Were Confederate Generals Traitors?

And remember, most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves or have anything to do with slavery. They were too poor. The boys who came out of the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee had probably never even seen a black person until they joined the army. From Walter E. Williams:

 The U.S. Constitution would have never been ratified — and a union never created — if the people of those 13 "free sovereign and Independent States" did not believe that they had the right to secede. Even on the eve of the War of 1861, unionist politicians saw secession as a right that states had. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical and destructive of republican liberty." The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.

Northern newspapers editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New-York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." The Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in extent." The New-York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."

Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who'd label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I'm sure Great Britain's King George III would have agreed. (Read more.)

Here is an article about Robert E. Lee from several years ago by African-American scholar Dr. Edward C. Smith:

Lee's life story is in some ways the story of early America. He was born in 1807 to a loving mother, whom he adored. His relationship with his father, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, (who was George Washington's chief of staff during the Revolutionary War) was strained at best. Thus, as he matured in years, Lee adopted Washington (who had died in 1799) as a father figure and patterned his life after him. Two of Lee's ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Mary Custis, was George Washington's foster great-granddaughter.

Lee was a top-of-the-class graduate of West Point, a Mexican War hero and superintendent of West Point. I can think of no family for which the Union meant as much as it did for his. But it is important to remember that the 13 colonies that became 13 states reserved for themselves a tremendous amount of political autonomy. In pre-Civil War America, most citizens' first loyalty went to their state and the local community in which they lived. Referring to the United States of America in the singular is a purely post-Civil War phenomenon.

All this should help explain why Lee declined command of the Union forces -- by Abraham Lincoln -- after the firing on Fort Sumter. After much agonizing, he resigned his commission in the Union army and became a Confederate commander, fighting in defense of Virginia, which at the outbreak of the war possessed the largest population of free blacks (more than 60,000) of any Southern state. Lee never owned a single slave, because he felt that slavery was morally reprehensible. He even opposed secession. (His slaveholding was confined to the period when he managed the estate of his late father-in-law, who had willed eventual freedom for all of his slaves.)

Regarding the institution, it's useful to remember that slavery was not abolished in the nation's capital until April 1862, when the country was in the second year of the war. The final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was not written until September 1862, to take effect the following Jan. 1, and it was intended to apply only to those slave states that had left the Union. Lincoln's preeminent ally, Frederick Douglass, was deeply disturbed by these limitations but determined that it was necessary to suppress his disappointment and "take what we can get now and go for the rest later." The "rest" came after the war. (Read more.)

 In the meantime, National Parks Service has issued a statement concrning Gettysburg:

 The National Parks Service has a message for America: We will not remove any Confederate statues from our country’s national parks — and the country’s best-known Civil War battlefield is making that crystal clear. Less than one week after a group of white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a monument depicting Robert E. Lee, U.S. parks officials aren’t holding back words about their plans for monuments.

“The National Park Service is committed to safeguarding these unique and site-specific memorials in perpetuity, while simultaneously interpreting holistically and objectively the actions, motivations, and causes of the soldiers and states they commemorate,” the parks service said in a statement, according to Penn Live. (Read more.)

Allen B. West reports that the debacle in Charlottesville was a complete set-up. Share

No Happy Harmony

From First Things:

They are no less ambitious than women in any other American college, and most are as focused on success as are their male peers. But many come from conservative Christian backgrounds, where the natural differences between men and women are cele­brated and mothers often stay at home. They appreciate that a woman’s role in the family is something unique and valuable, and they are not persuaded by radical feminist arguments that marriage and motherhood are mere oppression. How then, they wonder, can the longing to have and care for children be combined with a sincere desire to achieve something of value outside the home?

Thus they ask a question at the forefront of popular literature about women and work: How can ­women “balance” professional interests and family? Like countless other women, I’ve had to juggle my obligations as a mother and wife with the demands first of graduate study and then of teaching and scholarship. But I’ve slowly come to realize that this quest for balance, the desire to reconcile radically conflicting demands, is misguided. Work and family evoke from us two distinct modes of being and of relation to others. The conflicts between these modes cannot, if we are honest with ourselves, be wished away or ignored. (Read more.)

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Fashion at Versailles

For Ladies:

With Marie-Antoinette, elegance and simplicity of clothing was the order of the day at Court. For everyday life, the robe à la polonaise, a modest outfit, was in fashion among women along with the robe à la lévite. Simply dressed in a robe à la polonaise made of grey silk, the queen is putting together a bouquet in a countryside scene, with a rose in her hand. (Read more.)

Actually, the dress in question (above) was blue, not grey; because it is supposed to be a moonlight scene it may appear to be grey.

