strunkenwhite
Well-known member
Not in Vietnam, but all right.
Confederate history month
- Thread starter FriedCFour
- Start date
ShieldWife
Marchioness
I’m not sure what you mean.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
American deaths in Vietnam (which was the war example I used) were like 30% draftee, but it's still true that they were young and the flu disproportionately hits oldsters.
Just use this when you need a facepalm to post.Christ, there needs to be a facepalm reac.
I would've just said All Lives Matter.
John Pemberton is a particularly tragic figure. Born and raised in Pennsylvania and had a rather distinguished prewar career serving in the Second Seminole War, the Mexican War and even in the Baltimore Riots that directly preceded the American Civil War. He resigned his commission though despite all of that and the fact that his two younger brothers served the Union and the begging of his Virginian-born former Commanding Officer Winfield Scott. Why? Because he married Martha Washington (no not that one obviously) but another one with the same name who hailed from Norfolk, Virginia. He apparently agonized over the decision to fight for the State of his Wives birth for weeks before finally deciding to do so.
Despite his impressive military service though and overall record and having good relations with President Davis, he was basically sidelined for the first two years of the War because of his 'abrasive' personality though it was likely more due to the fact he was contrarian to more amateurish military opinions combined with the fact he was a distrusted Northerner.
He was given command of defending Vicksburg in October of 1862 and took command of the fifty thousand troops in the theater who up to that point basically had a reputation of losing both at Shiloh and the Corinth Campaign. He used his Administrative skill and experience in helping rejuvenate the command and dealt General Grant his first major defeat at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou where Sherman attempted a cross river landing north of Vicksburg and was decisively defeated for the effort.
But we all know the history of what did happen in the Vicksburg Campaign. In probably one of the most impressive military campaigns of maneuver and battle in the War and perhaps contemporary history, General Grant was able to pass the Vicksburg fortifications with his river fleet, support a cross river operation south of Vicksburg which including marching thousands of troops and hundreds of artillery pieces and supply wagons across swamps and marshes before deploying them across the Mississippi River and fighting eight battles in three weeks which included defeating two separate armies, burning Jackson, Mississippi, the Capitol of the state and bringing Vicksburg under Siege.
General Johnston, who commanded a second army in the area, also refused to combine forces with General Pemberton beforehand, and refused to march to his assistance after the Siege, actually informing Pemberton he should abandon Vicksburg (despite President Davis stating Pembertons objective was above all else to hold Vicksburg and thus prevent the entire River from being under Union control) and bring his larger army under Johnstons presumed command since the latter was Senior. Of course that meant abandoning Vicksburg and being forced to attack Grant. So Pemberton decided to attack Grants Army, but Johnston's smaller army was no where in area, having already fled after having failed to defend Jackson, Mississippi.
General Pemberton during this whole time was still dealing with varying degrees of distrust, disrespect and outright insubordination from his division commanders ranging from casually refusing to salute him, openly questioning his orders, to in one amazing case, one of his division Commanders (loring) decided to abandon the Army after the Battle of Champion Hill and taking his five thousand men with him and joined General Johnston's army which was in the area instead of retreating back towards Vicksburg. Then of course he endured the entire 47 day Siege where the entire City was pushed onto the brink of starvation before finally surrendering on July 4th after all four of his remaining division Commanders agreed he should (and yet blamed him just as unanimously for the failure of the campaign).
He was taken prisoner but eventually exchanged and spent eight months awaiting new assignment but ultimately no one wanted him. Eventually he said to President Davis he was willing to serve the Confederacy in any capacity and accepted the drop of rank from Lieutenant General down to Lieutenant-Colonel which if anything is a rather surprising testimonial of his loyalty to the political cause of his Wifes family. Despite the drop in rank, he did such a good job commanding artillery that under General Lee he rose to commanding all of the artillery in the Richmond-Petersburg theater and becoming the Inspector-General of Artillery within three months.
His post-war life was no less controversial as there was a campaign by some prominent Pennsylvanian Unionists (including General Meade) to not even allow him to be buried in Laurel Cemetary, where his parents and other relatives were buried. He was ultimately buried there however.
