Special to the Mirror by Joseph Corcoran
In addressing the removal of Civil War monuments , President Trump asked the question rhetorically, “Where is this going to end?”
Although President Trump says many very stupid things , I don’t think he should have been criticized for that one . I wonder about it myself .
We have a monument in Eastville commemorating the Civil War Confederate Soldiers from Northampton County who died fighting for the Confederacy . Is that monument OK or does it have to go ? One solution is to leave the monument be and change the wording on the plaque in front . I don’t mean that as a flippant remark .
The monument could be a remembrance of the most horrible time in our history without glorifying the participants on the side of the vanquished .
But there are many other monuments that will very difficult to deal with . How about the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney in The Baltimore Inner Harbor . The Taney was the last ship to return from fighting the Japanese in WW2 . The ship is a monument to the brave crew but it was named for Chief Justice Roger Taney . The land-based monument to Roger Taney was just removed by order of Baltimore’s Mayor . ( Taney wrote the infamous opinion that among other things declared that freed black slaves could not be citizens of the USA .)
So you get my point . Trump’s question was not so stupid .
Raymond oOtton says
Here’s some questions.
In 2008 the Democrats held all the power so why didn’t they take care of Confederate statuary issue at that time?
This is not an issue that makes the top 20 for the average American yet it is now the top issue for hyper-partisan Democrats. Why is that?
Stuart Bell says
Modern men, who would have stopped this foolishness in it’s tracks 30 years ago, have lost their voice and will to fight. They are more interested in the ‘Four Fs’:
1) Football
2)Facebook
3)Food
4)Fornicating
They truly have been conditioned to think….’I can’t say that’. Men today will call the police like they used to call their Mommy to protect them. Then they call a lawyer like they used to call their daddies. Sad. Most call their wives, ‘The Boss’. Sick. They worship children and dogs, not strength and honor.
Paul Plante says
Yes, the book burners and scrub brush wielders and history revisionists and iconoclasts of the POLITICAL CORRECTNESS MOVEMENT who are going to tell everybody in America how they have to think really do have their work cut out for them as they use threats of acts dangerous to human life that are intended to intimidate and coerce the civilian population of the United States of America and to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, such as was the case in Baltimore when the cringing, crawling, craven Gov. Larry Hogan capitulated to the howling mob and in the middle of the night, a time when the skulkers are out, and had the Taney statue removed from public view so that we can no longer be politically contaminated by the sight of him which serves to remind us that unlike the crap that Hillary Clinton spewed to the American Legion touting “American Exceptionalism” on Sept. 1, 2016, the United States is not an “exceptional” nation, at all, but a flawed one, and that is not due to Roger Taney by no means.
“The mob howled at me and I got so scared I peed my pants, and being so scared and frightened of them, I then ordered the statue of Roger Taney to be taken down in the middle of the night when honest, loyal Americans were home asleep in their beds!”
There is the pitiful governor of Maryland speaking to the history books as they are being re-written by the howling mob.
As to Roger Taney, who died reviled by America in a state of poverty, it is pure BULL**** that Roger Taney was solely or even partly responsible for starting the civil war, given that associate justices James Moore Wayne, John Catron, Peter Vivian Daniel, Samuel Nelson, Levi Woodbury, Robert Cooper Grier and John Archibald Campbell all joined with Taney in the Dred Scott decision, while that is now what the book burners and history revisionists and the craven cowardly governor of Maryland now require us to believe, that Roger Taney was responsible for the civil war, as if we were all stupid children huddled at their feet who simply lack the sense to know better, when it is the book burners and history revisionists and iconoclasts who know nothing at all of American history, yet deem themselves superior to us in every way, just like Hillary Clinton.
It happens to be basic schoolboy/schoolgirl history in America that the roots of the civil war were well into the fertile ground of America at the time ratification of the United States Constitution was being debated in 1787, when Roger Taney, who was born March 17, 1777 was one (1) year old.
