Maybe this is a Poe, but the Emancipation Proclamation was a direct poke in the eyes of the confederate states.
One reason for the proclamation was to prevent countries like England from intervening on behalf of the confederacy and the proclamation meant that slave states would lose a lot of resources by inciting slaves into escaping, meaning that the south began to lose a lot of “property” and money.
Sure, the preliminary proclamation promised freedom to the slaves in Confederate states that did not re-join the Union by January 1, 1863; but no slave state did go for that because they knew it was only a matter of time before their slaves would be freed too. Just about the reason why they had gone to war in the first place.
I believe Tread is referring to the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation said that any state which rejoined the United States before January 1, 1863 would not have slavery abolished in it. It was a deal which in retrospect, the southern states should have accepted.
Keep in mind this wasn’t a new offer. Lincoln had promised he wouldn’t abolish slavery in any state back in 1860. The southern states should have accepted that promise as well.
Instead, the slave states felt they needed to start their own country in order to protect slavery. Which ironically ended up getting slavery abolished.
Yes, I think he’s probably trying to make an argument along these lines, but I can’t believe anyone would make an argument this silly and expect to be taken seriously.
You laugh, but I have already seen a couple of similar instances:
In the 1970s, Lynyrd Skynyrd peformed with a big Confederate flag as a backdrop. I have seen at least one documentary on the band where the flag has been edited into just a big red backdrop.
The Confederate flag appears on the wall of Hoover’s room in the movie Animal House. But I tried finding an image of that today to illustrate a point about the changing perception of the flag, and in every image I can find, the Confederate flag has been edited into an American flag.
Anyhow, I am all for removing the flag from public property. I am much less enthusiastic about the decisions by Wal-Mart and eBay and Amazon to ban sales of the image. I am not a fan of censorship, whether it is carried out by government or corporations. For my money, the best way to relegate the flag to the dustbin of history is to shame those who display it. Trying to ban the flag is only going to result in backlash, and people flying it out of spite.
Also the reasons given by the Colonists during the American revolution were dramatically different. The South actually did have representatives elected to Congress. The colonists to Parliament, not so much, though I don’t want to start a silly pissing contest over the American revolution.
Do. Not. Read. The. Comments. On. Any. Alabama. Social. Media. or. Newspaper. Site. Today. I’ve seen stupidity and racism masquerading as respectable ancestor worship before, but not like this- it’s on steroids and Viagra and a sip of white lightnin’ and a bump of coke.
I live in Montgomery and I photoshopped a gay pride/rainbow flag onto one of the empty flagpoles and put it on my Facebook page with some mild social outrage about them “taking down our heritage and raising up a queer symbol” to see if I can start a movement. Just did it an hour ago and got some friends to share it and tweet it and already the leading news anchor in the region has asked somebody “OMG is this for real!” so hopefully it will make at least one racist asshole have a stroke.
Then I’m rather surprised you didn’t jump on the biggest, most important difference, that the British wore red uniforms and the Confederates grey ones.
That would toootally destroy the analogy.
We Americans have a gun worshipping culture. When its combined with the sort of rhetoric that is used by those that participate in Lost Cause culture, its a match and a keg of gunpowder…from time to time it goes off. Add the vicious red/blue dichotomy and its scary. Sometimes that means that a church gets shot up, sometimes it means the federal government backs down on a guy grazing his cattle on federal land to avoid a violent confrontation. Sometimes you get Ruby Ridge.
If we aren’t getting rid of the guns, we need to diffuse something.
And yeah, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But you can kill a lot more people with guns a lot faster. And we aren’t going to face an armed revolt of our citizens if they have compound bows and hunting knives. The idea that you have a gun not to protect yourself from “bad guys” (although that is a reason) but from the jackbooted thugs in the federal government is not at all uncommon.
“neener neener, I found a uniform that is not grey”.
Good heavens…
ETA:
yes, at the start of the war a lot of Southern state-militia even wore blue and northerners wore grey. British rangers also wore green bla bla bla…Butternut bla bla Royal Artillery…blah.
