Comment Archives: Stories: Special Issues
Re: “Best of the Triangle 2011: Readers' Choice poll winners and finalists”
That's it. Next year I'm organizing a campaign around a DJ so that Bob Dumbass doesn't win again. sheesh.
Re: “Best of the Triangle 2011: Best Moments of the Triangle”
Indeed it is, j90agq5j243ga. Thank you, it's been corrected.
Re: “Best of the Triangle 2011: Best Moments of the Triangle”
WXYC is, in fact, the legendary college radio station at UNC.
Re: “Best of the Triangle 2011: Readers' Choice poll winners and finalists”
Now they just need to be plotted on a map to keep in the car! Finalists included.
Re: “Remembrance: Civil wars by other means”
In the heat of discussion my point was lost. I am not, have not and will not defend slavery. It is indefensible. My ancestors did not own slaves but did fight for Southern independence and I will honor my ancestry and the rights of states to secede, based on the United States Constitution. And I continue to say that the amorphous federal behemoth that sticks its nose too deeply into state issues, such as education, is the result of the aftermath of the War for Southern Independence. I did not vote for our present president and it had nothing to do with race. He is an extremist liberal whose sole agenda seems to be social justice. He is clueless as a leader and his inexperience at ever leading anything is being revealed in the continuing economic decline. Hopefully his reign of ineptitude will end after one term.
Re: “Angel Collie is a young transgender Christian on a mission of love”
Thank you for the effort you are putting into getting the christian message out to people in the church. I am a Sixty-Four year old transgendered M-T-F. I found Christ three years ago and have been very active in my church for three years now. There is love and peace among my fellow worshipers who have accepted me into their church. I am openly out as a transgendered woman and have been looking for a path to peruse my worship with the lord and get others to join in. There are so many out there that need this kind of support. Again I want to thank you for what you do.
Re: “So, about that rebellion...”
Another restored antebellum home, the Smith-Atkinson House (built ca. 1853) stands in Johnston County, nine miles east of Smithfield, on Brogden Road. The home, together with four acres surrounding it, was bought from my great uncle Roger Smith by the Johnston County HistoricalSociety in 1982. The Society hired a reconstruction expert from New York to restore the home. After nearly a decade of painstaking work, the restoration was completed in summer 1992, and the home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Smith-Atkinson house was originally owned by my great-great-grandfather William Alexander Smith, an anti-secessionist Republican who, after the war, was elected as a Republican to the U. S. House of Representatives and who later corresponded frequently with President Ulysses S. Grant.
During the war, in spite of his political beliefs, he remained good friends with NC's Civil War Governor Zebulon Vance. Nicknamed "Blow-Your-Horn-Billy," he was elected nearly unanimously as Major of the Home Guard in early 1865. (Only his opponent, a die-hard secessionist, voted against him!)
I fondly remember my grandfather driving me out tothe "old Smith homeplace," as he called it, where the tenants then residing in the house, provided a tour throughout its spacious rooms and hallways.
(These visits happened during the fifties and sixties--long before the "old Smith homeplace" was restored.)
During the Battle of Bentonville, my great-grandfather, Roger A. Smith, then six years old, sat on the front veranda and could hear the sounds of the battle fought just a mile away as the crow flies, on the south side of the Neuse River. He could even hear the old rebel yell when the Confederate soldiers charged and the hey-hey-hey-hey when the Union soldiers charged.
As family legend has it, the Union officer designated by Sherman to burn the house refused to do so when he saw the Masonic emblem above the parlor mantelpiece. (The officer and Blow-Your-Horn-Billy were fellow Masons.) So Masonic botherhood trumped Union-Confederate divisions!
In June 1992, I visited the Smith-Atkinson house, now completely restored. The New Yorker gave me a tour of the renovated home. He had furnished it with 1840s Empire furniture, had enclosed all modern appliances in wooden compartments, and eschewed installing central heat and central air, using propane in wintertime for the many small fireplaces and open windows for cooling during the summer. I took a number of photos, of both the interior and the exterior. What most caught my eye (and camera) was the re-finished curving mahogany staircase winding its graceful way to the second floor.
