Virginia Sen. Dick Black says no Confederate soldiers died fighting for slavery

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Virginia Sen. Dick Black says no Confederate soldiers died fighting for slavery

Thursday, Sep. 14, 2017 by Trevor Baratko

State Sen. Dick Black (R-13th) says no Confederate soldiers died fighting for slavery, a comment described by a George Mason University scholar as “at the very least, a misleading overstatement.” ... The local lawmaker's statement, sent in an email to Republican colleagues, comes amid a national discussion about race, symbolism and the propriety of Confederate monuments in public places in modern-day America.

One such monument stands in the center of Leesburg, the largest town in Virginia {sic. The writer means Loudoun County. The paper will fix that.} and the seat of the fastest-growing county in the South. The statue is placed on county property next to the Loudoun County Courthouse. ... Black represents a portion of Leesburg and Loudoun County.

The senator, in an email obtained by the Times-Mirror, says he opposes efforts to “cede authority to localities” in terms of deciding the fate of monuments. “That's just code for tearing them down,” he says. ... “None of those soldiers fought to defend slavery,” Black wrote. “Soldiers don't serve for things like that -- trust me, I know. Imagine the men of Picket's Charge {sic. He means Pickett's Charge. Sheesh, do I have to do everything around here?} thinking, 'I'm virtually certain to die in this attack, but I take solace in defending slavery.' Give me a break.”

Loudoun County Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) has requested that localities be given greater authority over monuments on public property. State law dictates monuments to war veterans cannot be removed. ... Black continued, “Only now, with racist hate groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, have Confederate memorials been viewed as political statements. Statue removal is solely an act of racial hatred and nothing else. Their objective is to tear our nation apart and destroy it. Do you sense the faintest patriotism in any of these clowns?”

[shraby]

1. He forgets they were also seceding from the United States of America and as such were traitors to

the country. Their reasoning was to secede because they wanted to keep slaves to do their work and by seceding, they could and would make their own laws regarding everything.

[GeoWilliam750]

9. The argument was not even about keeping slaves

But about the expansion of slavery into the territories not yet organized into states. This was a big deal so that slave states could continue their domination of the House of Representatives.

[ExciteBike66]

2. The guy wants to keep statues of folks who fought against the USA,

and yet he has the gall to claim that liberals are the ones lacking patriotism?

[Pope George Ringo II]

3. Virginia has a better argument than most

The state did actually vote *not* to secede over slavery, and then later did vote to secede over providing troops to put down the rebellion. From a narrow, very technical viewpoint, Virginia did not secede over slavery in the strictest sense of the words, whatever the Confederacy they joined may then have stood for. There's something there with Virginia making this claim, but I think if you're going to do it you have to be very precise hitting limited goals and your hands have to be very clean.

Now, if you want to claim that the Confederacy was sweetness and light, or that the "secede over slavery" crowd didn't then vote as a bloc to secede over the use of force, or if you want to start blabbing about "racist hate groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa" then that's another story. And the more he talked, the more his real agenda became clear.

[atreides1]

7. Virginia Ordinance of Secession (April 17, 1861)

Unfortunately the Ordinance fails to specifically mention the use of troops as a reason, but it does defend the rights of "Southern slaveholding States, even if briefly!

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Ordinance_of_Secession_April_17_1861




"... and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States."

[Pope George Ringo II]

11. The pro-slavery crowd didn't waver

But they really did vote against secession on April 4. Then there was the vote to send a delegation to Lincoln on April 6, and things went South (so to speak) after the Fort Sumter thing, some old-fashioned rabble-rousing, and Lincoln's April 15 call for 3 whole regiments to put down the rebellion which provoked the April 17 vote after things were already escalating. And we won't even get into West Virginia.

Call it two weeks, and they still invoked slavery. I concede it was thin, and I am cheerfully pointing out that the loudest voices are not the good guys, but the chain of events does clearly show that slavery may have been the foundation--but it was the issue of troops that finally pushed Virginia over the edge. That itty-bitty distinction is more than most of the CSA has. This idiot is just making too much of it.

Edit: "Oppression of the Southern slave-holding states" isn't too hard to read as referencing the call for troops, either.

[Iliyah]

4. They caused the deaths of over 600,000 and destroyed many parts of

the USA because of human property and yes wanted to secede with that property along with their own currency (some south states). They are still trying to re-write history and unfortunately their base is that gullible in believing it.

With so called "Christian" RWers, I feel book burning is coming real soon.

[left-of-center2012]

5. He supports Syria's President Assad

Googling him I see he wrote Syria's President Assad and thanked him for protecting
Christians and Jews,
and said Assad's enemies (that'd be us) are viscous war criminals.

[underpants]

6. Let's take a look at 4 CSA State's Declarations of Caucus for secession

http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/secession.html#Mississippi

[SeattleVet]

8. Perhaps he should to to Project Gutenberg and read...

"After the War: A Southern Tour May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866" by Whitelaw Reid

Quite an eye-opener. Yes, there is a lot of racist language in it (it was written by someone that was a part of a Union survey of the area, which included the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court). A lot of the southerners moved away from the coast and tried to continue slavery, whether in fact or as a brutal type of indentured servitude (pay a few cents a day, and charge for board, keeping the freedmen under their thumb).

The US put a fast stop to that when they found it.

Fascinating contemporary account of the state of the defeated rebel states, and people.

[muntrv]

10. Naw, they were just shootin at American soldiers! That's all!