music of his/her heart rather than the color of his/her skin? I don't know! We are too shallow.

Thanks SRO. I'll put that in the article.

On the other hand, it is what "Lynyrd Skynyrd"puts on their T shirts. Lots of people where them.

LMAO.. you guys are thilly

I fixed the video, thanks to SRO. You should watch it. It gives a lot more insight to the words. LL Cool J isn't offended by the T shirt. He get's that to this generation, it's just southern pride. Still, I know a lot of people would disagree, due to the past of the flag. A while back there was a big debate here about it. I thought this was an interesting take on the whole thing. The song just came out 3 days ago, and is making quite the stir.

I think there's a fundamental flaw, though, in finding a symmetry between White and Black experiences.

I don't think it's so much about experiences, as it is about who you are now. These two young men are friends and yet their culture is very different. These are reflections of their culture. But culturedevelopsfrom a past. Many times they are unaware of that.

I found the whole thing very interesting. I am going to try to see if the video is available yet.

JR,

2 things:

1)Slavery was the hot-button issue of the Civil War. Slavery was a derivative conflict between the industrial North and the agrarian South. Of course, the more labor-intensive lesser-skilled crop tending made slave labor attractive to the South, but it wasn't "about" slavery, necessarily. The Confederate flag means a whole lot more than "slavery", and some of it is actually positive. Therefore,

2)to equate the Confederate flag with the swastika is completely off base. There was absolutely nothing redeeming about the Nazi regime. They had a monstrous agenda, and succeeded in making all of humanity question their own humanity.

Apples and oranges, John.

Ya know I do like Brad's stuff, he's a damned good guitarist and writer. I also do appreciate the fact that there is an attempt in popular media to address racial issues head-on. I think some do it better than others...

Southern Rock Opera , an album exploring these themes with far greater eloquence and grace than Paisley and LL, and with a whole lot more rock.

Like "Accidental Racist," "The Southern Thing" confronts stereotypes and name-drops General Lee, and is equally as honest in its approach of the subject, but without the cringe-worthy ad-libs or threadbare narrative. The song unpacks many different aspects of Southern identity, and as Patterson Hood snarls accusations of his lack of intelligence based on his geography, the riffs give his words muscle.

"Ain't about excuses or alibis / a in't about no cotton fields or cotton picking lies / a in't about the races, the crying shame / t o the fucking rich man all poor people look the same."

Two members of the band grew up in the area of Alabama known as the Shoals, famous for the Muscle Shoals Sound recording studio, a place where some of America's greatest musical icons, black and white, came to make beautiful music. On "Ronnie and Neil," the Truckers drop a few of those names, while intertwining the narratives around Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant, figures who have gone down in the typical rock narrative as being on opposite sides of a beef played out in call-and-response lyrics in their biggest hits, and in urban legend (like the one that Van Zant was buried in a Neil Young t-shirt). The Truckers imagine a kinship between them, suggesting that "southern men need them both around," and that the South did have some key cultural unifiers, one being the music. The origin of "Sweet Home Alabama" is imagined as a love poem, not some sort of middle finger to Neil Young:

"Meanwhile in North Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd came to town / To record with Jimmy Johnson at Muscle Shoals Sound / And they met some real good people, not racist pieces of shit / And they wrote a song about it and that song became a hit."

Then there's "Three Great Alabama Icons," a swampy stream of consciousness exploring the complex legacies of three key figures of frontman Patterson Hood's home state: Ronnie Van Zant, legendary University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, and, perhaps most puzzlingly to non-Alabamans, George Wallace, the former governor most frequently historically linked with supporting racial segregation in the mid-'60s. As Hood narrates:

"And when I first ventured out of the South, I was shocked at how strongly Wallace was associated with Alabama and its people. Ya know racism is a worldwide problem and it's been since the beginning of recorded history and it ain't just white and black. But thanks to George Wallace, it's always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent. And bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd attempted to show another side of the South One that certainly exists, but few saw beyond the rebel flag"

Sometimes that happens, LOL!

Larry,

I agree that there are the above song does explain it a bit better, what is so unusual about this, is that you have a song which is confronting it from both perspectives at the same time. And they are talking about the ugly side of the issue, unlike McCartney's and Jackson's 'Ebonyand Ivory", which is more of a happy lecture.

African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. William Henry Seward, Lincoln's anti-slavery Secretary of State during the Civil War, born in 1801, grew up in Orange County, New York, in a slave-owning family and amid neighbors who owned slaves if they could afford them. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves.[1]

slavenorth

It is encouraging to see artists take on gritty subjects, and in this case, socially relevant ones. What I think is missed in southern music much of the time, is that history has proved that it can be, and has been, a bridge builder. There are many southern musicians that have moved beyond some of the uglier cultural barriers, to something more promising; and, they have exemplified this in their lives and music.

I totally agree, Larry. At least these two friends found a way to discuss this and write a song. It's better than ignoring it.

This is true. It was part of the "Triangle Trade". And there were Northerners who owned slaves. But it was the "peculiarinstitution" (as it was referred to in the time of Revolution) of the south.

Here is a scene from "1776" and the discussion about the slavery clause:

John...How many slaves have you owned? I've never owned a slave of any ethnic group. I don't know any of my family for the last 200 years that have owned any slaves.

I would say, "For those who choose to live in the past there is no future." I personally think your discussion is a very divisive discussion and doesn't do anything to unite Americans. It only scratches the sore and refuses to allow it to heal.

We can go much further back than the USA and talk about slavery as it still exist in this world today as well, but to divide only diminishes the whole.

I don't know of any living soul alive today who was once a slave in this country. We have a black president. We have and have had many blacks that do and have held many high positions in this country.

I know of one black in particular I really admire. Ben Carson. He's saved a lot of lives and has evidently been an excellent American Citizen. There are many more like him, but somehow they don't receive the same good treatment as the ones who are constantly trying to divide us.

It's better than ignoring it.

Way better.

It also makes me think of my own relationships, and conversations with friends of different ethnicity/color/background. Sometimes the banter is lighthearted and joking, sometimes more serious, other times constructive, others not...whatever, relationship is the key. This particular song represents only part of the overall conversation and friendship between Brad and LL, and is in itself valuable, but also, value is found in the illustration of their relationship.

Slavery was not the primary wedge in the North/South conflict.

Just because fewer Northerners owned slaves, it does not mean they get a pass.

Slavery was not a North-South problem, it was an American problem.

However pleasant and introspective lyrics are in a song, it takes some a lot more powerful than the one in this song to sway me. Being a cynic, like I am, many times causes me to question popular lyrics more as a marketing technique using social commentary as opposed to being a cri de coeur.

In another article I read about this, basically sums up my feeling that this changes absolutely nothing. It will take a lot more than momentray flash in the pan to turn things around....a lot more.

