You gotta love these commemorative events that on the surface seem to be about the Civil War, but are little more than forums for folks to complain about what they perceive to be our own oppressive government. They always seem to bring together a true cast of characters. In this case there is John Eidsmoe, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law Emeritus at the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, who goes on and on about the compact theory of government and states rights as an explanation for Alabama’s secession without ever mentioning slavery, as well as a woman who wears a t-shirt with Frederick Douglass, who she believes was an advocate for limited government. All of them were brought together as a result of one Patricia Godwin who believes that the decision on the part of Confederate forces to fire on Fort Sumter was carried out because “Lincoln bin laden had fortified the fort with arms and supplies.” By the way, you won’t find one black person in the audience. I guess they don’t remember secession as a crucial moment of freedom from an oppressive government. The best part of this video is the end when a few of the participants are asked what would have happened if the southern states had never seceded. Their responses are priceless. I guess I just find it funny that people who believe in limited government would identify so closely with the Confederacy. They must not know their history.
By the way, just in case you are interested in why the state of Alabama seceded, you will not find it in this video:
WHEREAS, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the Constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security; therefore,
Be it declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in Convention assembled , That the State of Alabama now withdraws, and is hereby withdrawn from the Union known as “the United States of America”, and henceforth ceases to be one of said United States, and is, and of right ought to be, a Sovereign and Independent State.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Patricia Godwin might have to explore her point a bit. What is a fort if not “fortified . . . with arms and supplies?” As for the Professor Emeritus, though the Thos Goode Jones School has been around since 1928, the American Bar Association only granted them full approval in December of 2009. Do we have the seeds of another Yankee imperialist dirigiste plot here?
Don't be too hard on them Marianne. They're just trying to have a good time.
Professor emeritus of Constitutional Law emertius? Maybe he was actually in the Redundancy Department of Redundancy.
He was quite eloquent. I guess only those liberal-secular need authorization from the ABA. No need when you have God on your side.
Patricia Godwin is best known in these parts for (a) erecting a monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest in a black neighborhood of Selma (0r “Zimbabwe on de Alabamy” as she likes to call it), and (b) her appearance in the NPS movie at the Selma-to-Montgomery March Visitor's Center, an occasion she describes succinctly as ” the mother of all orgies….They were told that they would have all the sex, all the liquor, and all the interracial relationships that they could stand.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Judge Roy Moore of Ten Commandments monument fame, whose foundation hosted the event, already is trying to distance himself from it: http://tinyurl.com/yasyedz
Yes, she seems like a real winner/nightmare.
Som many errors in such a short clip (I wish there could be a law against the abuse of the Scottish national flag, the saltire, by these yo-yos. <sigh>.) Of course, it appears that Ms. Godwin doesn't know or doesn't care that Ft. Sumter was already a federal fort, which made it federal property under the Constitution or that Anderson moved his men from the increasingly insecure Ft. Moultrie to Ft. Sumter while Buchanan was president and that Buchanan not only refused to order Anderson to abandon Sumter but mounted the first attempt to resupply Ft. Sumter in January with the failed “Star of the West” expedition. As for taxes and tariffs, the Walker tariff of 1857 brought tariff rates so low that it was blamed by many non-Southerners for the Panic of 1857 and ensuing depression.
I know nothing about Canadian history/politics, but I just assumed the professor was wrong given everything else he had to say.
Well, it looked like everyone had a good time and I kind of dig the Douglass t-shirt.
Ironically, the got them liquored up scenario was one of the two major rationales by which Confederates tried to eliminate the cognitive dissonance between their beliefs about black capabilities and bravery by black units in the US Army (the other was the logistically mind-boggling belief that the troops were forced to attack by whites with bayonets at their back.)
Kevin-In many, if not all, states, you can't even take the bar exam if you haven't graduated from an accredited law school unless you meet a whole lot of additional, rather severe requirements. The Pennsylvania rule for being eligible to take the bar exam is at http://www.pabarexam.org/bar_admission_rules/20…. I'll get off the bar exam topic now. I passed mine on the first try, but I still have some dandy PTSD moments about the whole thing.<g>
I wonder where she got the idea that Lincoln's resupply mission to Sumter included arms. Come to think of it, I wonder where she got a great many of her ideas.
–ML
I will leave it to others to worry about such things.
