In Alexandria, Va., there is a bronze plaque that one would think should embarrass the residents of that city almost as much as the prominent statue of murderer Pancho Villa embarrasses us Tucsonans. And yet it doesn’t.
In the early days of the Civil War, a giant Confederate flag flew over the Marshall House hotel in Alexandria, and due to the size of the flag and the geography of the surrounding area, the flag could be seen by President Abraham Lincoln when he looked out the window of the White House. In May 1861, United States troops crossed the Potomac River and took control of Alexandria. Among other things, they grabbed Robert E. Lee’s home, Arlington, and turned it into a national cemetery.
Leading the troops was the ridiculously young (24-year-old) Col. Elmer Ellsworth, a personal protégé of Lincoln’s. As Ellsworth led his men toward the telegraph office, he couldn’t resist stopping by the Marshall House to deal with the offending flag. Ellsworth himself burst up the stairs to the roof of the establishment and took the flag down. As he descended the stairs, the proprietor of the place, a racist secessionist named James Jackson, fired a shotgun blast into Ellsworth’s chest, killing him instantly.
Ellsworth’s men, in turn, killed Jackson. Lincoln was devastated by the heinous event and actually presided over Ellsworth’s funeral, which took place in the East Room of the White House.
As for the plaque, there is no mention of Ellsworth, but it does refer to Jackson as “the first martyr to the cause of Southern Independence,” and adds, “the justice of history does not allow his name to be forgotten.”
It makes you want to fly to Alexandria just to hock a loogie. And then to forget that guy’s name.
We’re all going to be subjected to a lot of revisionist-history nonsense this year, for 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. I’ll admit that, over the years, I’ve grown tired of listening to otherwise-intelligent people try to explain how the Confederate flag is not a racist symbol, or how the Civil War wasn’t really about a bunch of people willing to fight and die to retain the “right” to own other human beings.
I once thought it funny, but now it’s just sad. And with the emergence of the Tea Party as a political entity, this year, it’s going to be sad and loud. We’re undoubtedly going to be subjected to a never-ending chorus of “states’ rights!” in a pathetic attempt to defend the indefensible. States’ rights to do what, exactly? To base an entire economy and society around the treatment and use of human beings as livestock?
It’s understandable that Southerners would honor their war dead. Even after 150 years, no one wants to admit that their ancestors died defending an ignoble cause. But ignoble, it most certainly was.
Some lamely argue that the Civil War wasn’t entirely about slavery, and that there were peripheral issues. There were indeed issues that didn’t directly have the word “slavery” in them, but the specter of the abomination cast its shadow over everything. Virtually every significant political action of the four decades leading up to the Civil War—from the Missouri Compromise to the Wilmot Proviso, the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the Dred Scott Decision—involved slavery in one way or another.
Furthermore, does anybody sincerely believe that the Civil War would have happened if slavery hadn’t existed? That the nation would have split in two, and the lives of 650,000 men would have been lost, over commerce disputes? Unlikely.
It’s heartbreaking imagining how many potential Mark Twains or Thomas Edisons or Stephen Fosters were lost in that awful war, and for what? So that some racists could squeeze a few more years out of a system that never should have existed anywhere on Earth, let alone in the United States, a system so vile that it did not deserve to be defended at the cost of even one drop of human blood?
Even if the lofty goals of more civil dialogue are met, that does not mean that Confederate apologists should be allowed to peddle their whitewashed drivel with complete impunity. Falsehoods that go unchallenged in the public arena have a tendency to coalesce into something with a false veneer of respectability.
There aren’t two sides to the issue of slavery; there is but one. Likewise, history has long since determined that there is but one way to look at the Civil War, and that is that it would not have happened had it not been for slavery, and that its only glorious outcome was the abolition thereof. To attempt to find some intellectual high ground from which to argue otherwise is a fool’s mission.
Some people will say, “Slavery is 150 years in our past. Why keep bringing it up?” Well, I’ll stop bringing it up when people stop glorifying the government(s) that fought to preserve it.