Perrie......Be that a movie and in this day and time, I find it hard to believe anything that is put before my eyes or ears.

Understand I'm not debating this video for the factual nature of it, rather expressing the simple fact that I've never seen a cotton field in NY, NJ or any other state in that area.

You can rest assured if the climate and lay of the land had permitted the same sort of agricultural production in the north as it did in the south, then this would not be an issue for discussion.

It's no different today than it was then. Whatever is beneficial to others is not nearly as important as what is beneficial to oneself.

The north were not the sweet loving, caring people that went to war with the south to free the slaves.

I know you have read about carpetbaggers. Of course, with the cloud coming into being, your grandchildren will probably never read about them unless somewhere somehow someone has been able to protect and preserve actual paper books written many years before and have not been destroyed.

I'm not debating the video. I'm just saying the pursuit of wealth and control of wealth hasn't changed one bit from 1776.

Aeon,

Trying to make a point with a picture of some low class southerner, does not make a case. We might as well be showing "People of Walmart".

Bob.....I don't think that was Perrie's intention, although I can certainly understand the difficulty in taking a side on this issue. The thing is, it's over. Get over it. Or put your car in reverse and drive that way from now on. At its highest point only 26% of Southerners had any slaves at all and a much smaller percentage had a significant number of slaves. Contrary to what you hear in school these days, most Southerners were dirt poor and could barely feed themselves. If they had the money to buy just one slave they could live off the money for years and forget the slave.

I understand and my response was NOT meant to conflict with yours. I'm looking at the big picture here and sure, people are talking about it (the song)...but they also talked about Octomom and Sarah Palin. Flash in the pan.

The image sums up my thoughts on rednecks, you may not agree, such is life. The minute music lyrics start changing Confederate flag waving people with a gun in one hand and a beer in another, then I'll change my perspective.

Are you so determined never to take a side in any debate that now you will find the North and the South "pretty much the same" on slavery??

First of all Bob, I do take a stand on many issues. Abortion, public education, GMO's, SCOTUS... you must be missing all those discussions.

And where did I say that the north and the south were the same in slavery. Obviously, the south was far worse on slavery than the north. That's why we had a "Civil War". But to deny that northerners were a part of the slave trade, would be revisionist.

Bob,

So your equating genocide with slavery?

That is not to say that slavery wasn't atravesty to mankind, but it also isn'tgenocide.

I understand and my response was NOT meant to conflict with yours.

Why not? The point of posting the song, was a discussion. I thought the song was interesting... different. There is bound to be a large variation on how it is viewed.

The image sums up my thoughts on rednecks, you may not agree, such is life. The minute music lyrics start changing Confederate flag waving people with a gun in one hand and a beer in another, then I'll change my perspective.

Aeon,

Thestereotypeput out there, is the same way that they look atNortherners which is something I deeply hated while living down there in my teens.

Six,

The north is full of farming. It need not becottonthat need hands. We grow apples, potatoes, wheat, corn, berries, etc. all of which need a lot of hands to pick. But the average farmer here didn't have slaves. That is historical fact.

The north were not the sweet loving, caring people that went to war with the south to free the slaves.

Absolutely. There were many northerners who wanted no part of the war. But the fact still remains,abolitionismwas a northern movement. And as for carpetbaggers, my daughters read the book and did learn about it in school. They also learned that blacks own blacks in school, too. I don't think that revisionism is as bad as some would have you believe.

I'm just saying the pursuit of wealth and control of wealth hasn't changed one bit from 1776.

Well, that is true.

I seeded the song (on NV) shortly after it went up on the internet, and the next day it was censored due to a plagiarism claim of some sort !

I thought the song was excellent ! I also had posted the lyrics on my Column over there, because I was so impressed by them. I'm not a huge Country fan, and not a Rap fan at all -- but I really got into that song! And I loved the way Brad sang it!! ..LL-Cool-J made his point ! ...Good to see this Perrie. (..and, Hi!

In the context that slavery was accepted as the norm in the US then, and also the fact that the North just barely got it together enough to take their stand (as there were a lot of Northerners who didn't like the direction the North was going), it makes complete sense. The north and the South were not two different entities, they were one. There can be no civil war unless the participants were once, one. Slavery existed as a matter of fact in the US and the disagreement over Slavery had as much to do with politics, Trade and Cultural Norms as much as it did about the issue of Slavery, though the issue of Slavery was the defining characteristic difference in the directions the North and South wanted to go. To attempt to encapsulate the Civil War as purely about Slavery, and caused by a racial divide between the North and the South, ignores the larger setting of where America, and the World was, when this took place. It also does disservice to understanding the true divisions that led to civil war in the first place.

Your premise seems to be based on your personal belief that there is a divide still in existence today, and you reflect your interpretation of history, and your ideology on that.

Did you know that the first 4 years the Civil War was going on, the American Constitution did not include the Thirteenth Amendment? Did you know that Lincoln barely pulled it with his own cabinet, and almost didn't in the House? Slavery, as an everyday reality for many all over the world, was still legal in the US while civil war raged.

The political realities were not merely ones between the States either. Much of our overseas trade was affected by the issue of Slavery as well; and, many countries were observing one another and their response to the issue. While those held as slaves may not have noticed, the issue of slavery itself was holding many countries captive. Some countries and companies would only deal with one or the other, and the increasing financial tension played a role as well.

I am not saying that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, I am saying that it was about Slavery, and much else as well.

The Confederacy was built on the idea that racial differences justify classifying some people as less than human...exactlylike the Nazi "Master Race".

The rational was cheap labor at all cost to ethics, not the eradication of a people/s and that is the main difference.

In 1860, slavery was finished in the North. Kansas voted 98-2 to forbid slavery. Slavery was NOT an American problem. It was a Southern problem.

Yes, because it was about economic. The south produced the cotton, and the north had the cotton factories. In there lied the difference

I never said it was OK. I came upon this story and thought it would make for an interesting discussion. I often stay neutral in my discussions so that I can be a fair host. I also do it to proposequestionsas I go along. But more often than not, I myself am challenged by the issue and so I put it out there and see what I get out of the discussion.

Good one Robert!

There are many forms of the confederate flag, but the battle Confederateflag was a part of the state flag of Georgia from 1956-2001, so I think it it is much more about pride than history. No one likes to be the looser, and they lost. On the other hand, I am far more disturbed that just this year Mississippi ratified the 18th amendment. I think that says a lot more than a flag does, not that the flag doesn't provoke a certainemotionalresponsefor all parties involved.

Good points, Bob Nelson.

Also, Blacks, even Native Americans were also slave-owners -- it was never about "less than human or racism" - it was always only about economics. The North was trying to take that away from the South.