For Gentlemen:

Men’s attire in the 1780s were comprised of three main parts: the justeaucorps, which was the coat that later evolved to the frac, the waistcoat, and breeches. Shapes were simplified in favour of a more slender silhouette without affectation. The letter which is part of this engraving describes the type of costume: “Habit de printemps à la Française. M. the Count of Provence. This habit, although plainer, is in the same style as the king’s. This type of habit à la française was worn at the end of the Ancien Régime. […] The habit à la française is composed of a justeaucorps, coat and breeches. The justeaucorps, which was looser-fitting than the frac à l'anglaise, was never worn fastened, despite being decorated with buttons and button holes. It had a straight collar made of the same fabric, in contrast to the English-style collars which were turned-over and made of a different colour. The justeaucorps had external pockets whose flaps constituted an essential element of decoration. The waistcoat was very long and had sleeves, meaning it could be worn without a justeaucorps in négligée dress, and was generally made of a different colour; it hung low and had basques in front and behind…” (Read more.)

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A Second Civil War?

From PJB:

Two years ago, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called the giant statues of Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson on Richmond's Monument Avenue "parts of our heritage." After Charlottesville, New York-born-and-bred McAuliffe, entertaining higher ambitions, went full scalawag, demanding the statues be pulled down as "flashpoints for hatred, division, and violence." Who hates the statues, Terry? Who's going to cause the violence? Answer: The Democratic left whom Terry must now appease. McAuliffe is echoed by Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic candidate in November to succeed McAuliffe. GOP nominee Ed Gillespie wants Monument Avenue left alone. The election is the place to decide this, but the left will not wait.

In Durham, North Carolina, our Taliban smashed the statue of a Confederate soldier. Near the entrance of Duke University Chapel, a statue of Lee has been defaced, the nose broken off. Wednesday at dawn, Baltimore carried out a cultural cleansing by taking down statues of Lee and Maryland Chief Justice Roger Taney who wrote the Dred Scott decision and opposed Lincoln's suspension of the right of habeas corpus.

Like ISIS, which smashed the storied ruins of Palmyra, and the al-Qaida rebels who ravaged the fabled Saharan city of Timbuktu, the new barbarism has come to America. This is going to become a blazing issue, not only between but within the parties. (Read more.)

More on the violence in Charlottesville from The American Thinker:

I've been suspicious of the nature of the violence at this supposed Alt-Right demonstration since the news first began breaking.  It is no secret that radical elements in the Democrat left have been routinely utilizing violence when it suits their purposes.  We also know via secret tapings by Project Veritas that the Democratic Party has a semi-official director of dirty ops, Dick Creamer, who hires, trains, and emplaces professional disruptors to encounter, engage, and infiltrate conservative demonstrations to foment violence, assuring that the demonstrations then become the targets of negative media attention – naturally, against the conservative side.  Creamer was caught on videotape boasting about his nefarious capabilities when he thought he was in friendly company.

So here we now have another blown supposedly conservative demonstration, where violence erupts and people are killed, and guess who just happens to be a ringleader of the various ultra-right to Alt-Right organizations ranging from KKK and neo-Nazis to the kind of patriotic folks who might go to a Flag Day celebration!  Um, that would be our vaporous political will o' the wisp, Jason Kessler, whose Occupy activities may well have put him in operational cahoots with high-level Democrat operatives.  And owing to the leniency of Virginia open carry laws, too many of Jason's followers just had to parade their personal armories in all their camo combat gear, showing off their minuteman firepower.  My first reaction at seeing those clowns strutting down the street like they were in Mosul was, like that of many of my fellow NRA members and military veterans, shaking my fist and yelling at the TV, "No!  No!  No, you idiots!  No!"  And that kind of award-winning stupidity makes me wonder if the head planner for the event, Jason Soros...er, Kessler, didn't have that firepower demonstration all lined up and ready to go precisely to make those right-wing tools look just like the fools they were being, while scaring the bejeezus out of the lefties, blacks, and MSM twerps.

There's still not enough evidence on the actual violence, other than the schizophrenic kid who ran over the woman, to make any kind of assessment as to who did what in the confrontations between the right-wing demonstrators and the surprisingly strong counter-demonstration.  I have to wonder if this Kessler fellow, strong Barack Obama-supporter that he is, had a hand in making sure his Alt-Right marchers were clearly guaranteed to encounter a strong crowd of riled up counter-protesters as well.  The reporting of Kessler's background, as well as that of Charlottesville mayor and Democrat activist Mike Signer and Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy, has convinced me that Charlottesville was a Democratic Party black operation, planned, organized, and carried out to its successful conclusion, to make the media portray all these conservative whites as stupid, racist, and violent.  I believe that it was done by this soulless young man, who succeeded in selling himself to the dumb-bunny right-wingers as one of them. (Read more.)

HistoryNet reports on Charlottesville's Civil War legacy:

Here are some fast facts about the city during the Civil War era.

1. Charlottesville, with a population of about 3,000 people, remained on the fringes of the war. Perhaps the only noteworthy conflict was a skirmish on the northern outskirts of town on Feb. 29, 1864, in the so-called Battle of Rio Hill.

2. The Union forces at Rio Hill were led by Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer. But he of the flowing locks bungled it – perhaps foreshadowing disaster 10 years later at Little Big Horn. At Rio Hill, Custer and his 1,500 soldiers attempted to raid a Confederate camp, but Custer mistakenly believed an accidental explosion was enemy artillery fire and fled with his troops, chased out by members of Confederate forces under command of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart.