The main thing about his wartime career (which was basically the Vicksburg Campaign) is that he was put in a difficult position. He had some excellent Division commanders but commanded very little trust or loyalty from them and in all honesty was put in a position which made it unlikely that he ever could. Plus General Johnston who commanded the only other force in the area was either unwilling or incapable of helping and at best muddled up things with his presence there. He was put into a tough spot and obviously didn't succeed in it.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Well said. While I don't think there's enough evidence to suggest Pemberton was a great general on the level of Grant (who, as you point out, simply blew poor Pemberton away with his seemingly impossible maneuvers in the Vicksburg campaign; that's why I've never been too keen on Confederate sympathizers' efforts to paint him as some mindless butcher, no inept thug could've done what he did) or Lee, I've never considered him to be even close to the same level as genuine failures like Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow. It certainly helps that he had to work with losers belonging to that latter category like Earl Van Dorn (who has the dubious distinction of being one of the few Confederate generals to lose to a smaller Union army, and one partly led by no less an incompetent than Franz Sigel at that) & Sterling Price (who failed at basically everything he did despite the occasional tactical success, culminating in his late-game trainwreck of an invasion of Missouri) for subordinates, as well.
If anything he fits in the category of men like James Longstreet, IMO: competent to excellent commanders who, due to politics and other factors outside their control, have undeservedly been ignored or received a bad rap over the years. Pemberton and these others strike me as the inverse of the other Johnston (Albert Sidney), whose overrated reputation as 'the greatest Confederate general to have died in battle' seems at best a huge what-if fantasy exercise based mostly on Jefferson Davis' shilling for the man and at worst, completely contradicted by his not-insignificant failures on the road to Shiloh.
This seems to be the right thread for this.
Bluntly, slavery post 15th century and biblical slavery are two completely different animals.
Biblical references to slavery were in the Hebrew context, in which 'slave' or 'servant' was effectively identical to 'employee', because if you didn't own the land but worked it, you were considered a 'slave' or 'servant', despite receiving wages and not, in fact, being bound to the land except by any debts that you had accrued.
Based on this, the Catholic Church always preached against Roman style chattel slavery and had, in fact, completely extirpated it from Europe by the 10th century. Chattel slavery resumed in Africa and the Americas starting in the 15th century, but always against Papal injunctions, bulls, and declarations. The Spanish actually threatened to go Protestant in the late 16th century over Papal condemnation of the slave trade and did expel Catholic orders from their territory in the New World.
Chattel slavery, as practiced in the Confederacy, has no biblical basis whatsoever. That it happens to share the name (in translation) is irrelevant.
Also note, 'suffer not a witch to live' is a *very* bad translation artifact from the King James bible due to the King being paranoid of witches. The actual text is 'suffer not a poisoner to live'.
Bluntly, slavery post 15th century and biblical slavery are two completely different animals.
Biblical references to slavery were in the Hebrew context, in which 'slave' or 'servant' was effectively identical to 'employee', because if you didn't own the land but worked it, you were considered a 'slave' or 'servant', despite receiving wages and not, in fact, being bound to the land except by any debts that you had accrued.
Based on this, the Catholic Church always preached against Roman style chattel slavery and had, in fact, completely extirpated it from Europe by the 10th century. Chattel slavery resumed in Africa and the Americas starting in the 15th century, but always against Papal injunctions, bulls, and declarations. The Spanish actually threatened to go Protestant in the late 16th century over Papal condemnation of the slave trade and did expel Catholic orders from their territory in the New World.
Chattel slavery, as practiced in the Confederacy, has no biblical basis whatsoever. That it happens to share the name (in translation) is irrelevant.
Also note, 'suffer not a witch to live' is a *very* bad translation artifact from the King James bible due to the King being paranoid of witches. The actual text is 'suffer not a poisoner to live'.
I’d agree with this mostly, with a few important points though. Biblical slavery does cover Roman slavery, and what is said about it is how a slave owner must treat his slaves and vice versa was said in regards to Slave owners under the Roman system. My view is that in talking about slavery as a whole, regardless of whatever the legal system of slavery is, you are told how you should treat them and how they should treat you. Regardless of whether it’s Hebrew, Roman, or Antebellum, you could own slaves and still be following after Christ and what the Bible tells us to behave as so long as you adhered to how you are told to. That’s why I say that the slave owners aren’t inherently evil just for owning slaves, you have to show how they treated them on that basis, because even American slavery it wasn’t all exactly the same, and certainly you’d see a much stronger divide between a massive plantation owner and someone who may have just a handful or rented them for the harvest.