(I was typing when Perrie was. Looks like we were on the same brain-wave.)

Hi CL and welcome to your article here, LOL!

I seeded the song (on NV) shortly after it went up on the internet, and the next day it was censored due to a plagiarism claim of some sort !

That's nuts. If you got it from a website and gave it the credit, it isn'tplagiarism.

I thought it was excellent, too, and I am also not a big country or rap fan. I think they did this with a big heart and in the hope of doing exactly what we are doing in this seed... having a national discussion.. even between the two grieving parties.

And Hi Back!

Bob,

Let me try it another way.. and why I found this song so amazing... coming from LL Cool J'sperspective, which is why you should watch the video and hear him talk.

While the Confederate flag meant something up to, during and even after the war, which is slavery, it's meaning changed somewhat over time. It became a matter of southern pride. When they waved it, it was not like the bedraggled "Nation" we left in the dust, but one that had it's own unique history and culture both good and bad, the bad being slavery.

I admit that I am not in love with the flag, but I can understand how a southerner can feel. What was left of the south after reconstruction was much like what was left after WWI in Germany. President Wilson knew that if we left Germany in such a terrible state after the war, we could be facing another war in years to come. He knew that the Germans were a prideful people and that no good would come from leaving them in tatters, but Europe wanted their pound of revenge and so they got it. And at what cost? A total of 60 million people world wide.

So while I can look at that flag as a Northerner and feel that it is a flag of oppression, a Southerner can look at that flag, and think back to a time when they had pride and an uniqueidentity and cultureand not even think of the blacks that suffered under it. It is not right... it just is.

This is a subject that has evolved over time and across the world. In ancient times, slavery was common,...

And sadly today, there are more slaves than ever before.

...and had no racial content. Blacks were not perceived as "less" than Whites.

Well perhaps, but doubtful. The line between treatingslavesworse than animals and treating slaves like animals...well, ....

Assuredly some, werenot racists....

Slavery became associated with race only when Africa became the principal source of "raw materials". And then the White masters declared that slavery was God's Will, the Blacks were innately inferior, and so on...

...and only became that way after white "mastas" from the South taught them to be that way. I'm sure racism didn't exist in slavery anywhere in the world until the US South institutedit.../s/.

The slavery of the North was that old, non-race-based slavery, doomed with the arrival of the idea of rights, equality and so on. And logically, at the same time that they eliminated slavery in their own states, Northerners also began agitating for the end of slavery throughout the country.

Better catch a cold-hard grip on the reality of history there Bob. Slavery was so intertwined in the culture of the North, South, and and all over the world, that the issue led to a civil war in the greatest country and Democracy in the modern world. I would even challenge you Bob, by saying that the US civil war, and the stand that was made by it's exhibition, enabled and encouraged the rest of the world to do the same.

African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South , in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. William Henry Seward, Lincoln's anti-slavery Secretary of State during the Civil War, born in 1801, grew up in Orange County, New York, in a slave-owning family and amid neighbors who owned slaves if they could afford them. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves.[1]

When the minutemen marched off to face the redcoats at Lexington in 1775, the wives, boys and old men they left behind in Framingham took up axes, clubs, and pitchforks and barred themselves in their homes because of a widespread, and widely credited, rumor that the local slaves planned to rise up and massacre the white inhabitants while the militia was away.[2]

African bondage in the colonies north of the Mason-Dixon Line has left a legacy in the economics of modern America and in the racial attitudes of the U.S. working class. Yet comparatively little is written about the 200-year history of Northern slavery. Robert Steinfeld's deservedly praised "The Invention of Free Labor" (1991) states, "By 1804 slavery had been abolished throughout New England," ignoring the 1800 census, which shows 1,488 slaves in New England. Recent archaeological discoveries of slave quarters or cemeteries in Philadelphia and New York City sometimes are written up in newspaper headlines as though they were exhibits of evidence in a case not yet settled (cf. African Burial Ground Proves Northern Slavery, The City Sun, Feb. 24, 1993).

I had written one book on Pennsylvania history and was starting a second before I learned that William Penn had been a slaveowner. The historian Joanne Pope Melish, who has written a perceptive book on race relations in ante-bellum New England, recalls how it was possible to read American history textbooks at the high school level and never know that there was such a thing as a slave north of the Mason-Dixon Line:

"In Connecticut in the 1950s, when I was growing up, the only slavery discussed in my history textbook was southern; New Englanders had marched south to end slavery. It was in Rhode Island, where I lived after 1964, that I first stumbled across an obscure reference to local slavery, but almost no one I asked knew anything about it. Members of the historical society did, but they assured me that slavery in Rhode Island had been brief and benign, involving only the best families, who behaved with genteel kindness. They pointed me in the direction of several antiquarian histories, which said about the same thing. Some of the people of color I met knew more."[3]

Slavery in the North never approached the numbers of the South. It was, numerically, a drop in the bucket compared to the South. But the South, comparatively, was itself a drop in the bucket of New World slavery. Roughly a million slaves were brought from Africa to the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese before the first handful reached Virginia. Some 500,000 slaves were brought to the United States (or the colonies it was built from) in the history of the slave trade, which is a mere fraction of the estimated 10 million Africans forced to the Americas during that period.

Every New World colony was, in some sense, a slave colony. French Canada, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Cuba, Brazil -- all of them made their start in an economic system built upon slavery based on race. In all of them, slavery enjoyed the service of the law and the sanction of religion. In all of them the master class had its moments of doubt, and the slaves plotted to escape or rebel.

Over time, slavery flourished in the Upper South and failed to do so in the North. But there were pockets of the North on the eve of the Revolution where slaves played key roles in the economic and social order: New York City and northern New Jersey, rural Pennsylvania, and the shipping towns of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Black populations in some places were much higher than they would be during the 19th century. More than 3,000 blacks lived in Rhode Island in 1748, amounting to 9.1 percent of the population; 4,600 blacks were in New Jersey in 1745, 7.5 percent of the population; and nearly 20,000 blacks lived in New York in 1771, 12.2 percent of the population.[4]

The North failed to develop large-scale agrarian slavery, such as later arose in the Deep South, but that had little to do with morality and much to do with climate and economy.

