Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 04, 2010

The fourth panel says it all in a nutshell.

you said NUTshell…lol…lay of them its cool to have them re-creations lest we forget what it took to build US

How about ~~ next time they want to secede..LET ‘EM!

The faux general seems to be un-balanced.

The subject of this week’s Elitist on the Mount: Southerners! With a touch of FOXnews.

It’s funny that Lincoln’s ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ didn’t free any of the slaves in the North.

It just goes to show that turning a complex situation into a simple soundbite isn’t anything new.

..a leading Rhet-torical question is fair and balanced…

Free the slaves only in the states that succeeded. Keep the slaves that were in the states that were border lining. The loyal US military was losing. What to do? The race card. Europe ate it up.

The irony is the whole states rights item. They made their own confederation with money and took orders from their pseudo-government! I wonder if their government taxed them too?

If they didn’t like it here they should have gone back to where they came from. I’m talking about the white Europeans that is.

Fourth panel nails it. When did the journalistic profession replace seeking the truth with simply presenting representatives of “both sides,” regardless how silly or false one (or both) of them might be? I don’t want “balance”; I want accuracy.

Lincoln only freed the slaves in Confederate states so that border states (like Maryland, right next to DC) didn’t switch sides. The strategic idea was to win the war to free all of them, and Lincoln was brilliant to do as he did.

Journalists don’t do scientific research… they simply report facts, which includes what interviewees say. I don’t see it as the role of the media to put the pieces together for us as conclusions and “report” their own brand of truth as “accuracy” … that’s our role to decide from what is presented to us. That’s the premise of Fox, who understands the American love for conflict and debate. It’s about the drama, not the slant, although the slant has to be there in order to have a good debate.

If we’re stupid enough simply to go along with Roland, or Matthews, or Hanity, or the NY Times, etc. and point to any one of them as delivering “accurate” conclusions, we deserve the chaos that we get. Like a jury, WE decide what is credible, and accurate, not them. IMNSHO.

TRUE Irony is that none of this would run in Lincoln’s papers since he used his powers to curtail freedom of the press. Penny for your thoughts?

The war was not fought over slavery, that became the battle cry for Lincolns second term in office. Don’t forget General Grant owned slaves.

Larry: My Dad would have agreed. Apache blood in the thunderbolts, too?

I’m waiting for Pat Robertson to explain why God hates Nashville. Is bad pop-pseudo country music a sin as bad as homosexuality?

The war was about a lot of things, including slavery. My college history professor took the position that for many in the South, the idea of freeing the slaves (who often outnumbered the whites in the area) was absolutely terrifying to many Southerners, who took up arms with the notion of defending their families from the new reality.

The papers published many stories against Lincoln, ridiculing him and blaming him for casualities, so he didn’t have complete control over them. It’s not too unlike today.

Potrzebie said: “The irony is the whole states rights item. … I wonder if their government taxed them too?”

That’s an interesting question: how did the Confederacy finance itself as a government?

I haven’t researched it, but offhand, the Confederacy was literally born into a state of war. In wartime, governments borrow money like crazy by selling bonds, and/or simply printing (or otherwise creating) the money they need. At the time, the U.S. Federal government was doing much the same; the predominant source of Federal revenue was from customs duties on foreign trade and excise taxes. Taxing the income of the general population became important only later, in the twentieth century.

The problem with historical reenactments is that we tend to read our current issues into the situations of the past – it’s fundamentally all about us (in the present) rather than them (in the past), no matter which side they were on.

Lincoln believed (probably correctly) that he did not have the constitutional authority to free slaves without some justification.. He did have the authority as commander in chief to free slaves in states that were in rebellion. Slavery itself had to be ended by a constitutional amendment.

Lincoln was a complex and subtle political thinker. There were people in the Republican Party who were more extreme abolitionists, but there is no doubt that Lincoln opposed slavery. But he also believed in following the laws as they were understood.

Any historical event of much magnitude has many causes, but the idea that slavery was not right at the top of the list is just twaddle.

