Sunday, February 18, 2018

Willful Ignorance and Contempt for History

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The last people to raise a furor over the American South’s evil slaveholding past would be New Englanders, who after the British, were most responsible for populating North America with Africans slaves. For example, the Puritans enslaved the Pequot Indians; General Nathaniel Greene was a Rhode Islander, a colony which had wrested prominence in the transatlantic slave trade from England by 1750; cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney was a Massachusetts man. Had the latter not perfected his machine, cotton production would have remained a time-consuming enterprise and the New Englander mills would not have perpetuated African slavery in the United States.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

Willful Ignorance and Contempt for History

“You may have missed the teapot tempest of PC hysteria that inaugurated the campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. The nine announced candidates gather today (May 3) in Columbia, South Carolina, to unveil their charms in a public forum. The show was scheduled to take place at the Longstreet Theater on the campus of the University of South Carolina.

Then someone discovered that the building is named for Rev. Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, one time president of the University’s predecessor institution, South Carolina College. And, Horrors! Mr. Longstreet in the period before the War for Southern Independence defended slavery and advocated secession! Of course, the august aspirants for World Emperor could not be expected to meet on such unhallowed ground, so the gathering was shifted to another building . . .

Let’s set aside that the Longstreet Theater has been the scene previously of numerous public occasions in which at least two Presidents of the United States, the current Pope, and numerous other world dignitaries have appeared. No one ever complained about the name before.

What strikes most is the astounding ignorance of, and contempt for American history that the political leaders and the press exhibit on this and similar occasions. They act as if some dark and terrible secret had been discovered.

But it gets funnier. The carnival has been moved to the theater in a nearby campus building, Drayton Hall. I do not know which member of the Drayton family Drayton Hall is named. I do know the Draytons, who produced prominent leaders from the Revolution to the Southern War, including a Confederate general, were for generations among the largest slaveholders of South Carolina.

Drayton Hall is bordered by College Street, Main Street, Greene Street, and Sumter Street. Greene Street is named for General Nathaniel Greene of the American Revolution, who was awarded a large Georgia plantation for his services (the plantation on which, by the way, Eli Whitney perfected the cotton gin.

Sumter is named for General Thomas Sumter, one of the heroic South Carolina partisan leaders of the Revolution. He was also a large slaveholder and as an old man in the late 1820s advocated the secession of South Carolina from the Union.

In fact, it is not easy to find a building built on the campus before the 20th century, or a street in the central area of the capital city of South Carolina that is not named for a slaveholder or secessionist!”

(Defending Dixie, Essays in Southern History and Culture, Clyde N. Wilson, Foundation for American Education, 2006, excerpts pp. 321-322)

4 comments:

  1. Those freaks who pulled down the little Confederate statue
    in Durham, all the charges were dismissed. They pick and
    choose the laws they're going to enforce just like in
    South Park, Florida.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Looking at the DA, I'm not surprised, unfortunately. It's amazing that after about 150 years, the Confederacy is still responsible for all the black's problems today. Mind boggling......

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  2. Echols stated "noble intent" regarding the criminals. A
    very disturbing scene; like wild savages. Black's problems
    go way back before they ever arrived in America.

    http://wlos.com/news/local/all-charges-dropped-in-case-of-toppled-confederate-monument-02-21-2018
    They never cared about the Confederacy - some marxists planted
    the idea. Marxists judge.

    ReplyDelete