Social The 'banning' of Nazi symbols in Germany and Confederate symbols in America

[Phr3121]

This about sums it up...

 

[Phr3121]

True, McClellan did little to follow up on his victory but he blunted the invasion and inflicted great damage on Lee's army.

A Union victory on both Northern campaigns, but at a huge cost to the war. The war should have ended in 1862 with a Union victory, but it didn't. Due to massive blunders by both McClellan and Meade, it would drag itself out into 1865. Thousands of deaths could have been avoided, during 3 years, had the Union ended that war sooner. That is a burden the North has to carry...

"President Lincoln was disappointed in McClellan's performance. He believed that the general's cautious and poorly coordinated actions in the field had forced the battle to a draw rather than a crippling Confederate defeat. The long inactivity of so large an army in the face of a defeated foe, and during the most favorable season for rapid movements and a vigorous campaign, was a matter of great disappointment and regret."

 

[Arashikage4Life]

A Union victory on both Northern campaigns, but at a huge cost to the war. The war should have ended in 1862 with a Union victory, but it didn't. Due to massive blunders by both McClellan and Meade, it would drag itself out into 1865. Thousands of deaths could have been avoided, during 3 years, had the Union ended that war sooner. That is a burden the North has to carry...

"President Lincoln was disappointed in McClellan's performance. He believed that the general's cautious and poorly coordinated actions in the field had forced the battle to a draw rather than a crippling Confederate defeat. The long inactivity of so large an army in the face of a defeated foe, and during the most favorable season for rapid movements and a vigorous campaign, was a matter of great disappointment and regret."

McClellan and Meade have both been unfairly maligned in traditional Civil War literature for their failure to follow up their respective victories but the truth is that in both instances, the Union army was severely handled and it was unreasonable to expect that they'd be able to follow up to a satisfying degree in either instance. Much talk is made of "lost opportunities" in the Civil War but the simple fact is that the total destruction of field armies on the battlefield is something that did not happen and was extremely difficult to achieve.

For further reading concerning these subjects, I'd suggest:

"General McClelland's Bodyguard: The Army of the Potomac After Antietam" by Brooks D. Simpson and "From Gettysburg to Falling Waters: Meade's Pursuit of Lee" by A. Wilson Greene. Both articles don't completely exonerate either McClellan or Meade but they present a more balanced viewpoint and arguments as to why both failed to bring Lee to battle after their respective victories. It's true that both could have been more aggressive but it's unrealistic to expect that doing so in either situation would have resulted in the destruction of Lee's army.

 

[Natty Dread]

Heritage not hate. Those opposed to the Confederate battle flag are clueless and simple minded. Also its not banned to fail thread lol

 

[Cole train]

Germany has technically 'banned' swastika and Nazi markings, except my BN HQ in Baumholder, Germany had a swastika built into the brick foundation that nobody ever removed

It was still there plain as day when I left in Jan, 2013

My countrys airforce flag

 

[Phr3121]

My country's air force flag.

That is pretty amazing for this day and age. Interesting. I did not know that.

Why Finland won’t let go of the Swastika
Link: https://www.theweek.co.uk/96503/why-finland-won-t-let-go-of-the-swastika

Does Finland need its Swastikas?
Link: https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/does_finland_need_its_swastikas/9865204

Also, U.S. Navy spends $600,000 to hide aerial view of San Diego base that resembles Swastika:

 

[Cole train]

That is pretty amazing for this day and age. Interesting. I did not know that.

Why Finland won’t let go of the Swastika
Link: https://www.theweek.co.uk/96503/why-finland-won-t-let-go-of-the-swastika

Does Finland need its Swastikas?
Link: https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/does_finland_need_its_swastikas/9865204

Also, U.S. Navy spends $600,000 to hide aerial view of San Diego base that resembles Swastika:

Lol we had this on my units barrack wall (not the flag though but a drawn version on paper)

Finnish waffen ss flag, our guys in military sre still unofficially some what nostalgic about ww2 since finnish soldiers were considered "elite" in waffen ss

 

[Captain Davis]

I did not say he was an abolitionist, merely anti-slavery. As I pointed out above, he could never be a true abolitionist because he put preservation of the Union first before the eradication of slavery.