From my experience, when it comes to discussing the underlying causes of the American Civil War most people, both North and South, have little real knowledge.

Was the War about slavery? Not exactly – there were other motivating factors to induce a split in the United States. However, I would recommend those who maintain that the slavery issue was not a key cause to read the Confederate Constitution (readily available at a number of web sites) and tell me what seemed to be the Confederate leaders’ primary concern.

Years ago when I first encountered the claim that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, I researched dozens of speeches given in Congress during the 30 or so years before secession. There is no doubt whatsoever: the only thing the South ever cared about was slavery. All else was a smokescreen to hide the fundamental immorality of the basis of their culture.

bingo!

^ I agree wholeheartedly.

Scholarship on this topic is of course immense, and it’s hard to even begin with a recommendation. But here’s one book a little off the mainstream that I found very interesting:

Jaffa, Harry. The Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

This is old, but very good. More philosophic, perhaps, than historical. Jaffa was a student of Leo Stauss, who is often thought of as conservative, though I think he was too complex to label.

Here’s a passage from the introduction:

“The Lincoln-Douglas debates are concerned, in the main, with one great practical and one great theoretical question. The practical question was resolved into the constitutional issue of whether federal authority may, and the political issue of whether it should, be employed to keep slavery out of the organized federal territories. The theoretical question was whether slavery was or was not inconsistent with the nature of republican government; that is, whether it was or own not destructive of their own rights for people to vote in favor of establishing slavery as one of their domestic institutions.”

I don’t agree with everything Jaffa has to say, in particular I think he’s kind of dense on the politics of his own time, but he presents an interesting argument.

And a recent look at Lincoln and the Republican party is:

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

I’ve never understood “Grits” & why Southerners insist eating them with Butter, Salt & Pepper. It’s a cooked cereal & common sense would be to add milk & sugar (brown is best).

GJ_Jehosaphat:

its made of corn…ya wana put brown sugar on a corn cob?

Keep kicking that dead horse, Garry–I get it; Fox and slavery are the same thing.

Guelzo’s ‘Lincoln: Redeemer President’ is a great book on just how precarious his position was during the war; highly recommend it.

nothing wrong wit that, just prefrence…HEY mabe the real devide of the north and south was how they ate their grits! emancipation was just a coverup. come on people wake up and smell the grits! …hehe

I’m from the North, and I’ve had grits both ways (with butter, salt and pepper, and with milk and brown sugar.)

In my opinion, the dish is much better with butter, salt and pepper (and even better if you add a couple of deep fried eggs.)

Rule of thumb; if you’re visiting a different culture, try their dishes the way they eat them. :D

LOL Re: “its made of corn…ya wana put brown sugar on a corn cob?”

Well so are my Cornflakes & Sugar (Corn) Pops already come with sweetner. I purchased my first box of “Grits” in a Michigan Grocery Store years ago - before I ever visited The South. I enjoy telling True Southerners how I ate them just for “fun” and “The Look” I get. Once a gentle woman with a soft southern accent called me a “D@## Yankee for eating them with Milk & Sugar like it was “Cream Of Wheat”.

Makes me ☺ thinking of it. Now I’d eat them with some Vermont Maple Syrup and a splash of Coconut Milk and some chopped nuts. Yumm!

JRC123 – thanks for the recommendation – I will check it out. I’m no historian, but I find Lincoln just fascinating.

If the South secedes and makes it stick, I propose that all gays and lesbians should move to Hawaii, secede from the USA, re-establish the kingdom, and invite Guam, Tonga and the Marshall Islands to join up.

“If the South secedes and makes it stick, I propose that all gays and lesbians should move to Hawaii, secede from the USA, re-establish the kingdom, and invite Guam, Tonga and the Marshall Islands to join up.”

If they do, since they are vehement that they are “born that way,” and thus are biologically predisposed against propagating the species, they would only last a generation. No cheating with artificial insemination, because that would constitute a compromise of their high-minded “we’re not breeders” principles. So go ahead. That “kingdom” won’t last very long.

