The Confederacy is rising again in east Texas

[struggle4progress]

By JOHN SAVAGE
August 10, 2016

... “I had five grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy, and they were religious people who didn’t treat black people badly,” Toungate said, earnestly, his Southern drawl growing thicker as he spoke. “They were fighting for states’ rights, not slavery.” According to Toungate, before secession, the federal government mistreated Southern states by issuing unfair tariffs. “Thirty thousand blacks fought for the Confederacy because they loved their masters,” Toungate argued, offering the fact as proof that “slavery could not have caused the war” ...

... Texas’ Ordinance of Secession ... which officially separated Texas from the Union in 1861, declared that African-Americans were “rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race.” It says that Texas seceded because non-slave-holding states “demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the Confederacy.” The document does not mention tariffs or any state right other than the right to own black people.
Toungate waved off the document when I showed it to him later. “People have a distorted view of the Confederacy because liberal Northern historians wrote the history books,” he insisted. But these are primary sources, I noted, the words of the Confederates themselves. Toungate went silent for a beat, and then changed the subject. “I’m sick of the federal government wasting money,” he said, and “people living off welfare” ...

The Texas Education Knowledge and Skills guidelines for teaching the Civil War offer a crystal-clear example of how the state curriculum politicizes history, says Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat who served on the State Board of Education from 1984 to 2012. The history standards, she told me, “whitewash slavery.” In a 2011 report, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank focused on education policy, echoed that opinion, calling the TEKS social studies standards a “politicized distortion of history.” “Slavery … is largely missing,” the report reads. “Sectionalism and states’ rights are listed before slavery as causes of the Civil War, while the issue of slavery in the territories—the actual trigger for the <Civil Wa> — is never mentioned at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping; the term ‘Jim Crow’ never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is only mentioned in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces” ...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/texas-confederacy-rising-again-214159

[cloudbase]

1. In some cities like Vidor and Mineola,

it never disappeared.

[tonyt53]

2. Problem is, for starters, that 30K didn't do it because they loved the Confederacy.

TX has erased factual history and replaced it with their own "white" version and are using that version to teach students in schools.

[elephant hunter]

3. From time to time I hear talk about slaves fighting for the confederacy...

... and I think it is more of the disinformation people like Toungate put forth to justify their unjustifiable positions. I am pretty certain that Bruce Catton covered it in his history of the Civil War and that Lee was unable to attend a meeting of Confederate leaders to discuss the possibility because he was too busy surrendering to Grant. Therefore while it was considered at the absolute end of the war it was never put into practice. If any of you know otherwise, please correct me but only if you can document your correction.

[Aristus]

4. It's nonsense.

One can equate "fighting for" with bearing arms and serving in combat.

The African-Americans who served in the Confederate Army, on the other hand, were forced to perform menial, servile tasks like cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. They weren't paid, and they weren't offered manumission as a reward for service. So they were simply slaves who labored for soldiers instead of for plantation owners.

[modrepub]

9. You are correct

Slaves actually fighting in the Confederate Armies wasn't "approved" until very late in the war (and under much protest). Slaves, however, were pressed into service building fortifications, working in arms factories and other activities that could be considered serving the Army. They weren't paid (and if they were their pay was given to their masters). Most were confiscated by the government for short periods of time. There were laws regarding this act that were designed to limit the number of slaves and time under government confiscation and at what rate to reimburse the slave owner if a slave was killed or seriously injured performing work for the government. Person's holding large numbers of slaves could be exempt from government confiscation, which often caused resentment from other slave owners subject to government confiscation.

I don't think I've ever seen an analysis of the impact of slave confiscation on southern army strength. We've all seen numbers pointing to a numerical superiority of northern armies over southern armies. I wonder if including the number of slaves "working" in the southern armies during campaigns brought their numbers more in par with the northern armies they opposed. This could explain why the southern armies who were generally out numbered by their Union counterparts fared so well in may of the battles fought during the civil war.

[marble falls]

5. "Toungate went silent for a beat, and then changed the subject."....

Classic symptom of cognizant dissonance.

[radicalliberal]

8. It's a classic sign of intellectual dishonesty.

The Germans have done a far better job of coming to terms with their Nazi past than Americans have with regard to our racist past. As a white Texan, I have no respect at all for so-called neo-Confederates. There's precious little, if anything, separating them from the KKK.

[CarrieLynne]

6. how does one have 5 grandfather's w/o inbreeding?

[Nitram]

7. My question exactly.

Sounds pretty kinky to me. Talk about the shallow end of the gene pool.

[Paladin]

10. ....states' rights, not slavery."

Yeah, I heard the same sort of neo-confederate bullshit when I was growing up in Texas. Luckily I was raised better than to believe in such feeble, hate-drenched propaganda. Go back under your rock, Mr. Toungate---and if you're any relation to the Toungates I knew in Austin, take them along with you.

[marble falls]

11. Except the State's right they were defending hardest was about owning slaves.

[area51]

12. The Confederacy lives on ...

... in Brazil.