Sen Tim Scott to Kelly – “No Compromise to Make on Civil War”

Senator Tim Scott isn’t having Gen Kelly’s excuses and historical revisionism.

Sen. Tim Scott Responds To John Kelly: ‘No Compromise To Make’ On Civil War

The White House chief of staff said the war was caused by the inability to compromise.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) seemingly chided White House chief of staff John Kelly on Tuesday after the former Marine Corps general claimed that the Civil War was caused by the inability to compromise.

“We need to stop relitigating and referencing the Civil War as if there was some moral conundrum,” Scott, the sole black Senate Republican, said in a statement. “There was no compromise to make – only a choice between continuing slavery and ending it. We need to move forward together, instead of letting the divisions of the past continue to force us apart.” 

Kelly on Monday said a “lack of ability to compromise led to the Civil War” and called the removal of Confederate monuments a “dangerous” scrubbing of history. The senior Donald Trump aide made the comments during an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who asked his thoughts about the removal of two plaques honoring President George Washington and Gen. Robert E. Lee at a church in Alexandria, Virginia.

“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly said during the interview.

“He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which, 150 years ago, was more important than country,” he added. “It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War. And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand.”

A number of U.S. historians have criticized Kelly’s comments about the Civil War, calling them “strange,” “sad,” and “wrong.” Stephanie McCurry, a history professor at Columbia University, told The Washington Post that Kelly’s comments echoed talking points of a “pro-Confederate view of the Civil War.”

 

The American-American Arms Race

Up until the Chumph, walking around with guns at protest marches was almost exclusively the purview of white wingers. Unable to win an argument based either or the truth of their claims, or their ability to converse intelligently,, the right-white fell back into the KKK history and decided to tout guns at rallies to threaten “evil liberals” who always seemed to win an “argument”.

Portions of the white-right have always been synonymous with violence. Whether the KKK, white nationalist, neo-Nazi, or even some Militia groups – they have left a bloody path wherever they go across America.

Now that they have the full support of the Chumph and his racist lackey Jefferson Davis Sessions, they are emboldened, and the number of hate crimes, and level of domestic terrorism has risen exponentially. By trying to drive a wedge between legitimate Law Enforcement and brutal goons who murder and assault at will, the Chump has created a situation where the citizenry is les sure that the Police will actually be on the side of Law and Order. I think in all but a few areas of the country, that fear is a bit overblown.

However, the white right is spoiling for a fight -as seen with both the murder in Charlottesville, and the attempted murders in Gainesville a few days ago,

This does not bode well.

Left Wing Militia set to defend their communities…Because the Chumph and KKK Sessions won’t

Left-wing groups taking up guns in ‘arms race’ against Trump-backing right-wingers

Left-wing activists are taking up arms in response to increasingly bold actions by white supremacists and other right-wing extremists.

Membership in left-leaning gun groups has jumped under President Donald Trump, just as militia membership dramatically rose during his predecessor’s presidency, reported the New York Daily News.

The National African-American Gun Association added 500 new members within two days after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville left a counter-protester dead, and the group went from four chapters to 45 in the past year.

The national Liberal Gun Club has roughly doubled its paid membership since the election, to about 5,500, and the LGBTQ-oriented Pink Pistols groups also added members.

“It’s a way to assert our strength,” said Jake Allen, 27, who helped form the Pink Pistols. “Often, queer people are thought of as being weak, as being defenseless, and I think in many ways this pushes back against that, and I want white supremacists and neo-Nazis to know that queer people are taking steps necessary to protect themselves.”

Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, said leftists had gained a new perspective since Occupy Wall Street, and he said Trump’s election had emboldened right-wing hate groups.

“Back (during Occupy demonstrations) we were sitting in parks, twinkling our fingers and talking about economic inequality,” Bray said. “Now we’re talking about firearms and self-defense.”

Anti-fascist radicals, including the armed Redneck Revolt group, have clashed with right-wing extremists at public demonstrations around the country, but the trend away from nonviolent protest has worried some veteran activists.

“Is an arms race what we really want?” asked Scott Fearing, executive director of Rochester’s Out Alliance. “What we know in any arms race is that it’s never good for anybody, and death and destruction and harm and hurt can come when so many people have arms and weapons.”

 

The War Next Time – Armed antifa and White Wing Demonstrators

Loose gun laws are enabling escalating violence – the NRA is getting what it wants to sell more guns.

White wing provocateurs started showing up to campaign events and rallies back in the 2012 election cycle to threaten left wing protesters and demonstrators… The left armed up in response.

Geez…I wonder why?

 

Pro-Trump sign during election

Antifa, white supremacists exploit loose gun laws

Authorities gird for explosive clashes between heavily armed extremists in American cities.

Domestic extremist groups ranging from white supremacists to their rival “antifa” anarchists are increasingly exploiting loose gun control laws to show up at emotionally charged rallies with assault rifles and other high-powered weapons, increasing the likelihood of an explosive clash in an American city, according to law enforcement officials.

What makes the current threat environment especially combustible are open carry laws in many states that allow civilians to display virtually any gun in public that they want, often with no permit, training or background check required, according to federal and state law enforcement officials who are closely monitoring extremist groups.

“Why would you let someone bring an AR-15 to a hate rally?” former FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano asked. “It’s absolute insanity.”

Except in Charlottesville, Virginia, and other recent protest events, it wasn’t just one person. It was dozens or even hundreds of people who showed up heavily armed and primed for a fight. More than 1,500 people attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, with one Baltimore man suspected of membership in the Ku Klux Klan later arrested for firing his gun at a crowd of protesters. In Texas, swarms of gun-toting antifa members and white nationalists assaulted each other at several events near the Austin statehouse over the past year. And in Pikeville, Kentucky, more than 150 heavily armed neo-Nazis and white supremacists engaged in a tense standoff with about 100 anti-fascists in April, but the sides were separated by police and dozens of militia members before violence ensued.

Often, they came dressed in camouflage fatigues, tactical armor and Kevlar vests looking like Navy SEAL commandos, so much so that even the local police have mistaken them for U.S. law enforcement or military officers.

Now, authorities are bracing for what they fear could be lethal confrontations at rallies and other public events being planned in cities and towns across the country in the coming months. They say clashes over any number of hotly contested “flashpoint” issues could spark it, including Confederate monuments, immigration, the Trump administration’s so-called Muslim ban and gun control measures.

