That most un-civil war.....

Let me be very clear~our uncivil War between the States was not fought over Slavery! I don’t care what school you attended, or what kind of teacher you had…if you were taught that it was over slavery, you were taught a lie!

Although slavery, also known as property rights, was an issue, the act of secession was not about slavery!  It really was about States Rights!  And not the right to own slaves as some glib proponents of the slavery theory will attest.

Rather, it was the economy…or what political hacks are often wont to say, “It’s the economy, Stupid!”  

The southern economy was an agrarian one while the more populous northern states were basically manufacturing. The north had a ‘buy American’ agenda, therefore they wanted high tariffs on foreign goods making them more expensive than American products.  The south wanted low as possible tariffs so that foreign markets would buy more of King Cotton.   Problem was, the north had a larger and growing populace that, over time, would give them an advantage in Congress which southern leaders likened to taxation without representation, the stone upon which the rebellion of 1776 was founded.

So while it’s true that slavery was a major issue of the time, a political football, if you will, it was not the deciding factor that precipitated secession. Still, the system of government was working, citizens voting in individual States to classify their State as either ‘free’ or ‘slave’.  It was a fractious time and feelings ran high on both sides.

Factions came to blows in the Assemblies of many States.  Armed insurrectionists like John Brown fomenting revolution, abolitionists urging Slaves to flee their shackles for the safety of ‘Free States’, the famed underground railroad that funneled runaways to the north.  The fact is, the practice of slavery was ending. It had fallen into disrepute. England had abandoned the practice. Ministers of almost every church railed against it from their pulpits.  Not only was it unpopular, but it had become increasingly expensive to own slaves.  The large plantation owners, a relatively small group, were the primary business still using slave labor and finding it less profitable every year. There was a percentage of small farmers that owned slaves, usually less than a dozen, and that practice of maintaining mostly household labor was simply too expensive to continue. It was becoming economically more feasible throughout the south to hire immigrant labor that did not have to be fed and housed. Indeed, most of the public works throughout the southern states at that time employed Irish immigrants.

Still, as history books point out, slavery was in deed and fact an issue written into the Constitution of the Confederacy.  But, while it was just one issue, slavery was and is a very big deal for ‘black’ Americans.  And rightfully so.  They tend, therefore, to view the War in a very personal manner.  More so than most Americans.  Truth is, most Americans of today are descended from immigrants that came here after that war and simply don’t have a dog in the fight.

Of the three quarters of a million men who were killed in that conflict, almost half of them fought for the Confederacy.  And the majority of them by far, 95% or more, were not slave owners.  Nor were they fighting for the sheer joy of putting their lives and property on the line for a handful of slave owning rich men.  No, they fought and died for the same reason that their forebears had fought and died in our Revolutionary War. 

The flags they carried are of little importance except for the historical significance to their decedents and while critics are right to point out that they do not belong above the Capitol buildings that are supposed to represent every citizen, there is a place for them as there should be for all our historical icons, good, bad, or otherwise.

I’ve long been a proponent of teaching history, especially American history, warts and all.  America really has been a beacon of hope for the entire world and, as an American, its a position that I’d like to see continue. Teaching our students the flaws that accompanied our growth as a nation should not be a bad thing, rather a warning for future generations that history ignored is often history repeated.   

"Mine eyes have seen the glory..."

"Old times are not forgotten...."

This whole argument thing over the battle flag of the Confederacy is something else, don’cha think?  I mean, the darn war was ended in 1865 and the south lost ’n as ever’body knows, the winner gets to make the rules…

Of course, it’d probably help if all the schools in this fair country of ours ‘ud teach history the way it actually happened, warts ’n all…but, we had us a President back a few years ago, one of them progressive liberals, by the name of Woodrow Wilson ’n he decided that he didn’t like the way our history wuz taught so he, with the power of the Presidency (sound familiar) did something about it…he had it re-written…not a lot, y’understand…just a little bit…just enuff to clean up our hist’ry books by taking out some of the more heinous things that happened…ah well, for the common good, y’know….

