# State of Alabama offices closed for Confederate Memorial Day **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 28, 2008, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249 "2008-04-28T18:02:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/141 "2008-04-30T01:56:12Z")
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion] Isn’t this like saying “Other than the whole Native American thing, Jackson was a great guy”? I’m not trying to be a dick; I’m really trying to figure out what our attitude toward people like Lee should be. [/QUOTE] No. Destroying the Indian nations was Jackson’s primary, driving obsession in life. Jackson was defending nothing. In fact, he even invaded Spain (via Florida) against the direct orders of his superiors just so he could kill some Indians. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/142 "2008-04-30T08:24:09Z")
You know what’s really funny about these “I’m an abolitionist and I don’t care who knows it” threads (and damn but they’re numerous and almost to the point of “just cut and paste a response from the last one” point): If you read threads on entertainment, politics, religion, or just about any other subject, you’ll see that me, Liberal, John Carter of Mars, Sauron, Ogre, Ninety Wt, Zoe, astro, etc.,etc., are all over the frigging map and frequently completely disagree on major and minor issues. Yet when our homeland is insulted we all close ranks, link shields, and advance. It’s almost like something else that once happened with southerners who felt threatened and joined together… I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s something in U.S. history… (Flag raising at Iwo Jima maybe? or perhaps The Mandrell Sisters Variety Hour?.. well, it’ll come to me.) ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/143 "2008-04-30T10:11:42Z")
I get it! Y’all feel like Yankees fans! ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/144 "2008-04-30T11:38:15Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] If you read threads on entertainment, politics, religion, or just about any other subject, you’ll see that me, Liberal, John Carter of Mars, Sauron, Ogre, Ninety Wt, Zoe, astro, etc.,etc., are all over the frigging map and frequently completely disagree on major and minor issues. Yet when our homeland is insulted we all close ranks, link shields, and advance. [/QUOTE] Which sort of describes what happened in many cases back then. For the wealthy and the political, it was about slavery. But for ordinary people, it was about pride and sovereignty. And I gotta say, your posts in this thread have been insightful, informative, and inspirational. You’re a great spokesman for our mother, the South. God (or whatever you please) bless you, **Sampiro**. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/145 "2008-04-30T12:13:20Z")
[QUOTE=Ogre] I apologize and retract my accusation. I read the above post as “the South’s primary impact on the world has been morally odious.” In short, my bad. [/QUOTE] No problem. ---
**Author:** ![Sauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/146 "2008-04-30T12:54:05Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] Yet when our homeland is insulted we all close ranks, link shields, and advance. It’s almost like something else that once happened with southerners who felt threatened and joined together… I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s something in U.S. history… (Flag raising at Iwo Jima maybe? or perhaps The Mandrell Sisters Variety Hour?.. well, it’ll come to me.) [/QUOTE] The last two things I can think of that caused this sort of uniting of forces by Southerners who felt threatened were 1) When “Hee Haw” first debuted and 2) When “Hee Haw” was taken off the air. ---
**Author:** ![Sauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/147 "2008-04-30T12:58:50Z")
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion] I’m really trying to figure out what our attitude toward people like Lee should be. [/QUOTE] Lee was a great guy, and I’m proud to celebrate his memory. His HORSE, now … man, his horse was a jerk. If we ever have a state holiday for Lee’s horse, I might just self-immolate in righteous indignation. Or move to Boston. I can’t decide which would be worse. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/148 "2008-04-30T13:27:41Z")
[QUOTE=villa] At least Virginia has some kind of (weakass) excuse, when compared with Alabama, for commemorating Lee. After all, he was a Virginian. I’ve never understood the idea that Lee was somehow better than the other traitors. In many ways, I view him and his ilk as worse - not only did they fight a war to preserve slavery… [/QUOTE] Ummmm…not so much. The Civil War was not fought to either end or protect slavery. Slavery was simply the catalyst that brought the whole thing to a boil. There’s a very good discussion of this at [http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm](http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm). Some excerpts: > [@](#): > > Slavery was undoubtedly the immediate fomenting cause of the woeful American conflict. It was the great political factor around which the passions of the sections had long been gathered–the tallest pine in the political forest around whose top the fiercest lightnings were to blaze and whose trunk was destined to be shivered in the earthquake shocks of war. But slavery was far from being the sole cause of the prolonged conflict. Neither its destruction on the one hand, nor its defence on the other, was the energizing force that held the contending armies to four years of bloody work > [@](#): > > During the entire life of the Republic the respective rights and powers of the States and general government had furnished a question for endless controversy. In process of time this controversy assumed a somewhat sectional phase. The dominating thought of the North and of the South may be summarized in a few sentences. > The South maintained with the depth of religious conviction that the Union