“The next incident is right around the corner,” said Captain Michael Rinaldi, counterterrorism chief for the New Jersey State Police. “Someone will run someone over, or someone will get shot and there will be a melee and it will gain momentum. There is definitely concern for what you saw in Charlottesville, that you’ll get a group and then counterprotesters and then you’ll have casualties.”

Gagliano, a former senior FBI SWAT team leader and crisis management coordinator in New York, said many of the protesters at recent public events appeared to be better equipped than he was as an FBI tactical agent deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

“Allowing openly carried weapons at an assembly, where tensions oft run high and counterprotesters now proliferate, is a recipe for disaster,” Gagliano said.

But when the people assembling are from warring factions of domestic extremist groups, he said, “We are simply passing time until the proverbial ‘Hatfield and McCoy’ incident occurs.”

Gagliano was one of several current and former law enforcement officials who said most of their colleagues “support the Second Amendment, but feel that common-sense regulations and restrictions are necessary and sensible,” especially when it comes to laws allowing for open carry and the purchase of guns once limited to police and military officers.

At least 45 states currently now allow some form of open carry, often for long guns that can include assault weapons. A smaller number of states also allow open carry of handguns and concealed carry of guns of various kinds and sizes.

The National Rifle Association, which has aggressively lobbied for open carry laws and against restrictions on gun purchases, did not return numerous phone calls and emails seeking comment.

 

Non Hate-Wing Gun Clubs Grow Rapidly

Arming up for the Chumph’s Civil War

Here are 6 gun groups that aren’t for white right-wingers

I have a theory that the quickest way to get legislative gun control in this country would be to start a movement that successfully convinces millions of black folks to join the NRA. I’m not pro-gun, I just know that a gun rights movement fueled largely by white fright would suddenly see the logic in gun restrictions if more people that didn’t look like them carried firearms.

That’s what happened in the late 1960s when the Black Panther Party for Self Defense started patrolling Oakland’s black neighborhoods while openly carrying guns, which was perfectly legal according to California law. It took only a few months of that for the state legislature to draft the Mulford Act, aimed at ending open carry in the state. After 24 Panthers showed up at the state Capitol armed to the teeth to protest the bill, Gov. Ronald Reagan couldn’t sign it fast enough.

The point is, throughout American history, the Second Amendment has mostly been an obsession of the right, but there are moments when it’s served the left as well. This is one of those moments. Having a president who sympathizes with neo-Nazis and fascists has helped mobilize and invigorate hate groups and other violent racists, inspiring some who oppose them to take up arms. To be clear, I am not in support of arming this country, and I’ve never thought throwing guns at the gun problem was a way to solve it. But with so much violence coming from the right, it’s unsurprising that some have decided to battle them on their own playing field. “We didn’t argue our way into white supremacy and slavery,” Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher told Shadowproof, “we’re not going to argue our way out of white supremacy.”

So here are six gun groups that aren’t just for white right-wingers.

1. Redneck Revolt and John Brown Gun Club

According to Dave Strano, one of the founders of Redneck Revolt, the John Brown Gun Club was founded in the aughts to offer gun training to “the radical community and also to distribute free anti-racist literature at gun shows in Kansas and Missouri.” In 2009, as the Tea Party was coalescing in reaction to the election of the first African-American president, Strano saw the right-wing movement as a collection of angry, working-class whites who were being duped by wealthy conservatives. He wrote a manifesto in 2009 that declared the white working class “an exploited people that further exploits other exploited people…used by the rich to attack our neighbors, coworkers, and friends of different colors, religions and nationalities.” Inspired by the Young Patriots, the radical, white working-class collective that worked with groups including the Black Panthers and Young Lords in the 1960s, Redneck Revolt was born the same year. Its membership is almost wholly comprised of white radicals whom Strano says grew up in “poor or working-class white communities, in trailer parks and rundown apartment buildings, surrounded by redneck culture.”

According to its website, Redneck Revolt has nearly 40 chapters around the country. It describes itself as “pro-worker” and “anti-racist,” with a mission to “incite a movement amongst white working people that works toward the total liberation of all working people, regardless of skin color, religious background, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, or any other division that bosses and politicians have used to fragment movements for social, political, and economic freedom.” The John Brown Gun Club still offers firearms training (a lot of members grew up hunting), with an emphasis on aiding defense practices among “communities of color and LGBTQ folks.” Members also show up with guns to act as a protective force for anti-fascist protesters, and were visible at events from Charlottesville to Trump’s recent rally in Arizona.

2. Pink Pistols

The Pink Pistols membership got massive bumps on the heels of two recent national events: the massacre of 49 people at LGBT nightclub Pulse in Miami, and the election of Donald Trump. Founder Doug Krick established the group after reading a 2000 Salon article by gay journalist Jonathan Rauch, who was sickened by a series of hate crimes against the LGBT community, including the murder of Matthew Shepard. “Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons,” Rauch noted. “In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry….Homosexuals have been too vulnerable for too long. We have tried to make a political virtue of our vulnerability, but the gay-bashers aren’t listening. Playing the victim card has won us sympathy, but at the cost of respect. So let’s make gay-bashing dangerous.”

Its website describes the Pink Pistols’ goal plainly: “We teach queers to shoot. Armed queers don’t get bashed.” The group’s motto is, “Pick on someone your own caliber.”

3. National African American Gun Association

Like other groups on this list, the National African American Gun Association saw its membership soar after Trump’s election; the organization’s numbers doubled to 14,000 after November 8. Philip Smith, the group’s president, has noted that while Trump is an unexpected recruitment boost, the racists emboldened by the president have also driven up membership. “Two years ago, fringe groups were just that: fringe groups,” Smith told CNN. “But now those fringe groups are kind of like, ‘It’s cool to be racist’…our community sees that, and it scares us. You know what, let me get a gun just in case something happens, just to make sure.”

Among incoming members, the most significant demographic leap is in the increase in women. (A Washington Post article from March points to anecdotal evidence that black women are buying guns and learning to shoot at rates far higher than in the past.) Smith notes that it can be doubly dangerous for black Americans to arm themselves due to the disparate treatment of white and black gun owners, as exemplified by the police murder of licensed gun owner Philando Castile. But as Smith points out, the need for protection can outweigh those fears. “We don’t want to bother anyone, but we’re not gonna let anyone come and break into our house at two in the morning and sit there and wait for the police to come, and get killed in the interim,” Smith told a guns-focused news site. “We’re gonna protect ourselves.”