3. The University of Virginia, like Charlottesville itself, escaped the war’s ravages. The student body, however, answered the call of the Southern cause. Strong supporters of secession from the Union, about 500 of the university’s 600 enrollees in 1861 joined the Confederate army, as did more than 2,000 alumni.

4. UVA’s enrollment plummeted in the war years. In 1862-1863, there were 46 students enrolled. Only eight went on to graduate, but the university never closed.

5. Charlottesville also contributed to the cause through industry, producing swords, uniforms and artificial limbs. Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood was so pleased with his Charlottesville-made right leg that he declared, “The Charlottesville leg is far better than the French one.”

6. Charlottesville was site of medical facilities, including a hospital, that treated wounded and sick Confederate soldiers. Ultimately, Charlottesville General Hospital treated 22,700 patients during the Civil War and employed 300 people.

7. African Americans outnumbered whites in Charlottesville at the time of the Civil War. In Albemarle County, of which Charlottesville is a part, 55 percent of 26,615 residents were African American. Of those 14,512, all but 606 were free blacks. Today, about 107,000 people live in the county, 81 percent of them white and 10 percent African American.

8. Charlottesville surrendered to Union forces. Despite Custer’s retreat at Rio Hill, he and Gen. Philip Sheridan formally accepted the town’s surrender on March 3, 1865. Little more than a month later, Lee surrendered the Confederacy to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in a ceremony at Appomattox Court House, about 60 miles south of Charlottesville. (Read more.)
 

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Unless We Turn Back to God

From Matt Walsh:

We are divided as a people. I’d say we’re even more divided now than we were during the run up to the (first?) Civil War. At least back then the two sides had some very fundamental things in common. They believed in God, they loved their families, they cared about virtue and valor.

These days, you can’t get a consensus on anything. Forget about living in two separate countries — we’re living in two separate universes. Hundreds of different universes, really. I have little in common with a modern leftist, but I have even less in common with an alt-right neo-Nazi. Who is on my side? I don’t even know anymore. We’re all strangers to each other. Even as men met on the battlefield in 1862 and visited horrific violence upon on another, there existed a mutual respect, a sense of honor, and similarity. We have no respect for one another. We laugh at the concept of honor. We laugh at all that is good and decent. We laugh at each other. We hate each other. That seems to be the only thing we have in common. (Read more.)

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A Floral Fantasy

Featured on East of the Sun, West of the Moon: A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden, Illustrated by Walter Crane, 1899. Available to read online for free

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Next: Banning Our Founding Fathers?

From The Federalist Papers:

This is an incredibly slippery slope. All of America’s Founding Fathers were imperfect men. Most were slave-owners, and I have no doubt others were genuine scoundrels. But we owe them a debt of gratitude no matter what sins they may have committed. As Jay Cost writes: “If I contract somebody to paint my house, and I find out later that he is an adulterer, does that excuse me from paying what I owe? Of course not. By the same token, my debt for the painting does not oblige me to act as though he did not wrong his spouse.”

So it goes with the Founders who owned slaves: We should appreciate them for their endeavors, for our lives are manifestly better because of their struggles, but honoring them does not require us to ignore or excuse their errors. Madison’s home Montpelier, for example, just opened an exhibition, “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” exploring slavery at the plantation.

Wiping out America’s history because there are parts of it that are unsettling or unappealing is a leftist way of trying to re-write what this country was founded upon. If you can depict America’s founders as malevolent, evil men, you can paint the entire nation that way. (Read more.)

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Elimination of the "Unfit"

From Herman Cain:

You want to denounce Nazis? Here you go, America. Don't tell me again about the moral imperative to denounce Nazis if you're going to let this slide. As Rob mentioned to me when we were discussing who would write this up, the essence of Hitler's eugenics program was to filter out children who didn't have the traits deemed optimal for the Aryan race. Horrifying? Obviously. You'd have a fit if they started aborting babies for having brown skin, or - if there was some way you could tell - for being gay.

And you should have that fit.

But you don't need to wait. You can have the fit right now, because Iceland is well down this road. There, expectant mothers are given blood tests to determine if there's a likelihood their baby will have Down Syndrome. And if it looks that way? Well, the mothers are informed that most abort under these circumstances. No one wants a child who doesn't have the perfect designer genes, you understand, so Iceland is now to the point where almost 100 percent of mothers who are told their babies will probably have Down Syndrome go ahead and have said babies killed. (Read more.)

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Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn

From your friendly neighborhood art historian:

Today’s artwork is Jan van Huysum’s Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn, which was painted in 1724. This clever composition juxtaposes a variety of flowers, all of which appear to be in full bloom, with a number of insects such as different kinds of butterflies and ants.

Although the composition looks as if the flowers were placed aimlessly in a bouquet, in reality they weren’t. In fact, the different kinds of flowers shown here, normally bloom in different seasons throughout the year. Thus, it would have been impossible for Van Huysum to have painted this work in one go. Rather, each flower was painted as it became available, arranged within the composition according to the artist’s wishes.

Jan van Huysum’s interest in nature is evident here. Flower painters often had an interest in botanical studies and would spend hours upon hours studying, classifying and drawing each individual flower. Look at this detail! (Read more.)

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