Slave and free state pairs

Before 1812, the concern about balancing slave-states and free states was not profound. This is how the states lined up in 1812:

Slave States	Year	Free States	Year
Delaware	1787	New Jersey (Slave until 1804)	1787
Georgia	1788	Pennsylvania	1787
Maryland	1788	Connecticut	1788
South Carolina	1788	Massachusetts	1788
Virginia	1788	New Hampshire	1788
North Carolina	1789	New York (Slave until 1799)	1788
Kentucky	1792	Rhode Island	1790
Tennessee	1797	Vermont	1791
Louisiana	1812	Ohio	1803

After 1812, and until the Civil War, maintaining the balance of free and slave states within the federal legislature was considered of paramount importance if the Union were to be preserved, and states were typically admitted in pairs:

Slave States	Year	Free States	Year
Mississippi	1817	Indiana	1816
Alabama	1819	Illinois	1818
Missouri	1821	Maine	1820
Arkansas	1836	Michigan	1837
Florida	1845	Iowa	1846
Texas	1845	Wisconsin	1848
		California (One pro-slavery Senator)	1850
		Minnesota	1858
		Oregon	1859
		Kansas	1861

[ edit ] End of slave states

Maryland, ^[1] Missouri, ^[2] Tennessee, ^[3] the new state of West Virginia, ^[4] and the District of Columbia prohibited slavery before the Civil War ended. However, in Delaware, ^[5] Kentucky, ^[6] and most of the Confederate States , slavery continued to be legal until the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery throughout the United States in December 1865, ending the distinction. Ratification of the 13th Amendment was a condition of the return of local rule to those states that had declared their secession

~WIKI~

My soon-to-be Son-in-law disagrees,

25 years old, half black and half Cherokee, Gary grew up and lives in South Carolina-Georgia, he drives an old, old Plymouth with a rebel flag on the hood and a black-power fist on the bumper,,,,he also loves the song and wish more poele were willing to live in peace, harmony, and the present.

Anyone who doesn't like this flag displayed,

Hey Bruce, I got no problem with the flag man! But really, "go to hell"?!

C,mon man.

Nobody HAS to go any where Bruce; C'mon. You have no authority to command that. LH

That's funny.

the confederate battle flag was designed as has been stated because of the similarity to the unions flag , It was designed by a general of the southern confederacy . now flags on a fielf of battle are a form of heraldry, a way for people to recognize which side forces belong to , and many times those flags incorperate things meaningful to those that fly them , each color has a signifigance and a meaning , just as the symbles contained on the flag have a meaning .

take our own national flag for example , the red and white stripes represent the 13 origional colonies , the colors red and white have a significant meaning as well .

White signifies purity and innocence, Red, hardiness & valour, and Blue, signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice. And of the stars we all know stand for the individual staes One for each state in the union.

the confederate battle flag incorperates the same things for the same reasons , stars for the individual member states , the colors mean the same things though configured differently , the main difference was the cross , it was adopted from the scottish national flag , or the St Andrews cross.

St andrew was a disciple of christ that was crucified for his belief , but because he felt he was not of the same level of christ he petitioned that he not be crucified in the same manner as christ so the roman s crucified him on an X shaped cross . and it came to signify that those that used this symblism later were saying that they though following christ where jnot on the same level as christ and thus less worthy to be crucified in the same manner.

another reason this might have been chosen was the scotish anscestry of those in the south as a way to remember their roots .

one of the problems with the CBF is not only what it came to signify from its origional use , but those yrs later that used it for their own purposes . the nazi flag is the swaztika , yet because of the autrocities of WW2 it is a revieled symble , but the swaztika dates back over 3000 yrs and has been found not only in Europe but the near and fars east and even in japan in ancient buddist temples .

in the world of heraldry things have been adopted and used over and over again some that have used them have used them for evil or have made the use of certain things seem evil .

He probably had too much to drink last night. And the night before that and so on.

Hadn't heard the song, but the lyrics were very good. At least it wasn't about killing the man.

I do agree with those that say the Civil War was about economics, not slavery.

But the song, imo, has lyrics that go to the depth of our hearts, pride and American spirit. I praise it for that reason - not because of any remorse over slavery.

Slavery was a business in Africa by Africans long before it was brought to our country, and many slaves were members of the family and respected here. I see the song more about who we are today than who we were in the past -- all races, not just one.

Why not? It's the truth !

Looks good to me Bruce even without the flag.

John.....let me inform you like Perrie has tried to do. People in the south don't think slavery when they see that flag.

I'll put this in for your sake. White people don't have all the prejudices you seem to think we have. either. We see southern pride and like Bruce has said, "Rebel Born, Rebel Bred."

You see. We live our lives down here and mind our own business. We don't tell you how to live yours either.

We're not interested in how you feel about the flag or anyone's idea of how we should live. We would rather you take care of your business and leave us alone.

It appears to me the people who just can't take care of their own business have a hell of a lot more problems than we do.

We have minds of our own. We don't believe in the collective living as Michelle Obama, Stalin, Lenin or any of the others believe. And we don't care if she is black or white.

Remember......"Don't Tread On Me."

I believe the discussion has really taken a turn from its original intent. You see John. We get it. Slavery was bad. It's over. Let's move on with more songs like the one in this discussion.

Get over the Confederate Flag. The more you scratch the more it is going to spread.

The picture of the fellow out in his back yard is detestable by almost all Southerners.

If that is the picture someone has in their mind of us then they are sadly mistaken and I feel sorry for them.

I've never lived in the north but have met a lot of good people from there and I've met some real assholesl, but we have plenty of assholes down here as well.

I take that back. I did live in Illinois when I was in the service. It wasn't the people I didn't like......it was the coldest place I've ever been and I hated to have to wear multiple layers of clothes just to go out in the middle of the winter.

I'm not from the South, but I think of the flag as Southern Pride, too. Look at the "Culture" -- it's all about 'Pride,' and they darn well had a right and good reason to feel it.

By the early 1800s, most Northern states had passed laws in favor of abolition, but the acts called for gradual abolition. In the South, on the other hand, slavery became *an ingrained economic* and *legal institution.*

measuringworth

Very good post Bruce. My brother is practically a historian on the Civil War. Without getting too involved, he has studied and written about it for years. He has all kinds of relics from the different battles most don't even know about.

Thanks Bruce.

So just to be clear here Bob,

Almost all of Germany and Austria were involved in the genocide of 12 million people in one form or another. Slave labor to death. This was the whole purpose to many the whole Third Reich and all who joined in.

Slavery, a nasty american institution own by about 8% of the southern population, including blacks themselves, is the Holocaustsequivalent? Tell me, what do you think the other 92% of the southerners were fighting for in the Civil war? It wasn't slavery. It was states rights.

Now let's jump forward. Yes I totally agree that groups like the Klan have used that flag to represent racism. Yes the flag is hurtful to most blacks. I am aware of that. But there are loads of other southerners who don't see it that way. They just see it as southern pride.

Did you even watch the video?

That is the essence of the Accidental Racist. A flag that doesn't have that connotation to the average southern Joe. Like I said, it isn't right, but it is just that.

John my friend....there's more to it than you understand. I was associated with a lot of blacks as a child even during the enduring times and I'm glad we have come as far as we have come. Let' keep heading the right direction.