4. Liberal Gun Club

Lara Smith, the spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, says the group’s membership jumped “well over” 10 percent after Trump took the White House. “There is suddenly a significant uptick in the number of liberals realizing that we may, in fact, have a tyrannical government on our hands and the Second Amendment protects them too,” Smith said in an interview.

Founded in 2008 by Mark Roberts, LGC came into being to serve gun owners turned off by the NRA’s aggressively right-wing culture. Lefty gun owners often feel uncomfortable talking openly about their political outlook thanks to the hyper-conservative views that pervade gun culture, which makes LGC, oddly, a gun-filled safe space of sorts. And while America’s gun obsession and refusal to impose even the most commonsense gun controls are the cause of an astounding number of tragedies each year, Smith—who told the Miami Herald that LGC has worked collaboratively with Pink Pistols and Black Guns Matter—argues that gun fatalities point to graver issues society refuses to address. “We should be looking at suicide prevention, health care, systemic poverty and racism, the war on drugs,” Smith told Mic. “These are the real problems, and when you focus on the guns you don’t focus on the underlying issues.”

5. Huey P. Newton Gun Club

Last year, the Bureau of American Islamic Relations—a deceptively named group of Islamophobes—staged a protest outside of a Dallas mosque. There to counter them were members of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named for the legendary Black Panthers co-founder. The club was co-founded by Charles Goodson and Darren X, two native Texas activists working to put an end to police violence against communities of color. The group has three explicit goals: to “arm all black, brown and poor men/women across the United States who can ‘legally’ bear arms,” to “end black on black violence” and to stop “police terrorism and murder of the people.”

Huey P. Newton Gun Club

“We accept all oppressed people of color with weapons,” Darren X told Vice in 2015 “The complete agenda involves going into our communities and educating our people on federal, state, and local gun laws. We want to stop fratricide, genocide—all the ‘cides.”

6. Black Guns Matter

Maj Toure is a politically conservative African American who started Black Guns Matter because of anti-black police violence. “Black Guns Matter came about because of the amount of murders of African American people, especially by corrupt police officers,” Toure told NBC News. “I don’t have to convince anyone that my life matters but I’m going to have the tools to defend my life because it matters to me.”

It’s odd to transform the phrase Black Lives Matter, created by a group that is staunchly anti-gun, into a pro-gun effort. And right-wing pundits drool over Toure because of his libertarian attitude toward guns. But he argues that his mission is to “educate urban communities on their Second Amendment rights and responsibilities through firearm training and education.” He’s lectured in venues around the country on gun laws and safety, including resolution and de-escalation tactics.

 

These confederate Monuments

Turns out, the State with the most confederate Memorials is my home State, Virginia. Some of the Historical reasons is tha a good part of the Civil War was fought here, a number of the key military Generals (Lee, Jackson, Stuart) were Virginians, and the fact that Richmond was the Capital of the confederacy. The descendants of those families still live here.There has been a push to remove the Monuments or rename buildings and roads named after them through the years – but the connection to Virginia born people tends to moderate the responses from both sides. At least it did until Charlottesville where a bunch of outsiders came in in their Nazi gear to wreak havoc.

One of those dots on the map is near where I live, and I have seen the monument. It is to the local soldiers who died in the “War Between the States”. The fact that they all fought as confederates, well…Is what it is.The family names of those guys live on today as part of the local population. Hard for me, at least, to work up any ire over this. Let it be.

The State was as segregated under Jim Crow as any in the South. Let it be. You can get a confederate license  plate in Virginia by joining the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Let it be.

There is a historical context in Virginia because that is where a large part of the war was, and that was where these folks fought. There simply is no relevance to a Lee, Jackson, or Stuart statue in any state other than Virginia, Maryland (Antietam), and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where they fought. In Virginia at several of the Battlefields there are still bullets, cannonballs, and bones lightly buried in the battlefields where they fought.So this is part of our living history.

So I am not sure all of these need to come down – and support moving some to historically significant places. You want to move those confederate generals from Monument Avenue in Richmond to the Battlefields at Bull Run, Manassas, Fredericksburg, or Cold Harbor…I won’t object at all.

So what I am arguing here is a common-sense approach…Although I still never expect to see a statue of Sherman in Georgia.

Virginia’s 204 confederate Monuments and Memorials

Symbols of the Confederacy still dot the South

Highest density

Virginia, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, is home to more than 220 Confederate symbols, including three military bases named for Confederate war heroes. Texas and Georgia have the second- and third-most symbols, at 178 and 163, respectively.

confederate Monuments in the US

Schools

109 public schools are named for Confederate icons, including Gens. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart, and the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Of these schools, nearly 25 percent have a student body that is primarily black, while almost a tenth of the schools have a student body that is more than 90 percent black.

Monuments and statues

Of the more than 700 statues and monuments, more than 25 percent are located in Virginia and Georgia alone. Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi combined make up an additional 30 percent. Nearly 77 percent were built or dedicated before 1950, while 6 percent were built or rededicated during the era of the civil rights movement. Four percent were built or rededicated after the year 2000.

Roads, highways and bridges

From General Lee Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, to Jefferson Davis Highway in San Diego, California, nearly 500 roads, highways and bridges memorialize the Confederacy.

Counties and cities

There are 80 counties and cities named for Confederates, including Fort Davis, Texas, and Lee County, North Carolina, among others.

 

More Make Believe History From the Chumph

Much of the Civil War was fought in Virginia. Major Battles in Northern Virginia include two at Bull Run and the first and second Manassas,

The Chumph’s Golf Course is located along the Potomac River about 20 miles outside of DC, and 20 miles from Leesburg. The closest point of any major fighting would have been a “Ball’s Bluff” near Leesburg. The closest documented skirmish (Less than 100 soldiers involved)  was on a place then called “Confederate Ridge”, overlooking the Loudon Valley about 10 miles away, although the locals, split in their alliance to the USA and the Confederacy were know to take a potshot or two at each other. For those interested in Civil War History, a good summary of fighting in Loudon County is here. None of it was closer than 15 – 20 miles of the Chumph Golf Course.

It is a nice Golf Course though…Or it was, before the Chumph bought it.

Trump has a Civil War memorial on his DC golf course — for a battle that never happened

resident Donald Trump was roundly mocked yesterday for the historical illiteracy evident in his Andrew Jackson quotes. Now Golf Digest is revisiting an earlier scandal involving Trump’s ignorance of the Civil War.

“Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” reads the inscription a faux historical marker on the course of the Trump National Golf Club, according to the New York Times. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’ ”

The battle never happened. “No. Uh-uh. No way,” Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association told the New York Times. “Nothing like that ever happened there.”