Consider Noah Webster in “A Citizen of America: An Examination Into the Leading Principles of America” on October 17, 1787, when Roger Taney was 1 year and 7 months old, and not yet a United States supreme court justice:
But, say the enemies of slavery, negroes may be imported for twenty-one years.
This exception is addressed to the quakers; and a very pitiful exception it is.
The truth is, Congress cannot prohibit the importation of slaves during that period; but the laws against the importation into particular states, stand unrepealed.
An immediate abolition of slavery would bring ruin upon the whites, and misery upon the blacks, in the southern states.
The constitution has therefore wisely left each state to pursue its own measures, with respect to this article of legislation, during the period of twenty-one years.
end quote
Whether in retrospect that was wise or not, a question for the philosophers to debate, right there is where the seeds of the American civil war were sown, seventy-four (74) years before sunrise on April 12, 1861, when a shell exploded above Fort Sumter signaling the start of the hostilities attributed to Roger Taney between northern abolitionists and southern defenders of the “state’s rights” Noah Webster discusses above.
And then there was “Crito” by Samuel Hopkins in the Providence Gazette and Country Journal on October 6, 1787, again when Roger Taney was a little more than a year old:
But until this be done, this business (slavery) must be unavoidably viewed in the most disagreeable, odious, horrible light, by us.
And we must be suffered to consider, and lay before the public some of the great aggravations which attend the continuation of this practice by us in these American States.
When the inhabitants of these States found themselves necessarily involved in convention with Britain, in order to continue a free people, and had the distrusting prospect of a civil war, they, being assembled in Congress, in October 1774, did agree and resolve in the following words: “We will neither import nor purchase any slave imported, after the first day of December next: After which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade; and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures, to those who are concerned in it.”
This reasonable, noble and important resolution, was approved by the people in general, and they adhered to it through the war; during which time there was much publicly said and done, which was, at least, an implicit and practical declaration of the unreasonableness and injustice of the slave trade, and of the slavery in general.
It was repeatedly declared in Congress, as the language and sentiment of all these States, and by other public bodies of men, “that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
“That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness:“
“That all men are born, equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, among which are the defending and enjoying life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
“By the immutable laws of nature, all men are entitled to life and liberty.” etc. etc.
The Africans, and the blacks in servitude among us, were really as much included in these assertions as ourselves; and their right, unalienable right to liberty, and to procure and possess property, is as much asserted as ours, if they be men.
And if we have not allowed them to enjoy these unalienable rights, but violently deprive them of liberty and property, and are still taking, as far as in our power, all liberty, and property from the nations in Africa, we are guilty of a ridiculous wicked contradiction and inconsistence: and practically authorize any nation or people, who have power to do it, to make us their slaves.
The whole of our war with Britain was a contest for Liberty: By which we, when brought to the severest test, practically adhered to the above assertions, so far as they concerned ourselves, at least, and we declared, in words and actions, that we chose rather to die than to be slaves, or have our liberty and property taken from us.
We viewed the British in an odious and contemptible light, purely because they were attempting, by violence, to deprive us, in some measure, of those our unalienable rights.
But if at the same time, or since we have taken or withheld these same rights from the Africans, or any of our fellow men, we have justified the inhabitant of Britain in all they have done against us, and declared that all the blood which has been shed in consequence of our opposition to them, is chargeable on us.
If we do not allow this, and abide by the above declarations, we charge ourselves with the guilty of all the blood which has been shed by means of the slave trade; and of an unprovoked and most injurious conduct in depriving innumerable Africans of their just, unalienable rights, in violently taking and withholding from them all liberty and property; holding them as our own property, and buying and selling them, as we do our horses, and cattle; reducing them to the most vile, humiliating, and painful situation.
This whole contest, it must be again observed, was suited to bring and keep in our view, and impress on our minds, a deep and lasting sense of the worth of liberty, and the unrighteousness of taking it from any man; and consequently of our unrighteousness and cruelty towards the Africans.