I didn’t find out about all this while I wuz in school…like durn near ever’one else, I tho’t history wuz pretty darn boring, all about names ’n dates ’n places ‘such…I didn’t know that a whole lot of warts had been removed courtesy of progressive liberalism…

Anyway, this flap over the Confederate flag is sumthin’ of a tempest in a teapot,  most of us regular Americans being far too busy trying to keep up with the payments ’n such…

I hear people on television talking about ‘institutional racism’ ’n stuff…it ain’t true, of course, being against the law and the Department of Justice eager to prosecute anyone they can that might be guilty of it….

People talk about racism ’n bigotry ’n tolerance ’n intolerance ’til a body just wants to plug up his ears ’n run away somewhere where it’s summertime ’n the fish are jumping...

Tolerance is a funny thing, being sometimes good ’n sometimes bad ’n figgering out the difference c’n give a body pause…

Now, I’ll testify that it’s a whole lot better t’be loved than t’be just tolerated…but, sometimes, ‘specially in a marriage, being tolerated is asking a lot of your partner, ’n other times, just being tolerated is enough, ‘specially if you happen t’be in the wrong, ’n as I approach that magical age of…well, old, I realize that I spent a lot of my life just being wrong about so many darn things….

Intolerance, on the other hand, is just plain bad…well, that’s how it’s portrayed today…today, when our United States are at loggerheads with each other, or at least seem t’be...

Now, when a progressive liberal behaves intolerantly, they’re apt to rename it ’n call it zero tolerance becuz intolerance is just plain bad…so when a six year old brings a toy cap pistol to school for show ’n tell, the teacher calls the cops who come and arrest the six year old, putting him in handcuffs and transporting him in a patrol car to jail where he’s photographed sitting on a wooden bench while various ’n sundry cops in battle gear pretend to interrogate him on suspicion of terrorism...

The actual fact of the matter is that while sometimes tolerance is good ’n intolerance is bad, other times ever’thing just gets all turned around….what in my somewhat wayward youth, we often referred to as ‘bass-ackward’….

As a young person, it’s really difficult to know the difference…sometimes, it’s difficult to know the difference when you’re old but usually by the time you get old, you just don’t give a big rats behind (or patootie) if I use the language of a favored niece….you notice how I cleaned it up for those folk who don’t hold with what they consider to be prurient language…just another form of discrimination that kids have to learn how to deal with…(back in the day when I wuz a reasonably tolerant father, before I became a curmudgeon, I told my children that when they felt they were grown up enough to swear, they should come to me ’n I’d teach them all the swear words that I knew ’n what they meant ’n how best to use ‘em~none of them ever did that having learned how to swear in the time-honored manner of ever’body else)...

Discrimination is the same kind’a thing…sometimes, it’s good t’be discriminating; other times, t’ain’t!

Now, you take bias…you c’n have a bias for something or ag’in it; it all depends on which side of the creek you happen to find yourself...

Now, for some reason, I almost always find m’self on the ‘wrong’ side of the durn creek….Ain’t at all sure how that happens but I feel like I been stuck there since I was a boy running the streets of Beattyville…

Step back in time.....

A little explanation...

...A year or so ago, most of my accumulated writings (novels, poems, musings, etc) were lost in the ether of the internet, thanks to my own stupidity of not having hard copies...recently, whils't rummaging through an old box full of papers 'n stuff, I stumbled across some early stuff...this soliloquy was written when I was thirty-two years old so if it seems young 'n stupid, well, quoting Mr. Red Skelton, "I dood it!"

Sunday Morning Soliloquy

  (45 years ago) 

Sunday morning at a crowded breakfast table with newspapers, the funnies and stories of the beautiful people and places, the living room all junky after sitting up ’til 1:30  in the morning watching the stupid television(?)...