When Trump was informed by the New York Times that three different local historians had said as much, Trump replied, “How would they know that? Were they there?”

Trump’s historical alt-facts are reminiscent of the major scandal when White House counselor Kellyanne Conway complained the press hadn’t covered the so-called Bowling Green Massacre.

The massacre never happened.

Not to be outdone, White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly referred to an attack by Islamist terrorists in Atlanta.

The attack never happened.

The fake historical marker on Trump’s golf course, commemorating the fallen in a battle that never happened, was signed by Donald Trump. “It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”

 

White-Wing Breitbart Racist Shoots Unarmed Protester

This is exactly why there will be violence in the streets shortly. As usual, the white-right has vastly overestimated their numbers…And underestimated the numbers of everyone else.

They use their guns instead of their fists…One of these days someone will toss a bomb.

Anti-fascist protester shot by Trump fan during brawl outside Breitbart editor’s speech

A man was shot and critically wounded over the weekend at the University of Washington during a chaotic speaking appearance by an editor from the right-wing Breitbart News website.

The “alt-right” website initially reported the shooter had been one of the anti-fascist demonstrators who showed up to protest conservative blogger Milo Yiannopoulos at his last appearance on the “Dangerous F*ggot” speaking tour, reported Hatewatch.

But the 34-year-old victim’s friends and witnesses to the shooting have contradicted some of those initial reports.

A crowd gathered outside the event Friday afternoon, and campus conservatives clashed with a variety of protesters as about 250 attendees poured into the auditorium, reported the Seattle Times.

Some of the right-wing speaker’s fans were unable to get into the event, and they argued with demonstrators and unfurled a “Pepe the Frog” banner celebrating the “alt-right” mascot as they chanted Donald Trump’s name.

The arguments turned to shoving and then punches, and Hatewatch reported that “Black Bloc” protesters punched an aggressive Donald Trump supporter in the mouth and shot him in the face with a blue paint ball.

The young conservative was then pulled to safety by his father, the website reported.

The crowd gathered outside threw bricks and other items at police in riot gear, and several people were struck by paint balls.

The shooting came amid this chaos, but some initial reports have turned out to be exactly wrong.

The shooter claimed he had shot a white supremacist in self-defense, but the victim — who remains hospitalized with life-threatening injuries — appears to be one of the anti-fascist demonstrators.

The gunman and a friend were arrested after turning themselves in, but both men were released without charges after claiming self-defense.

Washington allows deadly force when a person fears serious injury or death, but its self-defense law does not address whether they have a duty to retreat.

Eyewitnesses told Hatewatch the shooter, who was described as an Asian man, was an apparent Trump supporter who had been trying to provoke the crowd.

The victim, according to friends, was a Bernie Sanders supporter who was protesting against Yiannopoulos — who was permanently banned from Twitter over complaints about racist and misogynist bullying of other social media users.

The wounded man has an anti-hate tattoo of a red slash striking through a swastika, and witnesses said he’d been trying to calm others during the clash.

“He has always been of the mind to be compassionate, empathetic and to educate,” said friend Daniel Herrera. “That’s his goal.”

The victim underwent surgery Monday, and his condition was upgraded from critical to serious.

Yiannapoulos continued his speech even after learning a person had been shot, saying he would not be intimidated by violence.

“If I stopped my event now, we are sending a clear message that they can stop our events by killing people,” he said. “I am not prepared to do that.”

 

Whitewashed – The Civil War Forgotten Battle of New Market’s Black Troops

District of Columbia. Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln

Black Soldiers fought the ancestors of modern day Republicans during the Civil War…

After what I saw today in the Sessions confirmation hearing…It is a good time to remind them of that fact.

Note – you will have to go to the source site (The Atlantic) links provided here to see the footnotes.

Heroes of a Civil War Victory That History Forgot

ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 29, 1864, as dawn broke over eastern Virginia, some 700¹ black soldiers in the 4th and 6th regiments of the Union Army walked directly into enemy fire. The ultimate target of their assault was Richmond, the Confederate capital, just 15 miles north of where they stood. Success against the rebels’ fortress, which had never been touched in four years of war, would be a knife in the heart of the Confederacy, which only partly explains the intrepid action that day by units of what were then called the United States Colored Troops (USCT).

The approximately 1,800² soldiers arrayed against them were members of the Texas Confederacy, opponents of emancipation who were notorious for an especially sharp loathing of African Americans. When one of them saw the 4th and 6th approaching over the swampy terrain, he shouted, “n—ers, boys, n—-ers,” reveling in the prospect of what his unit called a “coon fight.”³

Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood

Less than two hours later, almost half the members of the 4th and 6th were injured, missing, or dead. The white officers who led the charge had been the first to die, and the black troops who took over from them were next. After that battle, Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th Regiment wrote in his diary: “When the charge was started, our Color guard was full; two sergeants and ten corporals. Only one of the twelve came off that field on his own feet. Most of them are there still…. [It] was sheer madness.”

The Union fell back, but only briefly. More than a thousand soldiers from three additional USCT regiments soon returned to finish the attack. And once again, as the white officers fell, says historian Noah Andre Trudeau, “it fell to black sergeants to keep the unit organized, keep it moving forward, keep it coherent. They were taking over the units under fire, with men falling all around them.”

By the time the battle was won, at about 8:30 that morning, it had taken an estimated 800-plus Union casualties—some 130 black troops killed in action, approximately 660 wounded—and an estimated 45 others were missing in action.

News and official battle reports all testified to the courage, grit, and skill that the USCT troops showed under fire, settling any doubt of their fighting spirit. “They never halted or faltered,” the New York Herald correspondent wrote, “though their ranks were sadly thinned by the charge, and the slashing was filled with the slain and wounded of their number.”

No fewer than 14 African-American soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in what came to be known as the Battle of New Market Heights. Five of them were for leading the troops forward after their officers fell. Four were recognized for taking up their regimental flags from wounded or killed bearers, a job that turns a man into a clear, slow-moving target. One soldier, according to his Medal of Honor citation, urged his men forward as he managed to load and fire his weapon with only one arm, the other having been so badly mutilated it needed immediate amputation.

For all that, New Market Heights is little more than a footnote in Civil War history—a battle, scholars agree, that deserves better.