If it were known, that the wise Governor of the world had determined to take some method to convince us of the injustice of the slave trade, and of the slavery of the Africans, had manifest his displeasure with us for it, and use means suited to reform us, could we conceive of any measures which might be better suited to answer this end, than those which have actually taken place in this war considered in all the circumstances of it.
It would be thought impossible that every one who then was, or had been, active in reducing the Africans to the abject and suffering state in which they are in the West Indies, and been among us, should not reflect upon it with self-condemnation, regret and horror, had not experiment proved the contrary.
And while we execrated the British for taking out men, and ordering them to be transported to the East Indies, and for crowding so many of our people into prisons, and prisonships, where they died by the thousands, without any relief or pity from them, was it possible for us not to reflect upon our treatment of the Africans, in transporting so many thousands of them from their native country, to a land of slavery, while multitudes, being crowded and shackled in our ships, have died on their passage, without one to help or pity them?
Could any avoid seeing the righteous hand of GOD stretched out against us and retaliating our unrighteous, cruel treatment of them, in a way suited to strike conviction into our minds of our guilt, and of the righteous displeasure of Heaven with us for these horrid deeds which had been done by us?
Surely we had good reason to espouse the language of the brethren, of Joseph in a similar case: “We are verily guilty concerning our brethren, the Africans, in that we saw the anguish of their souls, under our cruel bards, and they besought us, and cried for pity; but we would not hear: Therefore is this distress come upon us.”
Is it possible that the Americans should, after all this, and in the face of all this light and conviction, and after they had obtained liberty and independence for themselves, continue to hold hundreds of thousands of their fellow men in the most abject slavery?
And not only so, but notwithstanding their resolutions and declarations, renew and carry on the slave trade; and from year to year convey thousands of their fellow-men from the native country, to a state of the most severe and perpetual bondage:
This would have been thought impossible was it not known to be true in fact.
And who can describe the aggravated guilt which the Americans have brought upon themselves by this?
If this was an Heaven daring crime, of the first magnitude, before the war with Britain, how much more criminal must we be now, when, instead of regarding the admonitions of Heaven, and the light and conviction set before us, and repenting and reforming, we persist in this evil practice:
What name shall be given to their daring presumption and hardiness, who, from a thirst for gold, have renewed this trade in slaves, in the bodies and souls of men, and of those whom they employ in this unhuman horrid business!
“Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder, in the stores of Heaven,
Red with wrath, to blast these men.”
who owe their riches to such aggravated, detestable crimes, now necessarily involved in carrying on this trade!
end quote
There, as any schoolchild in America used to know before abject, pitiful, benighted, cowardly, craven ignorance became the main subject taught to schoolchildren in this America of today, was where the lines in the sand were drawn that 74 years later caused what would be known in the south as the War of Northern Aggression and in the north as the War of the Rebellion.
And Roger Taney, like all the boys in grey and butternut brown and the boys in blue who died in droves in the conflict, was just one more bit player in a huge drama he had no control over, federal judge or not, just as those boys who died in droves had no control over their own lives once the bullets and shot and shell started flying.
So the question is, why doesn’t the cringing, crawling, craven governor of Maryland and the book burners who call themselves the righteous Americans, while calling the rest of us a “basket of deplorables,” notwithstanding that many of us fought and bled to give them the right to be as stupid as a box of rocks, know any of this basic American history?
As to removing all traces of Roger Taney from living memory, the revisionists still have a statue of Taney in the United States Supreme Court to tear down, and then they have to go to Taney County in Missouri to get that name changed to something more pleasing to the howling mob, and there is a Taney street in Baltimore that needs its name changed, along with a Taney street in Philadelphia.
To close, to be truthful, I was never a fan of Spiro “Spiggy” Agnew, but this revisionist crap we are being confronted with today reminds me of what Spiggy said while speaking to the California Republican state convention on September 11, 1970, the year I got back from Viet Nam defending freedom of thought and the liberty of conscience that allows us American citizens the right to see history in a light different to that of these ignorant howlers and book burners who skulk about in the night as statues of Americans they don’t like are torn down:
“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.”