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LordsFire
Internet Wizard
It is entirely moral and expected for every Christian to strive to abolish slavery in any society in which it exists.
It is entirely moral and expected for a Christian living within a society that has slavery, to deal with the situation in the most godly way that he or she can.
Rome was a totalitarian state that Christians had no feasible ability to force to abolish a practice such as slavery.
If you want to go into a more finely detailed philosophical and ethical discussion about the boundary between things like indentured servitude, lawful expectation of labor from those rightly imprisoned, and slavery, that should probably be its own thread.
You are not listening to me. Multiple Church Father's, including some of the greatest Doctor's of the Church, stated that under no circumstances was slavery acceptable for Christians. That post-Reformation it was possible for greedy Imperialists on both sides of the divide to, in the case of Protestants, handwave away this prohibition via dubious mistranslations and then shouting SOLA SCRIPTURA from the rooftops, or in the case of the Catholic Empires (mostly Spain) to simply use the threat of going Protestant to prevent Rome from enforcing their (continuing) strong stance against Slavery in any form, does not eliminate this foundational truth.
The best actual translation of the Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek terms used in the New Testament that have been consistently mistranslated by Protestants as 'slave' is actually 'servant' or 'employee'.
And before you start in about the Church supporting strong monarchies, the whole concept of Divine Right of Kings was a *Protestant* one, never a Catholic one. The Catholic view on monarchies can be best expressed by Saint Augustine of Hippo, the great Doctor of the Church, when he stated that the only difference between a king and a robber was scale.
As an addendum, in the lands directly controlled by the Vatican through the period between the final collapse of the Roman Empire and the reunification of Italy, the most common government form was that of a city-state republic.
The best actual translation of the Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek terms used in the New Testament that have been consistently mistranslated by Protestants as 'slave' is actually 'servant' or 'employee'.
And before you start in about the Church supporting strong monarchies, the whole concept of Divine Right of Kings was a *Protestant* one, never a Catholic one. The Catholic view on monarchies can be best expressed by Saint Augustine of Hippo, the great Doctor of the Church, when he stated that the only difference between a king and a robber was scale.
As an addendum, in the lands directly controlled by the Vatican through the period between the final collapse of the Roman Empire and the reunification of Italy, the most common government form was that of a city-state republic.
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this sounds fairly revisionist and doesn’t really match up with much historically. Can you show me this in Catholic doctrine because from the christianization of Rome on it wasn’t abolished and it’s bizarre to me to blame Protestants for slavery. Somehow we are to blame for the behavior of Spain, Portugal and France in the Colonial era? Like, there was slavery during the height of Catholic control from Late Rome on, it still existed, even in Italy where the Vatican dominated and a solid chunk of the land was owned and controlled directly by the Papacy. I’m listening. You aren’t really to my points, seeing as half that whole post was a bunch of random stuff I don’t care about, never said and was never planning to say you just assumed I would.
Can you show me evidence of this for the specific verses in question?
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OK, let me get started then. Church leaders as early as the 5th century preached against slavery, on the grounds that it was an immoral act. By the 7th century the Church was actively teaching that keeping slaves was profoundly immoral, and that freeing them was an 'infinitely commendable act' towards salvation. In defiance of remaining Roman-era secular laws banning the practice the Church actively encouraged intermarriage, one of the most prominent cases being Clovis II, King of the Franks, marrying his English slave Bathilda in 649. Bathilda went on to rule the Franks as regent for her son between 657 and when her eldest came of age, constantly campaigning against slavery in her lands. Upon her death she was canonized by the Church explicitly for her stance against slavery.
Charlemagne forbade slavery in his lands, for which he was lauded by the Pope at the time. In the early 9th century, one of the more significant voices of that time, Bishop Agobard of Lyons, preached "All men are brothers, all invoke one same Father, God: the slave and the master, the poor man and the rich man, the ignorant and the learned, the weak and the strong... None has been raised above the other... There is no... slave or free, but in all things and always there is only Christ."
It was the common belief of Christendom under the Church that "slavery in itself was against Divine Law". By the early 10th century the last vestiges of slavery in Christendom was eradicated thanks to the efforts of Saints Wulfstan and Anshelm.
This lasted until the Reformation, when the power of the Papacy and the Church was broken and papal authority no longer was viewed as paramount in moral matters.