Sunday morning with the radio tuned to an FM station and the kids s till in their nightgowns, me in pajamas that I began wearing when I was thirty, my wife dressed but uncombed.  Ashtrays full, empty pop bottles, I quit drinking almost two months ago, tripped over the goddam vacuum cleaner on my way to shave and shower.

Reverse image, mirror, mirror, on the wall, you look like a hippy, an almost thirty-two year old hippy, that ain’t so bad, you don’t look that old, why shave?  What age do you have to be before you look in the mirror and say goddam you’re getting old.  Don’t feel old though, feel just like it was yesterday coming home for the air force, twenty-one years old and hungover, ten goddam years ago and all you wanted to do was drink and fuck and be cool, drive around all day in an old car with a bottle of beer and look at the world.  That’s about all the hippies want.  Must have been before your time, you and your buddies, always too late or too early, don’t shave, man, fuck it, in a beard, you’d look like Jesus and that’s why hippies and beatniks, etcetera, don’t bathe too often, if you get clean, you feel like shaving off your scruffy beard…..need to get out of this bathroom, house too.  Run away before too late, run you sonofabtich you, where to run, to go, because happiness is narcotic stopping time photograph, suspended in happiness is sort of death, I suppose and who in hell wants to die just to be happy, life is more than happy, happy will come and go, all experience and come again, a little different but almost recognizable, you idiot, on a Sunday morning before you shower and shave and converse with a goddam mirror the meaning of life…..

Age is a funny thing; if you don't mind, it prob'ly don't matter.....Mark Twain, I think....

Tolerance is a funny thing, being sometimes good ’n sometimes bad ’n figgering out the difference c’n give a body pause…

Now, I’ll testify that it’s a whole lot better t’be loved than t’be just tolerated…but, sometimes, ‘specially in a marriage, being tolerated is asking a lot of your partner, ’n other times, just being tolerated is enough, ‘specially if you happen t’be in the wrong, ’n as I approach that magical age of…well, old, I realize that I spent a lot of my life just being wrong about so many darn things….

Intolerance, on the other hand, is just plain bad…well, that’s how it’s portrayed today…today, when our United States are at loggerheads with each other, or at least seem t’be...

Now, when a progressive liberal behaves intolerantly, they’re apt to rename it ’n call it zero tolerance becuz intolerance is just plain bad…so when a six year old brings a toy cap pistol to school for show ’n tell, the teacher calls the cops who come and arrest the six year old, putting him in handcuffs and transporting him in a patrol car to jail where he’s photographed sitting on a wooden bench while various ’n sundry cops in battle gear pretend to interrogate him on suspicion of terrorism...

The actual fact of the matter is that while sometimes tolerance is good ’n intolerance is bad, other times ever’thing just gets all turned around….what in my somewhat wayward youth, we often referred to as ‘bass-ackward’….

As a young person, it’s really difficult to know the difference…sometimes, it’s difficult to know the difference when you’re old but usually by the time you get old, you just don’t give a big rats behind (or patootie, if I use the language of a favored niece….you notice how I cleaned it up for those folk who don’t hold with what they consider to be prurient language…just another form of discrimination that kids have to learn how to deal with…(back in the day when I wuz a reasonably tolerant father, before I became a curmudgeon, I told my children that when they felt they were grown up enough to swear, they should come to me ’n I’d teach them all the swear words that I knew ’n what they meant ’n how best to use ‘em~none of them ever did that having learned how to swear in the time-honored manner of ever’body else)...

Discrimination is the same kind’a thing…sometimes, it’s good t’be discriminating; other times, t’ain’t!

Now, you take bias…you c’n have a bias toward something or you c’n have a bias against; it all depends on which side of the creek you happen to find yourself...

Now, it seems that I almost always for some reason find m’self on the ‘wrong’ side of the durn creek….Ain’t at all sure how that happens but I feel like I been stuck there since I was a boy running the streets of Beattyville…