“They have formed their own 4-H Club — the ‘hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.’”
While that phrase is generally attributed to Spiggy Agnew, it was written by White House speechwriter William Safire and in the words of commentator Will Bunch:
“The words that William Safire penned and that Spiro Agnew mouthed actually had enormous impact that has lasted until this day.”
“They helped foster among conservatives and the folks that Nixon called ‘the silent majority’ a growing mistrust of the mainstream media, a mistrust that grew over two generations into a form of hatred.”
“It also started a dangerous spiral of events — journalists started bending backwards to kowtow to their conservative critics, beginning in the time of Reagan, an ill-advised shift that did not win back a single reader or viewer on the right.”
“Instead, it caused a lot of folks on the left and even the center to wonder why the national media had stopped doing its job, stopped questioning authority.”
end quotes
Because they became too ignorant and lazy and focused on the “narrative” is why.
Which brings us to today as we very much seem on the verge of another chapter of that civil war.
tony says
folks i’ll be brief, this stature to topple the confederacy is a brief start to change our way of life, next it will be all statures, then the left will begin to terminate the European Cultures, then all religions, elimination of certain people and finally Chinese style Communisom.
If you don’t believe me read up on the cultural revolution in China after world war 2, ours is a copy cat of the event that’s happening at this moment in our slow disappearing of our proud history of 1776
Thomas Powell, STCM, USCG (Ret) says
The U.S.C.G. Cutter Taney is the LAST ship still afloat that was at Pear Harbor on 7 Decomber, 1941. I served on two of her Sister Ships, INGHAM and DUANE.
Paul Plante says
It should not be lost on any of us as American citizens, starting with these holier-than-thou, self-righteous prigs in the AMERICAN POLITICAL CORRECTNESS MOVEMENT who are taking it upon themselves to be our thought police, telling us all what we can think and believe, that like it or not, when Roger Taney put pen to parchment and wrote the Dred Scott decision in 1856, he was doing so as a United States supreme court justice, which makes Dred Scott LAW OF THE LAND.
This is how Dred Scott starts:
DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD, (1856)
No. 38
Decided: December 1, 1856
THIS case was brought up, by writ of error, from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Missouri.
It was an action of trespass vi et armis instituted in the Circuit Court by Scott against Sandford.
Prior to the institution of the present suit, an action was brought by Scott for his freedom in the Circuit Court of St. Louis county, (State court,) where there was a verdict and judgment in his favor.
On a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State, the judgment below was reversed, and the case remanded to the Circuit Court, where it was continued to await the decision of the case now in question.
The declaration of Scott contained three counts: one, that Sandford had assaulted the plaintiff; one, that he had assaulted Harriet Scott, his wife; and one, that he had assaulted Eliza Scott and Lizzie Scott, his children.
Sandford appeared, and filed the following plea:
And the said John F. A. Sandford, in his own proper person, comes and says that this court ought not to have or take further cognizance of the action aforesaid, because he says that said cause of action, and each and every of them, (if any such have accrued to the said Dred Scott,) accrued to the said Dred Scott out of the jurisdiction of this court, and exclusively within the jurisdiction of the courts of the State of Missouri, for that, to wit: the said plaintiff, Dred Scott, is not a citizen of the State of Missouri, as alleged in his declaration, because he is a negro of African descent; his ancestors were of pure African blood, and were brought into this country and sold as negro slaves, and this the said Sandford is ready to verify.
Wherefore, he prays judgment whether this court can or will take further cognizance of the action aforesaid.
end quote
There, people, with all the hype and drama and pure unadulterated BULL**** put forth by the PC crowd removed, is the essence and heart and soul of Dred Scott – did he have standing in the Supreme Court of the United States or didn’t he?
It was a legal decision with great political ramifications either way, and the civil war was going to happen regardless of which way Taney answered that question, because either way, the Dred Scott decision was not going to end slavery, and until slavery was ended, the northern abolitionists were not going to be appeased.