“If the South secedes and makes it stick, …” means they overcame all the opposition the North generated. That would be a bloody mess.

“…secede from the USA,…..” it would no longer be called that….certinaly not “United” at that point.

“…I propose that all gays and lesbians should move to Hawaii….” See the first point I listed….they’d probably all be dead at that point

I suggest you finish “”If the South secedes and makes it stick” with a phrase containing “nuclear wasteland”

DOONESBURY, DON’T BE STUPID AND PAINT EVERYONE WITH THE SAME BRUSH: ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

We do living history. That includes both sides of the Civil War. We do yankees and rebs. We also do World War 2 living history: field Armies, hospitals, Army Air Corp., etc.

It takes a lot of money and time to give today’s generation just a little taste of what it was like for our forefathers.

My last Civil War recreation was Picket’s Charge Gettysburg. We had exactly the same number of cannons, horses and people as in the original battle. It was unbelievable the force on that battle field. It gave me a real feeling of the courage of men on both sides.

In our Southern Camp, we were mostly Democrats not right wing GOP. I’m a Federalist and strongly against States Rights. We had one Openly Gay member, and we discussed Gay rights around the camp fire. We had Black, White, British, and many European members. Just like in the actual war.

None of us favored Slavery, nor would we fight to defend it.

But, all of us would fight to stop Northern Invaders bent on burning our towns and homes to the ground. Stealing our land. Raping our women. Occupying our homes for 25 years, and reconstructing our country through thievery for 100 years!

By the way: Slavery did not cause the Civil War!!

It was greed by the North. They were the slavers. They went to Africa and kidnapped the Africans. They sold the South the Slaves so they could get the Cotton for their Mills. When the South got a better deal from Europe, the North did everything it could to stop it. Finally resorting to Proxy Abolitionist to free the slaves and ruin the South’s Cotton Business.

Southern & Northern Men died by the hundreds of thousands for the Greedy Yankee New England Factory owners, and their Cotton Plantation partners. None of which actually fought in the war they created.

AS IN ALL WARS, IT WAS ALL ABOUT MONEY!!

How you eat your grits? Is that like Swift’s “big-endian” and “little-endian?”

Amen, glenbeck & jalitha! I eat my grits with butter and salt too! Think I’ll fix some next breakfast along with sausage, cheddar cheese eggs, toast……….

The way we did it, was with brown sugar, a fried egg stirred in, crumbled bacon, with Thomas’s and peanut butter on the side.

The thing is Portzeble, the CSA government was completely dysfunctional. The states were worse than our NATO allies. Each one had certain obligations, but if that conflicted with a states priorities, then self interest won out every time. They were serious about “States Rights”. Governing for them was like herding cats. They were like Democrats … ooops they were Democrats. I have to feel sorry for Lee, what ever “glory” he found on the battlefield was squandered by his government, in a case of politicians shafting the military. Thank God that doesn’t happen anymore.

The good news is that if the “baggers” get their way they will become ungovernable and implode, then Darwin can step in, and evolution can continue it’s march.

In SC as a compromise, state employees are given a choice for a holiday, of either Presidents’ Day, MLK Day, or I kid you not: Jeff Davis’s birthday. Remember him?

Cheese and shrimp grits - had it in Charleston. Grits w/redeye gravy - Some place in Arkansas.

Grits - strangely adaptable.

“Is bad pop-pseudo country music a sin as bad as homosexuality?”

No, it’s worse. It doesn’t have a beat and ya can’t dance to it.

The South got out because they felt the North was trying to dominate and control them over the issue of slavery, which would’ve had disastrous effects on their economy.

The Civil War just exacerbated race relations from all that time onward. I think if the North had let the South go, they would’ve freed the slaves in their own way. But because they were freed at the point of the bayonet, we have feelings of mistrust, resentment and entitlement that permeate today’s race relations. Good trade-off?

to jhned: in the words of a great man: yes,always

to jhned: in the words of a great man: yes,always