In the meantime, as we endure a year filled with faux intellectualism and cockeyed interpretations of states’ rights, I just hope that the current resident of the White House doesn’t have a clear line of sight across the Potomac to the place where the racist rag once flew.
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2011.
…very eloquently written Mr Danehy…
Unfortunately, Tom, the reptilian-brain nonsense of reactionary conservatism still dominates our politics — and the same toxic human instincts that led to the Civil War are alive and kicking, with Arizona competing against the likes of South Carolina and Alabama for the competition to become America’s most ignorant state…
Cogent argument but it neglects to mention a couple of things. First, the great emancipation proclamation ONLY freed slaves in the confederate states. Second, the issue of the rights of states to secceed from the union was a hugh issue at the constitutional convention and several states only agreed to sign if the succession right was implicitly recognized.
Just because the “states rights” issue has been used to justify a number of evil things – I grew up in the south during the great civil rights battles of the 60s – does not mean that states have NO rights.
This reminds me when the “beverly hillbillies” tv show mentioned “It’s when the North whooped the south!” lol.
Very well written article . However it all reminds me of all the “closed mindedness” and stupidity of things that are going on in this country today, the ignoble wars we have with iraq, afghanistan today and all the civil unrest we have here in the USA.
Sometimes I wonder if we are heading into another civil war sooner than later.
“Cogent argument but it neglects to mention a couple of things.”
-neither of which has anything to do with the point of the article…
Of course the civil war was ‘about’ slavery. But, Tom, you really should check just a bit further into why a great many people who knew it was morally wrong still supported it. Do you know how much a slave sold for in a slave market in 1860? The answer will undoubtedly surprise you. If Obama/FDR ideology were in place in 1860, would it not have been sensible to compensate the slave owners for their slaves, to avoid this conflict? Just pay the slaveowners the value of their slaves and set them free. Surely this was considered; why was it not done? Again, the answer is shocking.
What an overblown uber-opinionated hateful piece of dung this article is. To think that farm boys from Wisconsin clamored to the cities in droves to go fight Johhny Reb because some wealthy landowners in the South wanted to own some slaves is absolute liberal revisionist hogwash! Similarly, to think that farm boys from Louisiana clamored to the cities in droves to go fight Billy Yank because some wild-eyed abolitionists in the North wanted to set the slaves free is complete and utter revisionist horse-puckey! My ancestors certainly didn’t fight to keep slaves, they didn’t own any. They cared not that others owned them, nor did they care to set them free. It simply was NOT the issue, or an issue at all to them. Period. Tom Danehy suffers from a severe case of “presentism” combined with a mighty good touch of liberalism… The prognosis isn’t good!
only someone with 3GoldBars up his ass would see this article as an “overblown uber-opinionated hateful piece of dung” —NONE of your points contradicts anything that Danehy has written here. I know folks whose ancestors fought in exchange for citizenship—-that in no way detracts from the big picture: no slavery-no civil war…
The point that 3GoldBars sought to make is that the entire matter came down to economics. And the issue of slavery had everything to do with economics.
Speaking of revisionist history! Tom Danehy, you need to do some research on the man history has labeled “The Great Emancipator.”
He wasn’t a great emancipator; he was a racist thug: In a letter to Horace Greely, August 22, 1862, he wrote “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equlity; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I am in favor the race to which I belong having the superior position. …I have no purpose, either 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.”
The Emancipation Proclamation, a purely political act to gain support for the biggest pile of corpses in history, was issued one month later and became effective January 1st, 1863 — and only freed the slaves in the States that had seceded from the Union — four slave states that did not secede from the Union remained unaffected, and they had populations greater than half the 11 States that did secede.
In other words, for purely political reasons having to do with his very tenuous hold on the Presidency and Samuel P. Chase and William H. Seward looking for the first opportunity to shoot him out of the saddle (so to speak), he usurped the power of Congress to raise and equip armies; he spent funds from the U.S. Treasury not appropriated by Congress; he suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus; he arbitrarily had citizens arrested for “preaching defeatism or advocating “peace at any price;” and he denied mail distribution to newspapers opposing his war.
