-Caveat Lector- Published on Friday, January 12, 2001 in the Boston Globe The Confederacy's Favorite Nominee by Derrick Z. Jackson IF THE SENATE Judiciary Committee straightens its backbone rather than slap the back of attorney general nominee John Ashcroft, we may get to see why his hallucinations about Bull Run will make him a bull in the china closet of civil rights. Any serious line of questioning should start like this: Senator Ashcroft, you praised Southern Partisan magazine for ''defending patriots like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.'' Let's explore what you meant by that. Senator, why are you, in the year 2001, praising Davis, the president of the Confederacy, who personally italicized the portions of the Constitution that preserved slavery? Why do you laud a man who said white superiority over African-Americans was ''stamped from the beginning, marked in decree and prophecy''? Why do you love a man whose vice president, Alexander Stephens, said the ''cornerstone'' of the Confederacy ''rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination, to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition''? Why do you complain about Davis being maligned by historians when Davis tried to rewrite history? He said on the floor of the US Senate in 1860 that ''Negroes formed but a small part of people of the southern states.'' For the record, in 1860 black people were 55 percent of the population in Davis's home state of Mississippi, 58 percent of South Carolina, and between a third to a half of the people of most of the rest of the slave states. Now, senator, I am reading this sentence again, where you say we've all got to stand up or else we'll be taught that Davis, Lee, and Jackson were subscribing their ''sacred fortunes'' to some ''perverted'' agenda. That sounds a lot like what Davis said in his first Confederate inaugural address when he said the North ''would pervert that most sacred of all trusts.'' Senator, since we know that that sacred trust was slavery, what is it that you are trying to say? Does that mean you will not investigate charges of black voter fraud in Florida? Senator, let's move on to Lee. You say today's history books ''make no mention of Lee's military genius!'' Why is that so important to you when the same Lee called Mexicans ''idle worthless and vicious''? Why do you praise a man who said as he exterminated Indians: ''The whole race is extremely uninteresting ... they are not worth it.'' Where can we find Lee's genius in saying that killing Indians was ''the only corrective they understand and the only way in which they can be taught to keep within their own limits''? Why is Lee so good when he justified the ripping of black people out of Africa to enslave them by saying, ''The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race''? Why does Lee need to be revered when his troops, like other Confederate divisions, hated free black people so much that they sometimes massacred defeated black Union soldiers even though they had thrown down their arms in surrender? Senator, may I read you a passage from the new book, ''The Making of Robert E. Lee,'' by Michael Fellman? A Confederate major wrote in 1864 after one battle, ''such slaughter I have not witnessed upon any battlefield anywhere. Their men were principally Negroes and we shot them down until we got near enough and then run them through with the bayonet ... We was not very particular whether we captured or killed them, the only thing we did not like to be pestered burying the heathens.'' Senator, why do you praise Lee when, after the Civil War, he actively resisted Reconstruction? Lee said white people are ''inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of the country in the hands of the Negro race.'' He said black people lacked the ''intelligence ... necessary to make them safe repositories of political power.'' Senator, thank you, but in light of your reverence for such men, we'll be asking President-elect Bush to appoint a less antebellum attorney general. As you leave, stop by the front desk. The clerk will arrange for you to participate in a Civil War reenactment in the slave state of your choice. Please send us a photo of your experience. We would love to see who you dressed up as. We're betting against Frederick Douglass. =A9 Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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