Best place to start here in St Thomas Aquinas, who lived in a time where slavery was utterly eradicated and thus wrote of the institution purely on a rational, theoretical basis. He concluded that it was utterly against natural law, that there was no basis in justice for the practice, that it was a manifestly unjust form of authority and thus in no circumstance could it be licit in Christendom.
There were exceptions, Pope Innocent VIII accepted Moorish slaves from King Ferdinand of Aragon. It should be noted that Innocent VIII is a leading contender for worst Pope in history due to his enormous corruption and moral turpitude, and was soundly condemned by all of his successors. Even he had to try and weasel around the existing teachings of the Church by claiming that because the Moors enslaved Christians it was somehow 'retributive justice' to enslave them in turn, a view that was roundly condemned at the time.
During the 1430s when the Spanish first started engaging in slavery in the Canary Islands, Pope Eugene IV issued the papal bull Sicut dudum condemning the practice and threatening the Spanish with excommunication if the practice continued, but such was the nadir of Papal authority that the practice continued, even in 'Catholic' Spain and Portugal. Pius II and Sixtus IV also issued papal bulls condemning the practice.
With the enslavement of Africans in the New World, Pope Paul III issued a magnificent bull against the practice that has been generally ignored by historians until recently, because it directly contradicts the 'accepted' historical consensus that the Church endorsed slavery or was 'debating' the morality of it on the grounds of whether or not Africans had souls. Note that this was an argument made by Protestants and various slave traders, but never accepted by the Church, and indeed condemned harshly.
In a second papal bull, Paul III imposed the penalty of excommunication on any who enslaved others.
Thanks to papal weakness (in this time Spanish and French troops regularly invaded Rome, the Protestants completely ignored Rome, and the nominally Catholic kings generally ignored anything the Pope said that inconvenienced them) nothing was done, but that didn't stop the Vatican from trying.
Pope Urban VIII reiterated and affirmed Paul III in the bull Commissum nobis. And the Papal Inquisition in 1686 made the following ruling in the form of questions and answers.
| Whether it is permitted to capture by force or by deceit Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one | No |
| Whether it is permitted to buy, sell or make contracts in their respect Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one and been made captives by force or deceit? | No |
| Whether the possessors of Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one and been captured by force or deceit, are not held to set them free? | Yes |
| Whether the captors, buyers and possessors of Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one and who have been captured by force or deceit are not held to make compensation to them? | Yes |
It should be noted that the Spanish made it illegal to publish or preach Papal decrees without Royal assent, and they refused to permit the anti-slavery decrees to be preached or published. They also asserted to themselves the right to appoint bishops, bypassing Rome entirely. Despite this, they were read, and the readings generally provoked riots fanned by Spanish authorities against the Church and threats by the Spanish crown against the Papacy.
It should be noted that historians have almost completely ignored all of this. The bulls and teachings were very well known and have been available, but in general the 'establishment' historians ignore their presence when they aren't actively lying about the Church's historical stance against slavery.
Moving past that, I encourage you to actually read the Code Noir promulgated by the French at the urging of the Papacy, and not the bowdlerized summaries of it you'll find on Wikipedia. Further, I would encourage you to read the Código Negro Español in the same manner.
It should be noted that most condemnation of the Code Noir focuses on just 4 articles (3, 12, 13, 38) while ignoring all of the others, especially 39 which explicitly made it a criminal offense to torture or kill a slave. There are records of prosecutions under this article, although it is unknown if any owners were ever executed for violations. This should be contrasted to the treatment of slaves in Protestant areas, where owners faced no legal consequences whatsoever for the treatment of slaves.
The Código Negro Español went even further, mandating that slaves were to receive a wage, were to be permitted to own property, and would explicitly have the right to purchase their freedom. Moreover slaves were permitted to work for their own profit a certain percentage of the year, and in fact it was customary for slaves to have their own garden plots which they could use to earn funds towards their liberty. Claims that the Código Negro Español was symbolic run afoul of the minor detail that by 1817 there were more free blacks on Cuba alone than in *all* of Protestant controlled areas combined.
It should also be noted that Catholic churches throughout Spanish controlled areas ensured that slaves could receive the sacraments, including marriage, baptism, etc, and church synods consistently ruled in favor of expanding slave's rights. They constantly preached the basic humanity of slaves, refused to segregate services between slave and free, and even turned manumission into an unofficial sacrament, with the ringing of bells and religious observances.