Some select quotes from “Wizardess” Godwin:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/semo/freedom/508/tra…
Kevin, thanks for the post. It was interesting to see my old law professor, John Eidsmoe, making your blog. I had Eidsmoe for Constitutional Law I and II. I'm not quite sure how he evolved into becoming one of the Confederacy's most ardent defenders. He is a midwesterner! However, I do not recall his personal opinions ever getting in the way of his teaching. He only had positive comments about papers that I completed on Hugo Black and Earl Warren! His opinions outside the classroom are another matter, but you may find this the case in any institution of higher education.
Since I may be the only graduate of the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law of Faulkner University who reads this blog, I would caution some of the readers not to attack the intergrity of the law school unless you have some substantive knowledge of it. Graduates of the law school have been permitted to take the bar exam in Alabama since the school's founding. There have been a number of fine jurist in the state who are among its graduates. While it may not measure up to a Harvard or a Yale, it currently has one of the highest pass rates on the bar exam in the state. There are a number of states which do allow graduates of non-ABA approved schools to sit for the bar. We are not in Pennsylvania, so the rule there doesn't apply to us! While this certainly doesn't apply in the case of Jones, any start-up law school would not initially have ABA approval. While a lot has changed at Jones since I graduated, it has made monumental strides in becoming one of the premier law schools in the state. It has provided a great service over the years.
Jimmy
Thanks for the response and please accept my apology. Any graduate of Faulkner who reads my blog can't be that bad.
hilarious. Especially the lady who believes the war was fought over high taxes and tariffs! Yeah, nothing riles up people more than tariffs. 620,000 dead and nearly a million wounded because of tariffs. LOL!
Take away all the comments about the Confederacy and just focusing on the bumper stickers and signs, this seems like an outgrowth of the Tea Party movement. I think I even saw a sign advocating the abolishment of the Federal Reserve. I do have a question, about your title having “bin laden” after Lincoln. I did not hear anyone refer to him that way in the video. Did I miss a previous post?
Very interesting – the gentlemen who believes the South would have come to assume a dominion-like status had the South not seceeded is clearly not familiar with the certian degree of subjugation that comes with being a dominion. These people need to study history, but memory obscures history…and is much more powerful than reality…
No apology needed. I'll encourage other Faulkner graduates to read this blog so I won't be the only one!
“Select” indeed. Classic combo of pride, anger and paranoia.
What's amazing is that these folks don't see the irony and absurdity of their comments. One guy says the war was about freedom and liberty… and apparently ignores the 4 million slaves who were deprived of their freedom and liberty.
And the woman with the Frederick Douglass shirt… what is she thinking?
If somebody had made this into a satirical skit, some folks would complain that the skit was making fun of certain groups of Southerners. But for these people it's not a joke… it's just scary bizarre.
I think what that lady meant to say was, “Frederick Douglass appreciated the sanctity of life because for a grand period of his, he had been limited to being governed by a whip. It was because of this tyrannical form of government, he took the responsibility upon his own person, to free himself, and become a profound supporter of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments of the Constitution of the United States.”
That particular bit of cognitive dissonance plagued the republic from its earliest days. Samuel Johnson famously wrote in “Taxation No Tyranny”: How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” Abigail Adams wrote John Adams in 1774, ” “it always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”
If everyone who reads this blog would contribute a dollar or two, we could buy a poster-size print of the Alabama Ordinance of Secession – maybe even frame it – and send it to this group. Maybe they would display it among the Confederate flags and photos of Confederate heroes. Who knows, somebody might even read it.
I love it. Great idea.
The only fact mentioned I disagree with; by firing on Ft. Sumter, Davis did in fact provoke the War of Northern Aggression. Had the South not attacked, Lincoln would have had no choice but to accept secession.
How can it be “northern aggression” if Davis provoked it? Other than that, you’re quite wrong. Lincoln had no intention of accepting secession/rebellion. There was plenty of precedent. Washington led an army to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. Madison was prepared to use military force to suppress secession if the Hartford Convention had voted in favor of it & he supported Jackson’s promise to use force during the Nullification Crisis. What Ft. Sumter did was solidify Northern support for suppressing the rebellion. It’s been likened to the effect that Pearl Harbor had in eliminating opposition to US entry into WW II. Robert Toombs, the only member of the Confederate cabinet who opposed ordering the attack on Ft. Sumter (you know you’re in trouble when Robert Toombs is the most reasonable person in a group) predicted what happened when he told Davis during that fateful cabinet meeting, ““Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”