The Supreme Court

[RogerDuke]

Ben Jones has been in the news lately. In fact he has an editorial in today's USA Today.

For those of you across the Atlantic Pond who may not know the history of the Confederate Flag here in the US, it was used by the South in the Civil War back in the mid 1860s and the South wanted to keep slaves (Although there was much more to the war than that).

Most people today only view the Confederate Flag as a sign of southern culture and heritage but a few still think it symbolizes slavery and should be banned from society. Ben Jones argues that it doesn't stand for slavery anymore because symbols, words, flags, etc change their meaning sometimes. He also argues that even George Washington owned slaves and we shouldn't outlaw anything affiliated with him.

Some people in Texas want to customize their license plates on their vehicles and want to have a small Confederate flag on it but Texas said they couldn't and now the case has gone to the highest court in the land, the U S Supreme Court.

Ben Jones is the official spokesman for the group defending the flag.

I should probably add that we aren't allowed to inject political views on the HazzardNet and I am simply stating facts and not opinions. If anybody responds to this post please be respectful and realize that the moderators could shut it down if you're not. Thanks

[Hobie Hartkins]

I'm not injecting politics or anything else. The War Between the States, or The War For Southern Independance, was NOT about slavery and had nothing to do with slavery! A cursory look at the facts is all that's needed to see that!

[Roth Potter]

I knew about the Flag being associated with Slavery and I know not much more, but I know it's not about that. It's about the Southern States and all they had fight for, even though I don't know what they did fight for. We don't get that in History lessons over here, all we hear here is about the Dutch Golden Age and the Discovery of Amerika (No it's not misspelled, that's Dutch).

[LizzyJackson-Davenport]

I'm not injecting politics or anything else. The War Between the States, or The War For Southern Independance, was NOT about slavery and had nothing to do with slavery! A cursory look at the facts is all that's needed to see that!

Could you please expand upon this?

[Hobie Hartkins]

Ok...here ya go folks....this is a simple run down of the entire situation but there's more to it than this, but this will give you the basic truth.

When the U.S. was founded, merchants from Europe, bought slaves from black slave holders in Africa. ( Yes, they enslaved their own people!) They got them very cheap and sold them on average for $1500! That's not in today's money, that's back then!! You had to be very rich to own slaves! As the slave trade progressed in this country ( U.S.A.), poor whites were having to compete with slave labor. When produce and animals were brought to market, the rich whites could sell more cheaper, than the poor whites, because of their cheap slave labor! ( Kind of like a mom and pop store vs. Walmart!) This resulted in resentment from the poor whites, trying to make a living. The people in both the North and the South, who opposed slavery, formed ant-slavery societies, which produced propaganda and had rallies, etc. to denounce slavery. I have the exact figures, somewhere, but off hand, there were like 132 anti-slavery societies in the south and about 90 some odd in the North! How could that be, if everybody in the south wanted slavery? People in the South hated slavery more than people in the North! This is because there were more slaves in the south, because the whites in the North couldn't get much work out of them, because of the cold! They were first generation Africans, right off the boat! When the whites couldn't get work out of the Africans, they spent so much money on, they put them on rafts and sent them down south and sold them to the southerners, because the climate in the South is like that in Africa, hot and humid. Hence the term, " They sold me down the river", meaning someone betrayed you. The south, was more of an agricultural land and the north had the developing industry, during the Industrial Revolution, where there was the development of the mass production line in factories, the structured workweek, and many mechanical inventions were made during this time. The Federal government took up taxes from all its citizens, just like today. Then they handed out the money to the states for bridges, roads, schools etc. The south was not receiving its fair share of the money that they were sending to the Federal government. The Federals were claiming the south was rural and country and didn't need as much of the money as the north, so they refused to give the south their fair share. This was around 1832 or so. This set up the cold war between the North and the South. This feud kept going until finally Lincoln stationed troops in the South and of course the south wasn't going to stand for that and....there ya go! The War Betweeen The States!! This is the politically INcorrect version. If you follow the fairy tales, then you know the evil south wanted slaves and the righteous north didn't and tried to save the poor slaves. However, less than 2% of the pop. could even afford slaves and the whites in the south hated slavery, because it threatened their livelyhood, so it wouldn't make sense to fight to the death for something you were against! In war,the victor writes the history and the Yankees won and they were in the wrong, so they covered their rear, by making up stuff that most people believe to this day, but common sense will show anyone that it just couldn't be the way they claimed it was!

I hope this helped! God Bless!

Edited April 10, 2015 by Hobie Harkins