Also:
To apply 20th century beliefs and standards to an America of 1858 and declare Abraham Lincoln a "racist" is a faulty formula that unfairly distorts Lincoln's true role in advancing civil and human rights. By the standards of his time, Lincoln's views on race and equality were progressive and truly changed minds, policy and most importantly, hearts for years to come.
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor at Harvard University

It's disingenuous to believe that he only wanted to stop the expansion of slavery and was not morally opposed to it. I've already provided several quotes and excerpts but here is another:

As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings [American political part of the 1850s hostile immigration] get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Lincoln was a proponent of gradual emancipation as he recognized the difficulties inherent with an immediate emancipation. Additionally, he did not suggest simply packing up all the freedmen and shipping them off to another country, he only proposed it as a voluntary option.

I'll agree that the EP was a war measure first and foremost but there were political motivations for not emancipating the slaves in the border states, Tennessee, western Virginia, and New Orleans and the surrounding area, primarily to keep the populace of the border states (slaveholding states all) from turning on him and joining the Confederacy. It would have been very difficult to attempt to enforce the neutral, slaveholding border states to free their slaves, which could have driven thousands more recruits into the ranks of the Confederacy, especially in Kentucky and Missouri, where Southern sympathies were greatest.

Also, his whole rationale for issuing the proclamation was predicated on Union success in the field, not failure. Lincoln did not want the issuance of the proclamation to come across as a desperate measure. Thus, he waited until the Confederate invasion into Maryland was thwarted before issuing it.

I have been a student of the Civil War for several years now. I research material almost on a daily basis. I try to avoid revisionist theories, by researching writings from the era. I've read books, memoirs, and news articles from that time.

I'll begin with a few quotes from notable people during that era:

“So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.”

Charles Dickens,
“All The Year Round”
December 28, 1861

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, essayist, pamphlet writer, Unitarian Abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century, had this to say in his 1870 writing, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, (Chapter XIX):

Just a couple of snippets:

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general -- not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man -- although that was not the motive of the war -- as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference of principle -- but only of degree -- between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

• All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats -- so transparent that they ought to deceive no one -- when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Colonel Arthur J. L. Fremantle,
of the Coldstream Guards, wrote a diary , Three Months in the Southern States, which documented his travels through the Southern Confederacy, April - June 1863. He began his journey at Brownsville, Texas and passed through every seceded state but Arkansas and Florida. He witnessed and documented the Battle of Gettysburg and ended his diary during the New York Draft Riots, July 11-16, 1863.

Colonel Fremantle took 3 months leave from the English Army and set sail from England on March 3, 1863. His purpose was to gain an interior view of the Confederacy’s quest for independence. He admitted that he was uninformed as to the actual conditions in the Confederate states. The only information they received in England was from biased Yankee newspapers. He also confessed that, he along with most of his fellow Englishmen, were inclined to favor the North due to the aversion to slavery.

Gradually, he comes to the conclusion that the conflict is not over emancipation, but over differing economic systems, one commercial and industrial, the other largely agricultural. The North, seeking domination over all people and all things, the other content to live off the land. However, both are joined by a written constitution. The numerically superior North imposes protective tariffs on the imports of the South. The tariffs are a bounty to the North and a burden to the South. Those tariffs have the effect of levying an unequal and therefore unconstitutional tax on the consumer. Three Months in the Southern States is Fremantle’s pilgrimage towards the truth. It is a personal revelation of the real purpose of the war that has been hidden from the Englishman’s view.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French diplomat, political scientist and historian. He was best known for his works Democracy in America, he observed:

“The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists.”
Another factor that motivated war was the Republican Party’s lust (which, with few and brief exceptions, it has retained to the present day) to tax and spend. The North waged war against the South in order to regain the federal tax revenue that would be lost if the Southern states seceded peacefully. Republicans were then, and remain today, a Party of Big Government.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are just a few examples of what people of that era recognized. There are many more, but I want to get to Lincoln himself. I'll post several of his quotes regarding slavery and the African.


“I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” - Abraham Lincoln, First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” - Abraham Lincoln's response to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune’s, editorial to Lincoln called "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," making demands and implying that Lincoln's administration lacked direction and resolve.

In his 1858 4th debate with Sen. Steven Douglas, Lincoln maintained, “And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

while debating Douglas in 1858, Lincoln declared the following: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” - The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 4th Debate Part I

“I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.” - Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas 1897. Page 252

When addressing the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, Lincoln quoted the following: “There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…” - Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]---that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife."
—Lincoln's Fourth Debate with Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858

“I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union.” Taken from Lincoln’s Letter to James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863.

“My enemies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am president, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the Union”.