And remember John.....we weren't the first ones to inhabit this country. Should we continue to hold onto the past and not reach out to the future?

John remember we took this country from the inhabitants who were here when we arrived. Should we condemn ourselves forever for it? You know what. I wasn't here then. I'm not African American, Irish American, Jewish American. I'm just plain ole American, which is the case with most of the people who live in this country today. None of us had any slaves. Should we condemn the American flag for what our forefathers did?

In case you don't know it Bob.....there were more KKK members in Michigan during Malcom X's childhood than there were in either Mississippi or Alabama. Were they one of the slave states? I can understand why some would be offended by the picture above. I certainly am, but let us push them into the past and not pull them into the present.

I've been down south more than a few times but I was in the company of a Black Male. If prejudice and racism are bad but tolerable up north, it is far, far worse and intolerable in the southern states.

Suffice to say, this pop, bubblegum hit of a song that is the topic here, changes nothing. My perspective of the south remains unaltered and the redneck behavior I see as being characteristic of the majority of southerners (not all) continues unabated.

Tennessee: Ayn Rands vision of paradise

I am the same way with the swastika. Centuries ago, and to this day, it is used as a religious symbol in Buddhism and other religions. In Buddhism it represents auspiciousness and good fortune. It is used also to represent Buddha's footprints and heart. That said, there is a subtle difference between the Buddhist swastika and the Nazi swastika -- the Buddhist swastika is almost always facing clockwise, while the Nazi swastika is almost always facing counterclockwise. This subtle difference isn't enough for many people to realize that they are used differently.

Given the association with Nazi's, I can't bring myself to wear a swastika - even though, when used in the Buddhist fashion, it means something entirely different.

Mike,

Perhaps he did this after listening to this tune. It is an interesting tune lyrically but it is basically schlock music. Robbie Fulks is right about Nashville.

Anyhow, I prefer this:

The Southern Thing

Ain't about my pistol
Ain't about my boots
Ain't about no northern drives
Ain't about my southern roots
Ain't about my guitars, ain't about my big old amps
"It ain't rained in weeks, but the weather sure feels damp"
Ain't about excuses or alibis
Ain't about no cotton fields or cotton picking lies
Ain't about the races, the crying shame
To the fucking rich man all poor people look the same

Don't get me wrong It just ain't right
May not look strong, but I ain't afraid to fight
If you want to live another day
Stay out the way of the southern thing

Ain't about no hatred better raise a glass
It's a little about some rebels but it ain't about the past
Ain't about no foolish pride, Ain't about no flag
Hate's the only thing that my truck would want to drag

You think I'm dumb, maybe not too bright
You wonder how I sleep at night
Proud of the glory, stare down the shame
Duality of the southern thing

My Great Great Granddad had a hole in his side
He used to tell the story to the family Christmas night
Got shot at Shiloh, thought he'd die alone
From a Yankee bullet, less than thirty miles from home
Ain't no plantations in my family tree
Did NOT believe in slavery, thought that all men should be free
"But, who are these soldiers marching through my land?"
His bride could hear the cannons and she worried about her man

I heard the story as it was passed down
About guts and glory and Rebel stands
Four generations, a whole lot has changed
Robert E. Lee
Martin Luther King
We've come a long way rising from the flame
Stay out the way of the southern thing

You know I have said this many times during the running of this article. Did you watch the video. It is thegenesisof this article. I have never been fond of the Confederate flag. Yet when listen to these two talk... I had a ah ha moment.

Yes, the flag has a negative history, to northerners and blacks alike. That part can't be denied. But it was also flown next to each of Confederate state's flags and in that way, it became part of their collective memory. Both reconstruction and the civil rights movement was to make sure thatracismwas dealt with. I find it far more disturbing that Mississippi just ratified the 13th amendment than flying that flag, because there is no excuse in doing that, other than racism.

The US Civil War

A -. From the Northern Union or federal perspective,

1. The Civil War was fought, first and foremost, "TO PRESERVE THE UNION" not free the slaves. The issue of slavery was forced upon Lincoln. Had it not been for the succession of the Confederacy, there would have been no Civil War and the problem of slavery might have well extended into the 20th century.
2. Other than the "Abolitionists" (a small but violent minority), there was NO majority outcry to free the slaves coming from the North. Fact is, the war was so unpopular in the North, Lincoln was forced to use "conscription" to get soldiers (none would volunteer) and even then, if you were rich you could buy your way out of it.
3. Gettysburg Address - About preserving the union, no mention of freeing the slaves.
4. Emancipation Proclamation was a calculated political move by Lincoln to confound the South and hopefully create a "fifth column" or "negro" counter-insurgency. There was nothing altruistic about that.

B From the Southern or Confederate perspective, in the Antebellum South,

1. 5% of the landed gentry or rich owned 90% of the overall wealth
2. work was primarily agrarian, with any manufacturing being ancillary to their mainstay crops, such as cotton.
3. whites fared only a notch above the slaves with many white families becoming indentured themselves. This spawned a white/black class struggle which is still in existence today.
4. they raised an army "through a combined system of voluntary enlistment and compelled service."

Reasons varied, but they usually came down to four fundamentals: uphold state sovereignty, regional duty, group solidarity and protection of home and family. "Just as most Northerners did not fight to end slavery, most Southerners did not fight to preserve it.

The South gave three reasons for leaving the Union:

1. The Confederate States felt the United States thought they had broken the Constitution. This takes into account States versus federal rights and its opposition to expand slave states. ( Teabagger/militia reasons today)
2. Economic and social differences between the North and the South.
3. Property Rights Note: Negros were considered property and todays Paulists, militia and paleo- libertarians in part, can trace their fight for property rights to owning negro slaves.

Notes;

Lincolns stand on slavery was at best, political, and like all political stands, it wavered according to the temperament of the voters. Fact is, Lincolns plan was to resettle the Negros, back in Africa, in what is now Liberia.

Source #1 - academic.udayton

Source #2 - cato

Source #3 - ihr

b) In the book, The Peculiar Institution (about southern slavery) the meaning of "peculiar" in this expression is "one's own", that is, referring to something distinctive to or characteristic of a particular place or people and was used as euphemism for slavery , which in the antebellum south was considered improper.

There was a dichotomy amongst the landed gentry, especially those who claimed christian belief, as to how to justify the practice of this forced labor. When a black is viewed as nothing more than an article of property, which had value, it is easy to disregard any humanity they possess, thus seeing them as mere property.

Slavery was a very expensive to maintain institution. Expense ledgers from antebellum plantations attest to an ever shrinking profit margin using slaves. Still, the owners felt compelled to protect their monetary investment (property) to point of succession from the Union, which they saw as a threat to this Peculiar Institution however inefficient and costly it was becoming.