formed under the Constitution was a Union of consent and not of force; that the original States were not the creatures but the creators of the Union; that these States had gained their independence, their freedom, and their sovereignty from the mother country, and had not surrendered these on entering the Union; that by the express terms of the Constitution all rights and powers not delegated were reserved to the States; and the South challenged the North to find one trace of authority in that Constitution for invading and coercing a sovereign State. > The North, on the other hand, maintained with the utmost confidence in the correctness of her position that the Union formed under the Constitution was intended to be perpetual; that sovereignty was a unit and could not be divided; that whether or not there was any express power granted in the Constitution for invading a State, the right of self-preservation was inherent in all governments; that the life of the Union was essential to the life of liberty; or, in the words of Webster, “liberty and union are one and inseparable.” It was a states’ rights issue. Lee felt that states’ rights were paramount; that is why he returned to Virginia. I have no problem with them taking a day off in his honor. One has to consider the actions of the man from _his_ perspective in the society of his time, not from our current perspective. What he did took guts and was a very honorable act in his day. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/149 "2008-04-30T14:03:18Z")
Aw, c’mon, Traveller was a good guy. Even if he never understood the South lost. > **[Books of The Times; General Lee's Horse Discusses the Civil War (Published 1988)](https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/28/books/books-of-the-times-general-lee-s-horse-discusses-the-civil-war.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print)** (Nobody else read that?) ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/150 "2008-04-30T14:11:51Z")
[QUOTE=Clothahump] The Civil War was not fought to either end or protect slavery. Slavery was simply the catalyst that brought the whole thing to a boil. There’s a very good discussion of this at [http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm](http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm). [/QUOTE] So there is a debate over the causes of the Civil War? And there are those who wish to portray it as not caused by a desire to protect slavery? Who’d have thunk it! Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/151 "2008-04-30T14:58:35Z")
[QUOTE=Sauron] The last two things I can think of that caused this sort of uniting of forces by Southerners who felt threatened were 1) When “Hee Haw” first debuted and 2) When “Hee Haw” was taken off the air. [/QUOTE] Yes, we weep in our mint juleps that we could not claim Fran Drescher as The Nanny for our own. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/152 "2008-04-30T17:08:45Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] I get it! Y’all feel like Yankees fans! [/QUOTE] I can’t believe nobody even acknowledged this. 😃 This is funny stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/153 "2008-04-30T17:17:16Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] I get it! Y’all feel like Yankees fans! [/QUOTE] When I was a kid there was about a 10 year streak in which Auburn lost to Alabama every year at the Iron Bowl and those who remained loyal were called “Shug’s Lost Causers” (Shug Jordan was the coach at Auburn). Similar thing. [QUOTE=Sauron] The last two things I can think of that caused this sort of uniting of forces by Southerners who felt threatened were 1) When “Hee Haw” first debuted and 2) When “Hee Haw” was taken off the air. [/QUOTE] I still think it was Yankees working for Nixon who killed Stringbean. And Junior Samples- that was no heart attack, I don’t care what anybody says. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/154 "2008-04-30T20:39:11Z")
Speaking of Hee Haw, I read where Lulu Roman has lost almost 200 lbs. She looks great, for a 61-year old. [http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/149677](http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/149677) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/155 "2008-04-30T20:50:12Z")
[QUOTE=NinetyWt] Speaking of Hee Haw, I read where Lulu Roman has lost almost 200 lbs. She looks great, for a 61-year old. [http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/149677](http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/149677) [/QUOTE] I’m glad for her sake she’s healthier. I met her once at a charity golf tournament George “Goober” Lindsey sponsored in Montgomery and a lot of his fellow Hee-Haw stars attended. I don’t know if my experience was typical of a Lulu sighting, but she seemed… well… crazy as hell. (Her son was cute though.) ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2008, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/156 "2008-04-30T23:03:23Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] Lots of insightful and informative posts in this thread. Given time and patience, maybe we can eradicate the ignorance of our Yankee friends. [/QUOTE] I consider some of mine fought by this thread. Thanks to everyone here keeping a level head. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/157 "2008-05-01T02:56:00Z")
[QUOTE=CarnalK] Like Christmas and Easter? 😉 [/QUOTE] Christmas is mostly a secular holiday now, and AFAIK, no gov’t employees get a paid holiday for Easter, which is always a Sunday. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/158 "2008-05-01T03:13:23Z")
[QUOTE=DrDeth] Christmas is mostly a secular holiday now, and AFAIK, no gov’t employees get a paid holiday for Easter, which is always a Sunday. [/QUOTE] It was a valid point…he was poking at my atheism. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/159 "2008-05-01T10:39:11Z")