I don't think I need to go into how different it was in Protestant-controlled areas, like your beloved Confederacy, hrmmm? Where baptizing a slave was a criminal offense, marriage had no meaning and was often a reason for the monsters who called themselves 'Christians' to sell family members to different plantations.
For those who are interested, I strongly recommend the following books. All are by Rodney Stark of Baylor University, but all include extensive references to primary sources which I have checked as well. I recommend Dr Stark for his excellent writing and his willingness to follow the truth down the rabbit hole rather than rest on political correctness.
Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History
Reformation Myths
For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts and end of Slavery
We all love to hate on the Confederacy . . .
But have you ever heard of Serfdom in Russia?
Slavery with some different terminology and it was abolished around the same time, in 1861.
Antebellum slavery was just an institution born from a inherent need (cheap labor) that would have been peacefully replaced and phased out in time as technology and society progressed.
Just like Russian Serfdom.
But have you ever heard of Serfdom in Russia?
Slavery with some different terminology and it was abolished around the same time, in 1861.
Antebellum slavery was just an institution born from a inherent need (cheap labor) that would have been peacefully replaced and phased out in time as technology and society progressed.
Just like Russian Serfdom.
here’s Francesco Petrarch writing in 1360 about the Scythian slave trade in Venice.
‘Whereas huge shipments of grain used to arrive by ship annually in this city, now they arrive laden with slaves, sold by their wretched families to alleviate their hunger. An unusually large and countless crowd of slaves of both sexes has afflicted this city with deformed Scythian faces, just like when a muddy current destroys the brilliance of a clear one.’
Is there an explanation for that one?
not beloved I just don’t hate them even if they did bring large swathes of Africans to America and gave them ample reason to be hostile to the American populace and still think they were morally better within Dixie than we are now, and don’t want to see the culture and history destroyed by progressivism.
Venice... you mean the same Venice that regularly was interdicted by the Church, was regularly in schism from the Church, completely rejected the authority of the Pope except when it was convenient to get help against their enemies, considered themselves separate from Christendom except, of course, when they were under threat? That Venice?
You ignore 90% of the argument, use an edge case from a schismatic region during the height of their power, and then expect people to continue to take you seriously?
You ignore 90% of the argument, use an edge case from a schismatic region during the height of their power, and then expect people to continue to take you seriously?
Venice was at the height of its power at that time, and while nominally a Catholic nation, was pretty widely noted to ignore Papal authority and do whatever it pleased -- to the point of being repeatedly threatened with interdiction, and twice *actually* interdicted.
Well most slaves Venice imported were then exported to Northern Africa and the Near East because Venice was a major player in all sorts of trade, including the Slave Trade, during that era. I'm sure some were used in the domestic markets of Italy. Venice was often the same way. Keep in mind this was the same power that 150 years prior hijacked the Fourth Crusade into successfully sacking numerous Christian cities on their way to a glorious victory over Constantinople. I'm sure the Catholic Church found that to be something to be frowned upon, as opposed to being utilized as Evidence that the Catholic Church employed Crusaders to routinely sack Christian cities.
As another illustrative example to keep in mind, during the early 16th century there was a Franco-Ottoman Alliance. This meant the Ottomans would raid Christian Lands often accompanied or otherwise supported by the French fleet (in Spain and Italy and the Balkans etc) for slaves, winter in France and then be able to ship their Christian slaves back to their Muslim homelands or be used as galley slaves... almost as if the Kingdom of France cared more about politics and foreign relations and countering the Hapsburgs then caring about the enslavement of Christians by Muslims (though I'm sure slavery was just one of the many issues the Church probably had with a Franco-Ottoman Alliance at the time).
No? I was genuinely asking if you could explain that quote and case, because you are obviously more familiar with this than I am. I wasn’t ignoring it, you were able to source a lot of stuff that I needed to read. When I was reading things on this subject I came across that, and I was curious how that particular quote fit in. Anything I am ignoring is because I don’t frankly have anything to respond with. I am not super familiar with the Catholic Church and am a Prot, for me everything has been five solas so I’m not as familiar with church fathers and doctrine, and have only just skimmed Aquinas. I also can’t say I was super familiar with the particulars of Venice, I’ll just say I have a lot more reading on the subject to do.