Perrie...

Cotton paid for 60% of the United States imports by 1860. I couldn't find anything that said apples, potatoes, wheat, corn, berries, etc provided money for the United States imports,

I agree slavery was and always will be a shame to us all, but it was as usual, an economic war. The source for that 60% paying for US imports was cotton and none of the above.

The north had the gins and the south had the product. 75% of the southerners didn't even have slaves and only about 5% had more than one or two slaves.

So......if the south split from the north where would that 60% of the nations income come from? The USA was providing 60% of the world's cotton by 1860.

Follow the money honey. You can always depend on that as a reliable source to find the truth.

If the north had truly invaded the south to end slavery, that would have been a worthy cause, but that was not the reason.

The Confederate Flag does not represent a desire for slavery. I know many can not and will not accept that as a fact, but it is.

As you've said, it is a symbol of rebellion for most southerners against tyranny.

The KKK basically stole our flag and as usual the media likes to associate the flag with the KKK which is not our wishes. You will find most southerners detest the KKK as well. According to my reading the KKK has about 5,000 members today. That is hardly a large representation of southerners.

One of the reasons you see this flag today more often is the division, I believe promoted by Obama. You can disagree with that, but I've been on this earth a few years and I see the division is greater now than any time other than Martin Luther King's civil rights movement, which I support as being a worthy goal.

But since then we have gained so much liberty and equality for all compared to the years before. No one can deny that is the case. The evidence supports it.

Being from the south, I'm not really crazy about someone from the north trying to tell me what I can drink, eat or how many bullets I can have in my gun. What's so strange about this tyranny is the ones who are promoting these ideas to be laws have the highest crime rates in the country and prove to me they aren't interested in solving the real problems, since they don't even enforce the laws they have, but have other desires in mind.

The most evident one is control over the law abiding citizens without any consequence to the non-law abiding citizens except giving them an advantage over us.

I do not have a Confederate Flag or any shirts with it on it, but if I see one, I am not offended. I speak only for myself and just about everyone I know.

Yes you have the kooks. You have them everywhere. One of the biggest rednecks I've ever met was from Michigan. Nothing against people from Michigan, but you have kooks as well like everywhere else in the country.

We just want to be left alone. We're not going to NYC and telling everyone they have to do things our way or else. We're doing fine down here without you. Your policies are causing a lot more problems that solving them in my opinion.

Here is an article from History.com

I think it plainly shows economics was the underlying reason the Union didn't want to lose the southern states.

(During the early 1800s, the center of production moved south and west, from cotton's early national cradle in South Carolina and Georgia to the black belt of Alabama and Mississippi.) Production rose from 2 million pounds in 1791 to a billion pounds in 1860; by 1840, the United States was producing over 60 percent of the world's cotton. The economic boom in the cotton South attracted migrants, built up wealth among the free inhabitants, encouraged capitalization of investments like railroads, and facilitated territorial expansion. Cotton also contributed to the national economy. The crop comprised more than half the total value of domestic exports in the period 1815-1860, and in 1860, earnings from cotton paid for 60 percent of all imports. Cotton also built up domestic capital, attracted foreign investment, and contributed to the industrial growth of the North. In the early 1800s, northeastern merchants began channeling commercial profits into industrial production of cloth (using southern cotton).

To no one in particular.

To John and Bob,

I think you fellows got me over a barrel. I wasn't around back then (I was barely around during the 1st gulf war) so I'll have to take your word on it as things happened as you described them.

What I posted was an outline of a report I did in college, 2005, in US History. I had to read books (a lot of books) and present a case citing the book, author, chapter, page and paragraph in the footnotes of my report, such as the book, " The Peculiar Institution " which was written by someone who had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

Now I suppose I could go back and cite an online sources for all the info I posted but I have a head cold, damn Wisconsin weather, and I just don't feel like doing it.

I'll let you two gentlemen hammer away at the causes, my main point is that your, white southern freeman, was only notches above a slave in the antebellum south and was treated just about as harshly by the landed gentry who controlled the southern economy.

I personally cannot see why an average white southern male would still today, support the Confederacy which viewed them only as being slightly better than a negro slave.

AE , and your research and what you have staed , is also what i have found out over the yrs as well ,. Slavery was an intricate part of the Civil war , but it was not by far the only reason nor was it the ovr riding reason for the participants to pick up arms , and fight . there are many oral historys about this era , and i doubt there isnt a family today that doesnt have one that goes back to this time frame .

You bring up some numbers that correspond with some of the things i have found out myself as far as what percentage of southeners owned slaves , the economic make up , and the different societal layers of the day , and you have staed honestly what was .

John , i think its safe to say that if you were picked up and plunked down in that era , that you would have been a northern industrialized abolishionist and would have indeed used the issue of slavery as your sole cause to go to war , but unfortunately not everyone on the northern side of the issue believed as you , my anscestor of that era left behind his journal and his writings explained his thoughts , as well as his motives for enlisying with the union , and slavery was not an issue for that son of new england , but the over riding principle of the union itself and its preservasion he like many he wrote about didnt care about the slavery issue or the black man , and he did use the N word in discribing them. many fought for many reasons and many of those reasons didnt take the ulturistic manefistation some would like to rewrite history to portray them as .

john i whole heartedly agree with you that slavery was a dying institution by the 1860s , the nation had already abolished the north atlantic slave trade , it was illegal to import any more slaves into the nation and had been for a good 20 yrs by this time . if one is to believe the 1860 census , only about 20% of southenors and a smaller percentage of northeners in so called "free" states , had slaves ,or the more genteel euphamism used of indentured servants nd color was not a barrier in those cases .now of those that did own slaves the majority only owned 5-10 , som the next largest demographic was between 25-75 , only about 3% owned 100 or more and of that 3% 2% of those owning 100 or more slaves in the south were actually colored themselves and held with the confederacy . 2 of the largest slave holders , one in Charleston SC , and the other in New Orleans , each held repsectively over 500 individuals as slaves for use on the docks . what those 2 cities have in common they were and still are today major ports of export .

No One is arguing that slavery was not an abomination , but it was not the sole reason or purpose this nation tore itself apart in war.

Bob nelson , technically yes the north did not fire the first shot , that was reserved for the south carolinians at Ft sumpter. but the north had already fired the first shots of the war through legislation that smoldered for yrs . one of them being the reparation of slaves and ignoring federal law . another and to my way of thinking more plausible and more encompassing reason for individuals that didnt own slaves to pick up arms , or vote to seceede was what in the late 1850s became known as the "Intolerable Acts " of that era .