According to his cousin, Dennis Hanks, he wasn’t much of a Christian, either: “When Lincoln went to church, he went to mock and came away to mimic. When he went to New Salem he consorted with Free Thinkers (Atheists) abd joined with them in deriding the gospel story of Jesus. He wrote a labored book on this subject, which his friend Hill put in the stove and burned up. Not until after his death were these facts denied by the Republicans…” (Dennis Hanks as quoted by Edmonds in Facts and Falsehoods, pages 54 & 55.)
Abraham Lincoln has been lionized as one of our greatest leaders, and yet his prosecution of the bloody Civil War violated the terms and substance of every liberty this nation was established to preserve and protect. If he is a great icon of anything, he should be remembered as the president who first ignored the Constitution of the United States and set the lawless standard for the United States government that America has had to endure ever since.
As a Tea Partier myself, I consider the emancipation of the slaves to be a shining example of the progress of liberty in a nation founded for the specific purpose of liberty. I know of no legitimate Tea Partier — not one! — who believes otherwise, though we all know there have been some attempts by wild-eyed leftist yahoos to infiltrate the Tea Party and act like racist bigots to paint us all with that brush.
Daney, you need to get down off your elitist high horse and start accepting reality.
Dear Fellow Tucsonans,
on a different subject that doesn’t relate to Mr. Danehy. I just wanted to add another perspective of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shooting. I believe the shooter was sane planning and implementing the shooting, he knew what was right from wrong and used a computer to verify his actions. Had a history where people verbally and visually knew about his condition, before the shooting and did nothing about it. He used the computer to alert his friends what was about to happen, yet people say he wouldn’t do it, his intentions showed he could do it! I used to transport the mentally challenged to their single apartments, boarding homes, single homes and assisted living facilities and I can tell you first hand, the conditions not only pertain to the their homes. They are but a tip of the iceberg: no bed, no furniture, no drink or food in the refrigerators, trash thrown throughout their living conditions, smell of urine and feces. They were dressed haphazardly with no respect for decency, even though they supposedly had caregivers, to maintain a clean environment and well-being. I couldn’t think of any one reason why the conditions were what they were, I could go on and on with lack of this and lack of that. I also transported the mentally challenged from professional facilities such as hospitals, daycare facilities used to help the mentally challenged, institutions, etc. I just want to say, in my opinion they are treated worse than the general population in relation to races, creeds and the colored. The system despairitely needs more money, a change in the way they are helped by medication(I saw many a patient in a catonic stupor, not aware of their surroundings, unable to control their incontinces.) I hate to even mention this, (bound and gagged, beaten for any type of behavior-dogs are treated better, let’s just say I don’t want to go there,) better dwellings and care. In no way shape or form would I give a mentally challenged person a gun, the same as what is true for convicted felons!!! The time to buy a gun needs to be longer for the security check, agencies need to have the same information on an individual(that’s what a computer is for) better scrutiny of the rules, regulations and laws are adhered to. If you would like to use my knowledge and experience, to better the plight of the mentally challenged, feel free to do so. I also worked at a Professional Psychiatric hospital for 8 months and transported babies through the mature population. As you can see there are two sides to the story, if I were put in the shootings situation, I would’ve the decency to protect another human’s life (even though a weapon was used), not just stand there and do nothing or run away. That’s me and the product of my upbringing, other people have different upbringings, customs, morales, religion, regulations and laws, their convictions dictate what they would’ve done. I hope I’ve enlightened a few minds and made you think of your actions, their are no two situations the same, thank you.
Respectfully Cordial with Sincerity,
Richard “the teeth less, one-legged Mardi Gras Leprechaun,” may your charm bring you good luck
and your wisdom find that pot o’ gold! F. Johnson
“The point that 3GoldBars sought to make is that the entire matter came down to economics. And the issue of slavery had everything to do with economics.”
3GB never even mentioned economics – all his comment said was that to suggest that the Civil War was about slavery is ” liberal revisionist hogwash” …
Frdmftr : your lengthy comment ALSO does NOTHING to contradict the points raised in the column…