Its relative obscurity derives in part from lack of access to the site. Only the largest battlefields were acquired in the years just after the war. Later, given the racist Jim Crow laws enacted after Reconstruction, there would have been considerable resistance in the South to a celebration of black heroism. The land at New Market Heights is now divided into parcels and will remain that way until the National Park Service (NPS) can convince its owners to sell or donate it, which so far they have not agreed to do. In the meantime, the Civil War Trust has listed New Market Heights among its  “most endangered” sites⁴.

That lack of access inhibits both scholarly and public interest. “A key part of battlefield research, any battlefield research, is walking the ground and understanding the terrain and reaching deductions from that,” says Robert Krick, a historian at the Richmond National Battlefield who has written several books on the Civil War. “The fact that there’s been no preserved property at New Market Heights also prevents casual visitors from seeing it, appreciating it, getting enthusiastic about it. [It’s] just not quite on their radar.”

The Battle of New Market Heights is also obscured by the ten months of fighting for Richmond that followed. More battles were lost than won during that time, and New Market Heights, while critical, was not conclusive. “The New Market Heights operation was only one of several efforts to breach the lines at Petersburg and Richmond in the summer of 1864,” says Pulitzer-Prize-winning Civil War historian James McPherson. “Most of them were not ultimately successful, so [New Market Heights] just didn’t get the same kind of publicity.”

Literally thousands of Medals of Honor were issued during the Civil War, almost a third of which were later rescinded due to fraud or lack of merit.⁵ But the 14 awarded for New Market Heights were never even questioned, and only four others were awarded to African Americans in the Union Army during the whole course of the war.

Portraits of 15 African-American soldiers and sailors who received Medals of Honor for service in the Civil War, the Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War.

Civil War historians—McPherson included—cite contemporary reports to confirm that actions which rose “above and beyond the call of duty” at New Market Heights would have justified such medals in any of America’s later wars. Captains and officers, almost all of whom were white, spoke of the black troops’ bravery in their logs, reports, and correspondence. Major publications, including the New York Times and New York Herald⁶, covered the victories of the USCT, and news of the heroism shown at New Market Heights drew special notice. On October 5, a week after the battle, Civil War correspondent Thomas Morris Chester wrote that “the officers and men of these regiments…wiped out effectually the imputation against the fighting qualities of the colored troops.”

Less than 20 years after the war ended, in the time of Jim Crow, that reputation for bravery was effectively withdrawn. But for later generations, the medals awarded for New Market Heights preserved the USCT’s record for valor. In that respect, at least, they were more fortunate than the African-American soldiers who came after them….Read the rest Here…

 

Winter For America

The Revolution will not be televised…It will not appear on the Internet on your favorite blog, You will not be able to Twitter, Tweet, or Facebook your friends…

You will not be able to get 30 miles per gallon in your car, visit your local WalMart, or order a new country on Amazon…

The Revolution will not spare the outlands, your gated community, or your frequent flyer miles.

 

Here’s how the US empire will devolve into fascism and then collapse — according to science

A sociologist who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11 attacks warns that American global power will collapse under Donald Trump.

Johan Galtung, a Norwegian professor at the University of Hawaii and Transcend Peace University, first predicted in 2000 that the “U.S. empire” would wither away within 25 years, but he moved up that forecast by five years with the election of President George W. Bush, reported Motherboard.

Now, nearly 17 years later, Galtung predicts that decline could come even quicker under a Trump administration.

“He blunts contradictions with Russia, possibly with China, and seems to do also with North Korea,” Galtung said. “But he sharpens contradictions inside the USA.”

Galtung’s biographer credits the sociologist and mathematician with correctly predicting the 1978 Iranian revolution; China’s Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989; the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989; the economic crises of 1987, 2008 and 2011; and the 9/11 attacks.

His predictions are based on a model comparing the rise and fall of 10 historical empires, and decades ago Galtung developed a theory of decline based on “synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions.”

For example, Galtung’s model identified five key structural contradictions in Soviet society that he predicted would lead to its fragmentation unless the U.S.S.R. completely transformed itself.

Galtung predicted the tensions between the repressed Soviet working class and the wealthier “bourgeoisie” with nothing to buy would lead to economic stagnation, and those economic forces combined with the push for more freedom of expression, autonomy and freedom of movement would — eventually did — pull down the Soviet Union.

He predicted in his 2009 book, “The Fall of the American Empire — and then What?” that the U.S. was plagued by 15 internal contradictions that would end its global power by 2020, and Galtung warned that phase of the decline would usher in a period of reactionary fascism.

American fascism would spring from its capacity for global violence, a vision of exceptionalism, a belief in an inevitable and final war between good and evil, the cult of a strong state leading that battle, and a cult of the “strong leader.”

Galtung said all of those elements presented themselves during the Bush era, but he fears fascist tendencies could sharpen under Trump as those cultists lash out in disbelief at the loss of American power.

The sociologist identified unsustainable economic, social, military and political contradictions that would eventually topple the U.S. as a world power.

Overproduction relative to demand, unemployment and the increasing costs of climate change would weaken the U.S. economy, according to his model.

Galtung also predicted that rising tensions between the U.S., NATO and its military allies, coupled with the increasing economic costs of war and the political conflicts between the U.S., United Nations and the European Union, would also diminish American power.

“The collapse has two faces,” Galtung said. “Other countries refuse to be ‘good allies: and the USA has to do the killing themselves, by bombing from high altitudes, drones steered by computer from an office, Special Forces killing all over the place. Both are happening today, except for Northern Europe, which supports these wars, for now. That will probably not continue beyond 2020, so I stand by that deadline.”

Rising tensions between America’s Judeo-Christian majority and Islam and other religious minorities created cultural contradictions, which are further sharpened by social contradictions between the so-called American dream and the reality that fewer Americans can achieve prosperity through hard work.

The decline of the U.S. as a global power would probably rip apart its domestic cohesion, Galtung said, which could potentially reshape American borders.

“As a trans-border structure the collapse I am thinking of is global, not domestic,” Galtung said. “But it may have domestic repercussion, like white supremacists or even minorities like Hawaiians, Inuits, indigenous Americans and black Americans doing the same, maybe arguing for the United States as community, confederation rather than a ‘union.’”

That breakup could potentially bring a revitalization of the American republic, Galtung said — if Trump makes a surprising shift in his persona and policies.

“If he manages to apologize deeply to all the groups he has insulted and turn foreign policy from U.S. interventions — soon 250 after Jefferson in Libya 1801 — and not use wars (killing more than 20 million in 37 countries after 1945): A major revitalization!” Galtung said. “Certainly making ‘America Great Again.’ We’ll see.”