One has to look at the econimic times and where in history this nation stood and the divide between agregarian and industrialization. I think everyone can see and agree that society in the north was more industrialized and dependant on export , the south was more dependant on the agregarian of produce and export of the raw materials . What everyone forgets is the US was not the only nation caught up ith eht industrial revolution of the time . other nations were seeking out and procuring places to aquire the raw materials to fuel their advances in this indutrialization . and one of our greatest competators were the United kingdom.

Now the old saying . Cotton was king , wasnt far off . it was ahighly prized raw resource needed to fuel the textile mills on both sides of the Atlantic .

One of the intolerable acts i refurred to was legislation passed in congress placing a tarriff on exported goods , and raw materials that were enforced on southern ports , but not equally enforced in the north. what the legislation basically did was charge a tax steep enough that any profit gained by selling raw materials , such as cotton , to anyone other than the northern held mills was basically confiscated and the growers were left with barely enough to replant the next crop , in essence it was a price fixing scheme by the legislature to make the growers sell to domestic mills , at the price the mills deemed as appropriate .

Now s share cropper without slaves would be hard pressed trying to support a family and make a go of a livelyhood under such conditions and of course resentment of the federal entity would entirely be understandable , basically they would be being told you sell to us at the price we will pay , or we will tax you more and you will have less . governmental extortion . and this i think would have been enough to entice those not even interested in slavery( remember they were also in direct competion with them as well) to pick a side and pick up arms , yes john and bob , it would be said it was about the money and who was getting it , not so much states rights , but individual rights to sell to whom would pay the most for what was produced . the state side of it could be said the un equal application of the legislated tariffs to try and make a free people conform to an unequal or even economy .

The issue of slavery will never be divorced for the civil war , but john is wrong that it was the only or main reason for that conflict . it is but a single thread in a complexly woven era . and IMHO if it was the only or main reason for the conflict , why did it take 3 yrs after the start of the war for the imancipation proclimation , and the 13th Amendment ( perrie , i think you meant the 13th and not the 18th that MS finally ratified and i was more concerned that it took a supposed free state of NJ until the 1990s to ratify it themselves) why was it still illegal until the middle of the war for colored men to join the Union forces ?

As i said this conflict is complexly interwoven , one cannot single out any one reason for its existance , just as one cannot say that people were taking sides for any one specific reason nor do it think they should try, what we do know is that it forever changed the national fabric , on how we treat ourselves , and how we have treated other nations we interact with politically even today.

( perrie , i think you meant the 13th and not the 18th that MS finally ratified and i was more concerned that it took a supposed free state of NJ until the 1990s to ratify it themselves)

LOL Mark,

That's what happens when one posts too late in the evening when they should have gone to bed.

Should I change that? Yeah.. if I can find it now.

robert , yep it was an assumption on my part , or an educated guess some might call it simply on the basis of johns own statements and his stated belief . so yep ill agree it was an assumption made on an educated guess. irregardless of the here and now or the then and there.

I've said it was mostly an economic war and the great saviors of the slaves were basically the same great saviors of the the people today. They are the same ones that tell you how they are looking out for you while they become filthy rich. Some after being president have made over a $100 million dollars in just speaking engagements, yet we still believe they are looking out for us. What idiots we are for having faith in these phonies over and over. The average Southerner is no different than anyone else. He/she just wants to be left alone and allowed to live his/her life without too many obstacles in the way. The Southerners I know have a special pride in the south and resist tyranny in any form. The great majority of slaves in this country were owned by wealthy landowners that co-operated with the wealthy industrialist to make a lot of money. The flag to me is a symbol of rebellion against tyranny from back then and still today. And I don't really give a flip whether anyone likes it or not.

Cotton paid for 60% of the United States imports by 1860. I couldn't find anything that said apples, potatoes, wheat, corn, berries, etc provided money for the United States imports,

I agree slavery was and always will be a shame to us all, but it was as usual, an economic war. The source for that 60% paying for US imports was cotton and none of the above.

The north had the gins and the south had the product. 75% of the southerners didn't even have slaves and only about 5% had more than one or two slaves.

So......if the south split from the north where would that 60% of the nations income come from? The USA was providing 60% of the world's cotton by 1860.

Follow the money honey. You can always depend on that as a reliable source to find the truth.

If the north had truly invaded the south to end slavery, that would have been a worthy cause, but that was not the reason.

The Confederate Flag does not represent a desire for slavery. I know many can not and will not accept that as a fact, but it is.

As you've said, it is a symbol of rebellion for most southerners against tyranny.

The KKK basically stole our flag and as usual the media likes to associate the flag with the KKK which is not our wishes. You will find most southerners detest the KKK as well. According to my reading the KKK has about 5,000 members today. That is hardly a large representation of southerners.

One of the reasons you see this flag today more often is the division, I believe promoted by Obama. You can disagree with that, but I've been on this earth a few years and I see the division is greater now than any time other than Martin Luther King's civil rights movement, which I support as being a worthy goal.

But since then we have gained so much liberty and equality for all compared to the years before. No one can deny that is the case. The evidence supports it.

Being from the south, I'm not really crazy about someone from the north trying to tell me what I can drink, eat or how many bullets I can have in my gun. What's so strange about this tyranny is the ones who are promoting these ideas to be laws have the highest crime rates in the country and prove to me they aren't interested in solving the real problems, since they don't even enforce the laws they have, but have other desires in mind.

The most evident one is control over the law abiding citizens without any consequence to the non-law abiding citizens except giving them an advantage over us.

I do not have a Confederate Flag or any shirts with it on it, but if I see one, I am not offended. I speak only for myself and just about everyone I know.

Yes you have the kooks. You have them everywhere. One of the biggest rednecks I've ever met was from Michigan. Nothing against people from Michigan, but you have kooks as well like everywhere else in the country.

We just want to be left alone. We're not going to NYC and telling everyone they have to do things our way or else. We're doing fine down here without you. Your policies are causing a lot more problems that solving them in my opinion.

Here is an article from History.com

I think it plainly shows economics was the underlying reason the Union didn't want to lose the southern states.

(During the early 1800s, the center of production moved south and west, from cotton's early national cradle in South Carolina and Georgia to the black belt of Alabama and Mississippi.) Production rose from 2 million pounds in 1791 to a billion pounds in 1860; by 1840, the United States was producing over 60 percent of the world's cotton. The economic boom in the cotton South attracted migrants, built up wealth among the free inhabitants, encouraged capitalization of investments like railroads, and facilitated territorial expansion. Cotton also contributed to the national economy. The crop comprised more than half the total value of domestic exports in the period 1815-1860, and in 1860, earnings from cotton paid for 60 percent of all imports. Cotton also built up domestic capital, attracted foreign investment, and contributed to the industrial growth of the North. In the early 1800s, northeastern merchants began channeling commercial profits into industrial production of cloth (using southern cotton).

To no one in particular.