> [@](#): > > **Little Nemo** : I know that. And I’ll admit most southerners know it now. But you should admit it took a few centuries for that idea to take hold. Black people have been living in the south for about five hundred years and it’s only been in the last fifty or so that they finally became southerners. There are plenty of people still living who can remember when saying that a black person was equal to a white person would have gotten you laughed at - unless you were black yourself in which case the consequences might have been a lot more severe. > > I’ll admit northerners didn’t always see blacks as equals either. And we kept some slaves as well. But we at least grew up on our own. Southerners didn’t stop enslaving black people until outsiders forced them to at gunpoint. And as soon as the outsiders left they went back to persecuting black people as much as they could get away with - and didn’t stop that until the outsiders came back and made them stop again. I suspect our little friend is just baiting us, but too many people really are this ignorant. So I will set the record straight. If by 'black people," you include the Spanish, yes they have been living in the coastal areas of the South for about 500 years. And the Native Americans have been here for thousands of years. I have no idea when they began to consider themselves Southerners and neither do you. Our cultures are so intermingled that you cannot separate them entirely. That is true of even the black slave and his boss: > [@](#): > > In North America, however, masters and slaves generally saw each other daily; masters lived on their farms and worked them along with slaves (as the bosses, of course) but the pattern of slaveholding created conditions in which masters and slaves influenced each other culturally and socially to a much greater extent than elsewhere in the Americas. The dispersal of slaves on North American farms also helps to explain why it was so difficult for slaves to unite in rebellion in North America: they were spread out, not concentrated. By thinking of huge plantations of the past, Americans tend to deny the degree to which Africans and Europeans mixed socially, culturally, and sexually on American farms. Mixing created lasting features of cultural uniformity across important cultural differences; it is one of the distinguishing features of North American slavery in comparison to slavery in other regions of the Americas. ) Cite: (History Museum of Slavery in the Atlantic Web site by Pier M. Larson, an assistant professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University It’s reasonable that you admit that northeners didn’t always see blacks as equals and that you kept some slaves as well. Because it is mostly the Northern states that had slaves for the longest time – by far. They did come into the first English settlement in Virginia in about 1619, but they were in New York by 1624. New York had slaves for 200 years. Compare that with my home state of Tennessee. I think we had slaves for about 68 years. (A rough estimate.) It was longer in the Carolinas, but parts of the South weren’t settled when Massachusetts and Connecticut had booming economies – with slaves. _All_ of the colonies had slaves in the 17th and 18th Centuries. The fact that the first abolitionist journal was published in East Tennessee is not that big a surprise to those who understand Tennessee. When election returns come in, that portion of the state is still different. Back then, they were very anti-slavery. There was a very close vote on the gradual abolition of slavery long before the war, but it failed. East Tennessee wanted to form another state, but it didn’t. So when you say, " Southerners didn’t stop enslaving black people until outsiders forced them to at gunpoint," your brush is a little too broad. Until you know the history of every state and maybe even the individuals involved, maybe you shouldn’t be making generalizing. You are perpetuating ignorance. Some Northerners may have seen blacks as equals just as some Southerners did. And some Northerners didn’t have slaves just as Southerners didn’t. Some Southerners didn’t have to be forced to give up slaves. And many Southerners never persecuted a black person. Do you really think that all of the “outsiders” were from the North? I have a friend who was injured on one of the Freedom Rides. I didn’t meet him until four years later. But he, like many other “outsiders” is a Southerner. You are ignorant if you think that white people in the South were not involved in Civil Rights. Are you aware of some of the horrible things that were done to slaves in New York? There is, I believe, a project now to make citizens more aware. Yes, some Northeners had some slaves. Do you really want to continue to feign ignorance of this subject? I’ll save my notes just in case. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249/160 "2008-05-01T10:46:17Z")
And although I think he’s too biased about his football teams: > [@](#): > > **BIRMINGHAM, Ala.** - Paul Finebaum will be among an impressive list of winners this week in New York **to be honored by The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.** The prestigious university, which also administers the Pulitzer Prize, recently announced the **winners of the annual Let’s Do It Better! Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity.** Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the award singles out newspaper, broadcast and web reporting that fosters coherent, authentic coverage of race reporting. > Finebaum’s show originates on WJOX-FM in Birmingham and is syndicated and operated by Citadel Broadcasting ( NYSE:CDL). With the award, Finebaum joins an imposing list of former winners from the broadcast category who have been honored at the workshop which include Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Bryant Gumbel, Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Bill Moyers and Bob Simon… (bold type added) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/state-of-alabama-offices-closed-for-confederate-memorial-day/447249.md?page=9)