 

Second Civil War

Never thought I would live to see it…

But shidt is about to get real bad.

 

Southern Baptists Reject confederate Flag

I wouldn’t have thought this possible as little as 20 years ago…

U.S. Southttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_tIxFJhR5khern Baptists Formally Repudiate Confederate Flag

The resolution calls for Southern Baptist churches to discontinue displaying the Confederate flag as a “sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ.”

The U.S. Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution on Tuesday repudiating the Confederate battle flag as an emblem of slavery, marking the latest bid for racial reconciliation by America’s largest Protestant denomination.

The resolution, passed at the predominantly white convention’s annual meeting in St. Louis, calls for Southern Baptist churches to discontinue displaying the Confederate flag as a “sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ.”

The action came four years after the denomination elected its first black president, Fred Luter, a pastor and civic leader from New Orleans.

Rev. Fred Luter was named the denomination’s first black president four years ago.

In 1995, a Southern Baptist committee issued a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for condoning slavery and racism during the early years of the denomination’s 171-year history.

The convention, currently made up of more than 46,000 churches nationwide, was established in 1845 after Southern Baptists split from the First Baptist Church in America in the pre-Civil War era over the issue of slavery.

The denomination now counts a growing number of minorities among its more than 15.8 million members and has sought in recent years to better reflect the diversity of its congregants and America as a whole.

“This denomination was founded by people who wrongly defended the sin of human slavery,” said Russell Moore, head of the convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “Today the nation’s largest Protestant denomination voted to repudiate the Confederate battle flag, and it’s time and well past time.”

The flag carried by the South’s pro-slavery Confederate forces during the 1861-65 U.S. Civil War re-emerged as a flashpoint in America’s troubled race relations after the massacre of nine blacks by a white gunman at an historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. The assailant was seen afterward in photographs posing with the flag.

The episode stirred a movement to eliminate the Stars and Bars flag – seen by many whites as a sign of Southern heritage, not hate – from South Carolina’s statehouse and many other public displays in the South during the months that followed.

 

On This Memorial Day – Remembering Those Who Fought to End Slavery

There are a lot of Southern Myths about the Civil War and Antebellum South, and what life was like in the period leading up to the War. The root of the war was economic. By 1860, over 60% of the GDP, and near 80% of the trade was generated by the South. And just about every penny of that money was built and fully enabled by slavery. It is no mystery why the Articles of Secession by every Southern State lists the cause of their actions as to maintain slavery.

The South was by no means monolithic as the Southern Myth would have you believe. And it was a dangerous place, with rebellion seething just under the surface. One of the few things which kept the slave master’s cruelty in check was the distinct possibility that ol’ Massa might “fall off his horse and break his neck”. There were hundreds, if not thousands of slave rebellions, and the risk was so great that during the Revolutionary War the Southern States supplied few troops to fight the British…Because they were needed at home to keep the slave rebellions in check. The sight of Haitian Troops marching to Savannah to attack British forces holding the city must have sent chills down the spines of Southern slave owners.

Further the South wasn’t monolithic. Large regions, especially the Appalachians, had no real economic ties to slavery, making the western Southern States a battleground between pro and anti-slavery forces. If you examine the maps of the Shenandoah campaign between Union General Phil Sheridan and confederate General Stonewall Jackson, you will find that there are areas conspicuously avoided by the rebs, You will find the same in certain areas of North Carolina. Those areas weren’t “confederate friendly”.

This Memorial Day we should celebrate those who fought to put down the rebellion, and ultimately end slavery. Over 100,000 of whom were white Southerners, and 260,000 of whom were black, often escaped slaves.

100,000 From Dixie Fought for the North in the Civil War

In all the recent debate about erasing Confederate history, no one talks about the history the South itself has erased, such as the many Southerners who fought for the Union.

Earlier this past week a judge ruled that the city of Louisville, Kentucky can proceed with the removal of a Confederate monument near the campus of the University of Louisville. Arguments against removing Confederate monuments over the past year have often claimed that in doing so communities run the risk of erasing history. What has been universally overlooked, however, is that the push to establish monuments to the Confederacy during the postwar years helped to erase the history of those white and black southerners who remained loyal and were willing to give their lives to save the Union.

Southern Unionism took many forms during the Civil War. Some disagreed with the right of a state to secede from the Union at the war’s outset while others grew weary of the Confederacy in response to a number of factors, including a Conscription Act in 1862 that exempted large slaveowners, the impressment of horses or mules for the army, and a “tax-in-kind” law that allowed the government to confiscate a certain percentage of farm produce for military purposes. Others in places like Appalachia and other highland regions that included few slaves saw little value in supporting a government whose purpose was the creation of an independent slaveholding republic.

Resistance to the Confederacy also took many forms throughout the war. The release of the movie, The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey next month, will introduce audiences to Newton Knight, who led an armed rebellion against the Confederacy in Jones County, Mississippi. Some joined clandestine political organizations such as the Heroes of America, which may have contained upwards of 10,000 members. Networks of communication kept resistors in touch with one another and their activities throughout the region. Unionists risked arrest by Confederate officials, ostracism from within the family, and violent reprisals from the community.

It is impossible to know just how many white southerners remained loyal to the Union during the war given disagreements over its very definition, but we do know that somewhere around 100,000 southern white men from Confederate states, except for South Carolina, served in the U.S. military. East Tennessee supplied somewhere around 42,000 men, but other Confederate states yielded significant numbers, including 22,000 from Virginia (and West Virginia) and 25,000 from North Carolina. The First Alabama Cavalry, which was considered one of the toughest units in General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army, took part in his “march” through Georgia and the Carolinas in 1864-65.

The decision to express one’s loyalty to the Union by joining the army was often a painful one to make from the lowliest private to some of the highest-ranking officers. While the story of Robert E. Lee’s decision to resign his commission in the U.S. army, rather than betray his home of Virginia, is often told and re-told in tragic prose, others grappled with the same decisions and yet chose to remain loyal. The man who offered Lee command of the U.S. army in 1861 was another Virginian by the name of Winfield Scott. Scott, whose military career stretched back to the War of 1812—including a failed presidential bid in 1852—was the highest-ranking general at the beginning of the war. Scott’s decision was no less difficult than Lee’s and yet he remained loyal and although too old to take command in the field, he helped formulate military policy that ultimately proved successful in subduing the rebellion.