End of story, which is schoolboy/schoolgirl history, or used to be, anyway, when children in America were required to not only be able to think, but to think critically.
Regardless of what Taney did in the Dred Scott case, which is a mere footnote to history now, armed abolitionist John Brown, whose body lies a’mouldering in his grave, famous in American history to those who were actually taught it for John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, was going to make that raid on Harper’s Ferry in an effort to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859, three years after Dred Scott, by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
If Dred Scott had been set free, that raid and its aftermath would still have happened, so Taney voting in favor of Dred Scott was not going to stop that raid, which is more responsible for starting the civil war than Taney’s decision in Dred Scott.
Ironically, perhaps, was the fact that Brown’s armed party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene, with the now thoroughly disgraced and soon to be totally forgotten Colonel Robert E. Lee in overall command of the operation to retake the arsenal.
And what Taney actually wrote as LAW OF THE LAND back then in 1856 is as follows:
“It is difficult at this day (1856, not 2017) to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.”
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
end quote
That, people, is what Judge Taney, like him or not, actually wrote in Dred Scott in 1856, back when people were not nearly so perfect as Hillary Clinton and her perfect in every way PC crowd are today, and what he was quoting was history as it was then, when slavery had been an institution for thousands of years.
Open up the Bible to 1 Timothy 6:1 for ready proof of that reality:
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.
end quote
Those words are said to date to either about the year 58 or 59, or about the year 64 or 65 AD, which is longer ago than Judge Taney and the Dred Scott decision by a couple of thousand years, and in a Christian nation like America was in 1856, why would those words from the Holy Bible be rejected by anyone in America, starting with the slave owners?
So it would seem that if these history revisionists really want to sweep away all vestiges of our slave-owning past, they had better start with a re-write of the Bible, and get all of the “be a good slave” crap out of there.
And since the most enduring symbol of slavery we have in this country is the Democrat party, hopefully these iconoclasts tearing down all these symbols of slavery like Roger Taney will tear down the Democrat party itself to finally remove that stain from our nation honor associated with the Democrat party’s long support of slavery that was more responsible for the civil war than anything Roger Taney did with Dred Scott.
tkenny says
“The ship is a monument to the brave crew but it was named for Chief Justice Roger Taney” Actually, that’s incorrect. The Taney is a Treasury class cutter. All of the cutters in this class were named for Secretaries of the Treasury. Taney was Secretary of the Treasury before becoming Chief Justice.
Jim says
You cannot pick and choose your history, destroying those uncomfortable parts of the history you find upsetting by burning or other means.
A couple of examples to consider.
1. The Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond served as the Capitol of the Confederacy from May of 1861 to the end of the Civil War, having been moved from the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery Alabama. What would those history deniers have us do with the building?
2. In 1864, The Union Army, needing a place to bury the war dead, identified the family estate Mary Anna (Custis) Lee, and the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee as the best available location for a cemetery. This cemetery is known today as Arlington National Cemetery, and is the final resting place for nearly 400, 000 War Heroes, Statesmen, and Political figures. How do we reconcile the hallowed ground where history truly comes alive, knowing the history of the land, and the previous resident?
Paul Plante says
Back at the time of this nation’s beginning, after throwing off the tyranny of a tyrant British king, James Madison of Virginia, called the “Father of the U.S. Constitution,” and a future United States president, had these words of caution to say to future generations of Americans leading right on up to us today:
“Do not separate text from historical background.”
“If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
end quotes
As we watch these efforts by these history revisionists to alter our view of American history, with its many faults we are supposed to learn from, not hide from, or have hidden from us, perhaps we should heed the message Jemmy Madison is trying to tell us here as to what the outcome of that history revision is going to be.
You don’t have to like American history to learn from it, and the more of it you don’t like, the stronger the incentive to not repeat it, since once history is made, as in the case of the civil war, that history cannot be taken back, and hiding it away from us makes us ignorant fools subject to the ravings of any demagogue who chooses to come along and lead us by the hand down the garden path of their choosing.