• A. Lincoln, August 16, 1864

Those are many of his quotes on his views toward slavery and Africans. I can also go over his illegal acts of tyranny and Constitutional debauchery if you wish.

 

[Arashikage4Life]

I'll reply later, and I mean no offense by asking the following, but you're a libertarian, correct?

 

[Captain Davis]

I'll reply later, and I mean no offense by asking the following, but you're a libertarian, correct?

Almost. I’m not socially conservative enough to be a straight Republican, but I’m too fiscally conservative and a proponent of self reliance, to be a Democrat. I probably identify most closely with Libertarians.

 

[Phr3121]

Hey @Captain Davis, don't know if you have watched this. Relating to what we were talking about a while back relating to women in the South and blacks in the South fighting in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. This one is Loreta Velazquez, fought as a Confederate officer.

 

[Arashikage4Life]

Almost. I’m not socially conservative enough to be a straight Republican, but I’m too fiscally conservative and a proponent of self reliance, to be a Democrat. I probably identify most closely with Libertarians.

I asked because your post seems to reflect the standard viewpoint of Libertarians regarding Lincoln. I have been studying the war myself for a long, long... long time. I've had articles posted online and even presented a time or two. Admittedly, my area of expertise is more military than political but I'm hardly a novice in the latter. With that said, I don't believe either of us will change the other's mind and since you provided me with some parting thoughts, I'll provide you with a link that sums up my thoughts better than I could here:

https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/debating-dilorenzo-a-lincoln-above-criticism/

There are several other "Debating DiLorenzo" articles on the site that are also worth reading. You may already know but Thomas DiLorenzo is (in)famous for his works Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Abraham Lincoln. Mostly dismissed by legitimate scholars, his works have nevertheless made a decided impact on certain groups of people, especially Libertarians and neo-Confederates ("Lost Causers"), both of which could accurately describe DiLorenzo.

 

[Captain Davis]

I asked because your post seems to reflect the standard viewpoint of Libertarians regarding Lincoln. I have been studying the war myself for a long, long... long time. I've had articles posted online and even presented a time or two. Admittedly, my area of expertise is more military than political but I'm hardly a novice in the latter. With that said, I don't believe either of us will change the other's mind and since you provided me with some parting thoughts, I'll provide you with a link that sums up my thoughts better than I could here:

https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/debating-dilorenzo-a-lincoln-above-criticism/

There are several other "Debating DiLorenzo" articles on the site that are also worth reading. You may already know but Thomas DiLorenzo is (in)famous for his works Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Abraham Lincoln. Mostly dismissed by legitimate scholars, his works have nevertheless made a decided impact on certain groups of people, especially Libertarians and neo-Confederates ("Lost Causers"), both of which could accurately describe DiLorenzo.

Look, I love this era and I love the debate. Don’t think I am being antagonistic. The debate makes me dig deeper and learn more. The thing that is so great and also so fascinating, is that even after all this time, there is still a debate. That is how complicated it was and there is no clear cut, black and white answer to who was right or wrong. Our positions are based on our perception of who had the right and who was justified in their actions.

If you are sympathetic to the South, there was a clear overstepping of authority by Lincoln and secession was a clear form of revolution. If you support the Union, Lincoln did what he had to do to save the Union. All of his unconstitutional actions were justified in order to do what was necessary to keep the country together.

I enjoy our interaction because we can debate without name calling or insults. We both obviously are passionate about the subject and have strong views. I’d like to keep our dialogue open though email or PM.

I started this quest as a mission for truth. As a Southerner, I have always felt ignorant about our history, so I dove in. Of course I am familiar with DiLorenzo, but the things I posted were Lincoln’s quotes. Those other observations were from outsiders with no dog in the fight. Again, I try to locate sources from the era, so I don’t get someone else’s interpretation of the things that happened, but opinions in real time.

 

[Captain Davis]

Hey @Captain Davis, don't know if you have watched this. Relating to what we were talking about a while back relating to women in the South and blacks in the South fighting in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. This one is Loreta Velazquez, fought as a Confederate officer.

I’ve seen where people have claimed that blacks fought, but Ive never personally read it. I know Jefferson Davis didn’t allow it, however I know that Bedford Forrest’s slaves fought with him.

The same with women. I personally don’t know much about it.

There are Southern black men who do claim and celebrate their Confederate heritage though.

If I’m not mistaken, there were actually more free blacks in the South than in the North, so it wouldn’t surprise me.