General George Henry Thomas, also from Virginia, became one of the most successful generals in the war and saved the Union army from being completely routed on September 19, 1863, earning him the nickname the “Rock of Chickamauga.” His loyalty to the nation cost him his family, who refused to speak with him ever again and even turned his picture against the wall. Very few monuments to the service of these men and others like them, who defied family, friends, and community for the sake of the nation, can be found in the former Confederate states. And yet the removal of some Confederate monuments has caused some to worry about erasing history.

The other significant Southern bloc that voiced their loyalty to the Union and commitment to crushing the rebellion was the region’s slave population. From the beginning of the war, and in the shadow of a Supreme Court that as recently as 1857 ruled that free and enslaved blacks could not be citizens of the United States, African Americans offered their services to the military. Beginning in 1862 along the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, former slaves rushed into the first all black regiments. By the end of the war roughly 150,000 former slaves fought and died to save this nation. They did so under the most harrowing conditions. Black soldiers were massacred on battlefields and even sent back into slavery at places like Fort Pillow in Tennessee and at the Crater in Petersburg, Virginia by Confederates, who refused to treat them as legitimate soldiers. As if that wasn’t enough, their own government refused to pay them what white soldiers earned. Only sustained protests that lasted more than a year and continued demonstrations of bravery on the battlefield led Congress to correct this injustice in the summer of 1864.

Southern Unionists, both black and white, may have celebrated Confederate defeat, but they continued to be persecuted owing to their wartime beliefs and actions by terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Life was especially difficult for former slaves, who fought for the Union and now hoped to exercise the right to vote, own land, or run for public office. Their sacrifice for the Union ended in the rise of Jim Crow state governments by the turn of the 20^th century.

After the war, as white Southerners erected monuments to their Confederate dead they also erected monuments to their former slaves, only they recalled not brave men who fought to preserve the Union, but their loving former “servants” who remained loyal to master and their Lost Cause. The very act of monument erection helped to erase this history for much of the 20^th century.

The removal of Confederate monuments need not result in the erasure of history. In fact, it may for the first time create the intellectual and physical space to commemorate and remember a new narrative of the past, one that corresponds more closely to the long and rich history of service and sacrifice to this nation that is recalled each year on Memorial Day.

 

History – Black Spies in The Confederate White House

One of my distant ancestral family members was a man named James Armistead Lafayette, related by marriage. During the Revolutionary War, he worked as a double-agent providing false information to the British Lord Cornwallis, and sending British War plans to George Washington. He worked as a servant, and was ignored as a threat because he was a slave. He was one of the most famous of American spies during the war as over dinner, British Officers blithely ignored the slave in the corner, believing him part of the furniture.

The confederates apparently didn’t learn that lesson. Black women were particularly effective in running spy rings, and collecting information even in the Capital of the confederacy.

The Black Spies in a Confederate White House

How a secret intelligence network successfully spied on Confederate leader Jefferson Davis in his own home.

The servants knew. The Confederate White House in Richmond, Virginia, was not a happy home. The coachman had heard Varina Davis, the first lady of the South, wondering aloud if the rebellion her husband led had any prayer of success. It was, he heard her say, “about played out.” Less than a year into the war, she had all but given up hope. And the president himself, Jefferson Davis, gaunt and sere, was under tremendous strain, disheartened and querulous, complaining constantly about the lack of popular support for him and his policies.

What the servants at the dinner table heard could be even more interesting: insights into policy, strategy and very private lives. They could glimpse up close the troubled emotions of Varina, who was much younger than her husband. She was in her mid-30s, he was in his mid-50s, and her energy, even her sultry beauty, were resented by many in that small society. She had a dark complexion and generous features that led at least one of her critics to describe her publically as “tawny” and suggest she looked like a mulatto.

Varina’s closest friend and ally in the cabinet was Judah P. Benjamin, the cosmopolitan Jewish secretary of war and then secretary of state. He was a frequent visitor to the Davis residence. He shaped Confederate strategy around the globe. And over port after dinner, what intimacies might have been revealed about this man, whose Louisiana Creole wife lived in self-imposed exile in Paris, and whose constant companion in Richmond was her beautiful younger brother?

As in any of the big households of yesteryear (one thinks of Downton Abbey, to take a popular example), what the servants knew about the masters was a great deal more than the masters knew about them. And in the Davis household the servants were black slaves, treated as shadows and often as something less than sentient beings. The Davises knew little of their lives, their hopes, their aspirations, and they certainly did not realize that two of them would spy for the Union.

History is almost equally oblivious. When it comes to secret agents, or servants, or slaves, all learned to tell the smooth lie that let them survive, and few kept records that endure. When it comes to the question of the spies who worked in the Confederate White House, where solid documentary evidence has failed, legend often has stepped in to fill the gaps and, to some considerable extent, to cloud the picture.

The one slave-spy we know the most about is William A. Jackson, the handsome coachman who appears to have been hired out by his owner at one point to work as a waiter in a Richmond hotel before being rented to the Davis family to drive them around the city.

In early May 1862, soon after New Orleans had fallen to the Union and as the Federal army under Gen. George McClellan was inching its way up the peninsula from Yorktown toward Richmond, the slave William Jackson crossed the lines into the Federal camp and began telling his story to the officers, who debriefed him at length, then to a handful of reporters. Over the next several weeks, tales about his revelations were printed and reprinted in papers all over the country.

Thus, one could read in the The Liberator, an abolitionist paper out of Boston, an article picked up from Horace Greeley’s Tribune in New York that was a paean to the escaped slaves making their way to Union encampments. Typically they were called “contrabands,” not yet entitled to their freedom (the Emancipation Proclamation was not announced until later that year, and did not go into effect until 1863).

“The fact cannot be questioned that the most important information we receive of the enemy’s movements reaches us through the contrabands,” the author of the Tribunearticle proclaimed.

When Jackson made his appearance in the Union camp, we are told, generals, colonels and majors flocked around him and the commander, Gen. Irvin McDowell, telegraphed the War Department with some of Jackson’s revelations.

If he brought useful tactical intelligence, however, it didn’t make it into the Northern newspapers, which focused on the gossip he passed along.

Jackson described Jefferson Davis as “pale and haggard,” sleeping little, eating nothing, constantly irritable and complaining about his generals: ‘He plans advances, but they execute masterly retreats,’” Jackson is quoted saying.

Varina Davis, meanwhile, had become a terror to her servants. “Mr. Davis treated me well,” said Jackson, “but Mrs. Davis is the d–––l,” the word devil considered too fraught for the paper’s readers.