Something to think about, anyway, as the statues fall in the middle of the night when the skulkers are out and honest people are home asleep in their beds.
Paul Plante says
This of course raises the question of why should there be statues of anything in this country, because every statue is sure to be offensive to someone for some reason, and why should one group of Americans get to offend another group of Americans.
Why, for example, should people in America who have kept their marriage vows have to go to Washington, D.C. to be confronted with and offended by a monument to one of the most famous and well-known philanders in modern American history?
If some statues are coming down, then every single statue in America should come down with them, the philanderer among them.
It should be across the board – no more statues, period, end of that story.
That should then settle the matter, but it won’t of course, because once the statues are down, especially those associated with what is called by the holier-than-thou PC crowd the “Confederate Era,” which happens to be a chapter, however ugly all the way around, in the American history we are supposed to learn from so we won’t be stupid enough to repeat it, the holier-than-thous are going to look for other symbols of America’s racist past, which really never ended, and continues full steam ahead today, and the next thing I will know, they will be coming to smash my banjo to flinders so I can’t play Dixie anymore, and then they will be tearing up my sheet music because it offends them, and yes, even the banjo case will have to go, because that will remind the PC crowd of the banjo that was in it, and that would offend them, so it would have to go, which leads to the question, when is this infantile bull**** ever going to end?
Every single statue to a Confederate soldier of any rank, general right on down to the lowest private, is a statue to someone on the side of a losing cause.
That is the lesson we were supposed to learn from those statues when I was young.
We were supposed to be reminded of that conflict by th0se statues, so we wouldn’t be stupid enough to repeat it.
But we are that stupid, especially today, so we will repeat that chapter of American history and all the ugliness associated with it all over again, and that train left the station and is now on the roll, because once mobs find they have power, as was the case in Charlottesville, they aren’t going to relinquish it, they are going to want to exercise more of it, and chaos will be the result.
As to Arlington, that is a continuous reminder, or used to be, of all it was that Bobby Lee lost in that conflict, and there used to be a message for all Americans in that, but quite obviously not no more, because we have become a people incapable of learning – anything.
How pathetic.
Raymond Otton says
Hey, wasn’t Virginia named for Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen?
Wasn’t this the same queen who sponsored the expansion of the British slave trade into the American and Indian colonies?
Time for a name change?
How about you New York transplants?
Isn’t your state is named for James Stuart, Duke of York, one of the most successful slavers in colonial American history?
Another name change coming up?
Then there’s Washington DC and Washington State named a notorious slave owner.
Name changes?
It’s tiring being woke, am I right?
Paul Plante says
I just burned my sheet music to Dixie.
Just got too damn scared having it around, the fear that I might be caught with it and sent off to a re-education camp for harboring a symbol of America’s Confederate Era, because anybody who has seen a civil war movie knows them secesh carried banjos with them everywhere they went, and Stonewall Jackson’s foot cavalry played Dixie everywhere they went, which makes it a real symbol of our racist past, along with the name Virginia, and yes, get rid of New York state, as well, for there is a name associated with evil if there ever was one.
And those ten Army bases named after secesh officers!
When will the howling mob be at their gates demanding the removal of those Confederate Era symbols?
May we live in interesting times, and it looks like we are.
Paul Plante says
How ridiculous this is getting was just highlighted in a news story about ESPN preventing one of its sportscasters named Robert Lee, incidentally an Asian dude, from broadcasting the opening football game in Charlottesville.
I think they are hunting for someone to do the broadcast named George McLellan or maybe William Sherman to be much more politically correct.
Paul Plante says
AND NOW FOR AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE:
Please … I repeat … PLEASE!
DO NOT USE the $1, $5, $10, $20, $50 or the $100 bills in your possession as they have pictures of former slave owners on them, which is offensive to everyone here in the United States of America and the world too!
So send them all to me and I will dispose of them properly!
I repeat, do not just throw them away!
They need to be disposed of properly and I am Certified to do so … thanks
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.