Confederate Quotes - page 3
Technically, Reconstruction was "over" when the last of the Confederate states had written new state constitutions and elected representatives and senators in conformity with the Reconstruction Acts. This happened fairly quickly, between June 1868 and July 1870, and it put in place state governments that were largely dominated by Republicans and that made heroic efforts to make a reality of voting rights for the freed slaves. But one by one, the wheels came off these reconstructed state governments and the old Southern Democratic power machines regained control. But "regained” is too anodyne; "overthrew” is the real word, since the recapture of these state governments was accomplished by violence and black voter intimidation.
Allen C. Guelzo
I would not be surprised if Martin Luther King and these agitators next desecrate the graves of Confederate soldiers and drag their remains through the streets in an effort to garner headlines. And what kind of person is participating in this march? Beatniks, frauds, and persons wanted to answer for crimes in other States.
James Eastland
Myths simply throw roadblocks in the path to enlightenment, and it is from truth that we have the most to learn. One man's truth, however, can be another's myth, and only through dispassionate and disinterested dissection of such stories can we tell the difference. The Confederate experience is dotted with episodes that are not particularly admirable.
William C. Davis (historian)
Removing the flag from this state's capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America's history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God's grace.
Barack Obama
In 1931, W. E. B. Du Bois attacked the decision to erect Confederate monuments as ahistorical and irresponsible: "The most terrible thing about War, I am convinced, is its monuments-the awful things we are compelled to build in order to remember the victims. In the South, particularly, human ingenuity has been put to it to explain on its war monuments, the Confederacy. Of course, the plain truth of the matter would be an inscription something like this: "Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery." But that reads with increasing difficulty as time goes on. It does, however, seem to be overdoing the matter to read on a North Carolina Confederate monument: "Died Fighting for Liberty!"
W. E. B. Du Bois
It is, of course, impossible to know the names of even a small percentage of our honorable ancestors. The 4,500 unarmed Wotanists murdered on the banks of the Elbe by Charlemagne's insane Christian army, for example, the millions who died on the Eastern Front, the million starved to death in Eisenhower's POW death camps, the children fighting to the last in the rubble of Berlin, the soldiers of the Southern States in Confederate Grey, the women and children burned alive in Dresden and Hamburg are among the unnamed. They must not be forgotten.
David Lane (white nationalist)
Under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.
Frederick Douglass
The surrender of the Confederate armies in 1865 involved: 1. The surrender of the claim to the right of secession. 2. The surrender of the former political relations of the negro. 3. The surrender of the Southern Confederacy. These issues expired on the fields last occupied by the Confederate armies. There they should have been buried. The soldier prefers to have the sod that receives him when he falls cover his remains. The political questions of the war should have been buried upon the fields that marked their end.
James Longstreet
Where are you from?” Sophia asked.
Larry looked a bit startled. "I'm from here...Great-greats came over from Holland."
"You said ‘y'all.'"
Larry was confused....
"What was that about?" Anne-Solenne asked.
"It's totally a Southern way of talking. Iowa is a Northern state. Fought on the Union side in the Civil War. Never had slavery...Northerners don't talk like that, they don't drawl, they don't say ‘y'all'...”
"Or put the Stars and Bars on their bumpers,” said Julian...and pointed at a Confederate flag sticker on the back of Tom and Kevin's truck.
"Point being, it was not like that to my uncle...When he was born, the Civil War was only ninety years in the past-almost within living memory. It would have seemed weird for Northerners to paste the traitors' flag on their bumper or cop an accent from Alabama. But while he was alive-”
"The cultural border shifted north.
Neal Stephenson
Clarence Potter walked through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, like a man caught in a city occupied by the enemy. That was exactly how he felt. It was March 5, 1934- a Monday. The day before, Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party had taken the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America. "I've known that son of a bitch was a son of a bitch longer than anybody," Potter muttered.
Harry Turtledove
While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the states' rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, states' rights for what purpose? States' rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle.
James M. McPherson