Civil War

[Guest dimdem]

As the filibuster has reappeared recently , I find it also funny that they will mention that it was used to try an stop Civil Rights Legislation by Strom Thurmond.  The part they leave out is that Strom was a Democrat when he did this.  Also , they forget to mention that a higher percentage of Republican Senators voted for it than Democrats.

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Of course, if you know a little bit about American history you know that in this period many politicians were being elected as Democrats in the South whose views were really much more in line with the GOP (= the Republican Party). Why didn't they simply run as Republicans? Because the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, and until fairly recently the party was non grata in the former Confederacy. In a lot of Southern states, until fairly recently, the real elections were the Democratic primaries, because it was a given that the Democrat was going to win the general election.

So, anyway, the Democrats provided both the major impetus for the Civil Rights Act and the major opposition to it.

P.S. Hillary's home state is Illinois. Bill is from Arkansas.

Edited August 7, 2005 by dimdem

[Ralph A]

An interesting sidebar:

There is a statue of George Washington on the steps of the State Capitol building in Columbia, S.C., that was there at the time of the War. He holds in his hand a walking cane - it's broken off. It was broken during the "unpleasantness", as the War is referred to by genteel Southerners.

Who broke the cane? Sherman's troops in 1865. Why? Some say because the bluebellies did not feel that a statue of the Father of the Country should be on the steps of that building - where the Articles of Secession were promulgated (they were signed in Charleston, however, due to an outbreak of smallpox in Columbia).

The Yankees tried to remove the statue, but succeeded only in breaking off the cane. It is still broken to this day.

Here's the interesting part:

The Confederates left the statue there to begin with, because they believed that what they were trying to build was the sort of confederation of states that Washington and the Founding Fathers actually had in mind!

[Ralph A]

I went to school here (E Company!):

The Citadel

The Citadel fought as a unit in the US Civil War (known there as the War of Northern Aggression), and has 8 battle streamers on their standard (Battles).

Edited August 13, 2005 by Ralph A