Jackson seems to have spent quite a bit of time driving Varina around, and listening closely to her depressed views of the “played out” Confederacy. In part, no doubt, Jackson was telling the Union officers and press what they wanted to hear, raising their morale by talking about the declining mood in Rebel Richmond. He said not only slaves but whites were looking forward to the arrival of the Union troops. The Davises kept their bags packed and ready to go, he said, and even Mrs. Davis couldn’t pass off Confederate money…Read the Rest Here, including the story of Mary Elizabeth Bowser the amazing woman who operated a spy ring in the confederate capital...

 

The Civil War…It Was About Slavery, Period

The Southern Myth has an entire alternate universe explanation about the causes of “The War Between the States”… COvering up the real reasons.

This is Col Ty Seidule, Head of the History Department at West Point

 

The Black Confederate Myth

One of the more interesting divergences of the Southern Myth – is the Myth of the Black Confederate Soldier. This one has popped up reliably since in was invented back around 1900, when southern writers tried to whitewash the brutality and savagery of the slave states, and deny that the war was really about slavery.At that time many of the soldiers who had fought in th Civil War were still alive,. The SCV campaigned for pensions for a few black men, All told, perhaps a half dozen black me were awarded pensions for serving in the Confederate Army, bolstering the claim at little expense. No record exists that any of these men ever carried a rifle.

Like anything to do with white supremacy, advocates have been able to dredge the sewers of black life and come up with black advocates – mot notably in this case Uncle Walter Williams.A few others discussed below wave the flag, and even dres up in confederate uniforms, espousing conservative causes.

The Myth of the Black Confederate Soldier

Lost Cause fanatics—including a handful of African Americans—insist that thousands of blacks fought for the Confederacy. Nothing in the historical record supports that claim.

On Sunday July 19, 2015 Anthony Hervey was killed while driving home on Mississippi’s Highway 6 after attending a rally in Birmingham, Alabama to protest the city council’s decision to remove a Confederate monument in Linn Park.

A fellow passenger who survived the crash claimed that she and Hervey were being pursued by another vehicle containing four or five black men. The accident is under investigation, but given recent decisions at the state and local level to remove Confederate flags and monuments and the resulting conflicts witnessed recently, the reported cause of the crash may not come as a surprise. What may surprise readers is that Anthony Hervey was African-American.

Hervey was one of a very small but vocal group of African-American men and women who identify closely with a narrative of the Civil War that celebrates the Confederacy. These so-called “Black Confederates” have been embraced by heritage organizations such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) and United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). In the wake of the South Carolina shootings, they have been front and center in a campaign that dates back to the late ’70s to convince the general public that thousands of free and enslaved blacks fought as soldiers in the Confederate army.

A resident of Oxford, Mississippi, Hervey was no stranger to the often contentious debates surrounding the display of the Confederate flag and other iconography. In 2000 he led protests to keep the Confederate flag flying atop the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina and closer to home, challenged the University of Mississippi’s attempt to replace its mascot, “Colonel Reb” and ban the singing of “Dixie” during football games.

Hervey was often seen wearing a Confederate uniform and carrying a large flag in front of Oxford’s soldier statue. Among his many signs could be read: “White Guilt=Black Genocide,” “The Welfare State Has Destroyed My People,” and “Please! Do Not Hire Me Because I Am Black.” According to Hervey, it is the policies of the federal government that have fueled suspicion and deepened the racial divide in the South. In his final speech in Birmingham, just before his fatal accident, Hervey said, “I don’t like black people. I don’t like white people… but I love the hell out of me some Southerners.”

It should be no surprise that Hervey’s outspokenness in support of the Confederacy and his conservative politics endeared him to crowds at pro-Confederate heritage rallies.

H. K. Edgerton of NorthCarolina

Others like honorary SCV member H.K. Edgerton of North Carolina—arguably the most visible pro-Confederate African-American—also appeared at rallies throughout the South following the shootings. A one-time president of Asheville’s chapter of the NAACP, in 2002-03 Edgerton walked 1,600 miles with the flag and in full Confederate uniform from North Carolina to Texas in opposition to government policies that divide the races and in support of Confederate heritage.

At the time of his walk Edgerton asserted, “If we Southerners don’t stand together we will lose our culture, heritage, religion and region to outsiders who sadly have no appreciation of the unique culture of being Southern.”

In Virginia, Karen Cooper has maintained a close relationship with the Virginia Flaggers, which organized in 2011 to protest the removal of the Confederate flag at the “Old Soldiers’ Home” in Richmond on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Originally from New York and a former member of the Nation of Islam, Cooper identifies closely with her new home and with Confederate heritage. She was introduced to the Virginia Flaggers through her involvement in the tea party and quickly found a home for her views on limited government and her strong stand against a welfare state that she believes has seriously harmed the black community.

As for the history of slavery in the South, Cooper brushes it aside as having existed throughout human history and, curiously, that for every individual it was “a choice.”

All three believe that racial unrest in the modern South and the recent divide over Confederate flags and monuments is the result of failed government policies and a false view of the history of the Confederacy. In their view, it was the Confederacy’s embrace of states rights and its own steps toward the recruitment of thousands of black Confederate soldiers that offered the promise of racial unity and equality. The willingness of all three to don Confederate uniforms and/or wave the flag offers a powerful visual reminder for those who continue to embrace a Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War—a narrative that rejects the preservation of slavery as the central goal of the Confederate experiment in independence in favor of a scenario wherein loyal black soldiers stood by their masters on the battlefield.

The Lousiana Native Guard, a group of local free black and Native American Men who Organized a Brigade to defend their home, New Orleans from invasion by the North. The confederate Generals denied them the opportunity to defend their city, resulting in the entire Brigade, consisting of two regiments defecting to the NOrth to become the US Colored Troops. The distinguished themselves fighting in the west, and would form the core of what would become The Buffalo Soldiers.

In their initial statement following the violent murder of nine black Charlestonians while attending Bible study at Emmanuel AME Church and the publication of photographs of Dylann Roof holding the Confederate flag, the South Carolina Division, SCV offered the following reminder:

“Historical fact shows there were Black Confederate soldiers. These brave men fought in the trenches beside their White brothers, all under the Confederate Battle Flag. This same Flag stands as a memorial to these soldiers on the grounds of the SC Statehouse today. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, a historical honor society, does not delineate which Confederate soldier we will remember or honor. We cherish and revere the memory of all Confederate veterans. None of them, Black or White, shall be forgotten.”…Read the rest here

 

A bit more about Hervey here.