The Alan Parsons Project - I Wouldn't Want to be Like You

But people have a habit of assuming that they were on the right side of history going back at least 4000 years, ancestrally, with "right" determined from history's Monday Morning Quarterback chair. Their version of history is imposed, actually, and updated by contemporary political hacks.

Gotta disagree with you there Robert. History always goes to the victor. Long before PC, even just after the war, it was told as the war to free the slaves. The fact that manynorthernersdidn't care at that time about slaves al la the 1863 NYC Draft Riot ( which was equally about those who could afford to buy their way out of service verses the poor) which ended with 11 lynched black men and hundreds of blacks driven out of the city, is often forgotten to be told in the history books. press.uchicago

No, this isn't a current political statement. But it does show how little people know the nuances of their own history.

That song is hate speech. Period. Ignorant propagandist tripe.

So are you calling LL Cool J a self hating black man?

Really great post Robert.

Personal piece of history:

My great grandfather came to this country from Austria via Ireland. Barely spoke English. Got off the boat and was asked to make his mark. He did. Then they handed him a brown paper package... a uniform and before he could say Gutten Morgen, he was inPennsylvania. We know this, since like many of his time, he kept a diary.... Some of it in German... more English as the war progressed. He had no idea of why he was in that war. He had never met a black man before coming to the US. But there he was, fighting for the north, when all he did was come here to get cheap lumber for his carriage business.... My family built the Berlin Carriage, hence my last name.

Hit utter confusion was also the confusion that all the Irish that came off that boat had. Shocked to be in a war when they had come here for a better life.

There are many such unknown narratives like this. The problem with history is that it can be view micro or macro.,.. and depending on who did the writing.

Great post Six, and love that song.

Or Read this:

americanhistory.about

or this:

While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting to preserve slavery, most of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee 's army had close family ties to slavery. To Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union , not to abolish slavery. ^[10] Abraham Lincoln consistently made preserving the Union the central goal of the war, though he increasingly saw slavery as a crucial issue and made ending it an additional goal. ^[11] Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation angered both Peace Democrats ("Copperheads") and War Democrats , but energized most Republicans. ^[12] By warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections , but they did not gain control of Congress . The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863 elections in the northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment. ^[13]

Look John, there is no doubt that for some in the south, that flag is a call to hate. But for many others, it isn't. The problem is that our collective memory, including our black brotherin, find it a painful reminder of a less than pretty period. Combine that with the fact that civil rights is really only about 60 years old and you can see why people get offended still. Like I said, it isn't a flag that I personally relate to. But the point of the song, and the discussion that I included and no one watched, is that there is another side to the story. It's to promote a dialog. I really wished someone watched the video instead of jumping in head first.

That is a great song! It could easily be from anyone, white or black, that lives in the north or the south. Reconstruction didn't help those that were freed. They were free, and I'm so glad of it-- but it made their lives worse in many ways. The treatment of African-Americans in the south was indefensible.

But bad things happen in the north, too. The last 'official' lynching took place in Marion, Indiana. The last 'official' hanging, took place in my hometown of Owensboro, KY. Neither one is something to be proud of.

Prejudice is prejudice. Period. Whatever the reason behind it.

I have to admit-- I was in an elevator, and 6 extremely tall black men got into the elevator with me. And I was scared. There were some of the UofL's basketball team members and they were lovely. They knew I was scared, (probably because I was backed against the wall like, Dear God, help me!), and talked with me, and we hugged, (they bent WAAAAY down), when I got off the elevator. It was an old, very slow, elevator. We stopped it at my floor and talked a bit.

And yet, too, up in Indianapolis, I was in an elevator, and 4 giant white men with tattoos and weird hair got in, and I was scared. Again backed up against the wall... They were from a World Wide Wrestling team, and THEY were lovely. They carried my luggage, and we became friends, in and out of the lobby...

So, was I afraid because they were black or because they were big? I honestly don't know.

I was always taught that the N-word was unladylike, horrible, unnecessary, and completely the wrong thing to say, and I'm in the northern-most southern state, or the southern-most northern state.

We're all one country-- can't we get over this and move beyond it? Not as long as people are mean to each other, I guess. I would never fly a confederate flag, but I can also understand that some people are proud of their heritage, like Lynnard Skynnard, and don't intend for it to be a symbol of prejudice and meanness.

Our neighbors, down the street, have flown a confederate flag-- and believe it or not, they're black. They're from Alabama. Do they just not know? Or are they proud of Alabama? Is everyone just being too contentious?

I wish that all of us could stop automatically judging people, although I, too, am guilty of it, (the elevators), just because of what they look like, where they're from, or what they're wearing. In my case, I plead shortness.

Remember this?

I am a giant puppy, wagging my tail wherever I go... I like people, and, for the most part, even though I'm afraid, most people are nice.

There are places where I would have had my throat slit. And there are times I SHOULD have had my throat slit. But, for the most part-- everybody is nice.

I'm so short, I'm not at all intimidating.

What can it be but psychological denial or willful ignorance?

Maybe it's just where you grew up and what you're used to...

Dowser, is it okay for people to wear Nazi tee shirts, with a swaztika on the front?

Or to fly the Confederate flag? For me? No. Never. I don't wish to insult anyone, nor do I wish to be lumped in with the Neo-Nazis... Out and about in the state? Depends on where you are. You could either be shot or toasted, depending on where you are.

I don't think that the people down the street are AT ALL able to see what the flag represents to a lot of people. Let's face it, they live next door to a Jewish family, and we're all friendly to one another. We don't have block parties, but meet when we go get the mail and wave, or help each other with lost pets, lawn care services, etc. To my knowledge, the Jewish family were not at all upset-- I think they realized that their next door neighbors were just from Alabama.

I don't know, John. Maybe it has to be up to each individual. Maybe some people just don't think about it. I don't believe the family that flew the flag saw it as a racial and/or brutal representation. And they are African-American. Perhaps it is more of a symbol to some people than it is to others. Personally, I think they just love Alabama.

I have a Native American bracelet from the 1880s, that was my great-grandmother's. Her husband bought it for her. Funny, it has small swastikas on it-- I think they mean friendship. I'm afraid to wear it-- not because of the small swastikas, but because the stones are loose and I don't want to lose those 5 carat stones of tourquois-- I'd never be able to afford to replace them, or match them.

Am I stupid and racist, because I didn't mind my neighbors flying their flag? Am I stupid and racist if I wear my great-grandmother's bracelet? I hope not.

It is a powerfully written poem. We are all accidental racists and need to work on not letting our culture blind our eyes with false pride over things that we had nothing to do with.

I would pose that the stars and bars have nothing on the stars and stripes wherein oppression, slavery, violence and Empire are concerned. Pick your poison.