Another building on Brogden Road and now on the National Register of Historic Places is the plain clapboard church that my great-great grandfather built (in my grandfather's words) "for the colored people three years after the Surrender." The small plaque above the front door reads "Shiloh Primitive Baptist Church."
On Tuesday April 19, I visited, for the first time in nearly a decade, the Bentonville Battlefield, the restored Shiloh Church, and the Smith-Atkinson House.
(Around 2002, since the New Yorker had finished its restoration, the Johnston County Historical Society sold the house to a family formerly residing in Goldsboro.)
Accompanying me on this visit were an old classmate from Hollins College, his wife, and the couple's three cute Pekingese.
On my blog, Daily Lights, Daily Darks (http://dailylightsdailydarks.blogspot.com/ and http://dailylightsdailydarks.wordpress.com…), I go into more detail about my April visit. The title of the blog entry: An April Journey to Klan Country. An accompanying blog entry: Photos from Klan Country. ("Klan Country" is explained in the text blog entries from both the Blogger and the WordPress sites.)
Re: “Remembrance: Civil wars by other means”
Well as another native southerner who had ancestors fight for the Confederacy, I must say I don't feel the same. I'm damn glad they lost. And damn glad to be an American in a Union that moved forwards, not backwards, and got the opportunity to thumb my nose at those ancestors while I voted a black man to be my president. And if any of my ancestors owned slaves (God I hope not!) then I am ashamed, embarrassed, and very sorry to every descendent of said slaves.
So....there ya go. Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree....from one native southerner to another.
Re: “2011 summer calendar”
Buddy Cop 2 - June 16-25 at Manbites Dog Theater
Re: “Remembrance: Civil wars by other means”
And, by the way, Nate, one of the "ugly and ongoing repercussions" of the Lost Cause is an enormous federal government that now dictatorially intrudes itself in just about every aspect of our lives. It robs from the states rights that our founders intended to remain under state control. This is exactly what noble men like Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun warned would happen. But, maybe you like big brother controlling you. I don't and for the life of me can't understand why any freedom loving American would. And how sad that native Southerners are to be chastised for being proud of their ancestry.
Re: “Remembrance: Civil wars by other means”
Nate, your comments reveal your ignorance of history as it pertains to the War for Southern Independence. It reveals that you are unaware that the slave trade was a financial boon to the northern states and that even after the abolitionists went on the rampage that many northerners, while crying crocodile tears about slavery, still held slaves themselves. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation is that it did nothing to free slaves still held in many northern states and was a worthless piece of paper used strictly for political purpose. Lincoln himself saw African Americans as inferior to whites and said so more than once in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. He was no great emancipator as he was made out to be. He ran roughshod over the constitution northerners so smugly claimed to hold to.
It might interest you to know that very few northerners had any real interest in whether or not the outcome was freeing slaves, especially in light of the fact that many of those same northern states (New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana) had passed laws prohibiting blacks from becoming residents of their states. Long after blacks were given the right to vote in the defeated south many northern states still disenfranchised blacks.
The thing that has caused such acrimony among southerners is the unbridled hypocrisy of the northerners who claimed slavery was the key issue while at the same time were about as racially bigoted as any southerner ever was. At least 6% of those who wore the blue also supported slavery and stated they would not give their lives just to free (insert racial slur here). It might interest you to know that on President Jefferson Davis' final journey (his body being returned to Richmond for burial) at every stop former slaves who had been educated and prepared for entrance into society by the Davis family expressed their love and respect for the man who cared about them, not as chattel, but as human being who would be free and needed to be prepared for that freedom.
It is people like you who feel that all those who have their roots in the south should be placed on a stool of everlasting repentance and be asked to express guilt and regret for slavery. Obviously slavery was a horrible thing and needed to end, but I'll climb on my stool and repent as soon as those who are descendants of the thieves and robbers from the north who raped, pillaged and plundered the south during reconstruction repent. It's funny how easily people can point to the offenses of slavery but overlook the horrible damage done by a radical, unconstitutional federal government following the war.
My encouragement to you, Nate, don't just read the yankee version of history, a version that paints the north as wanting to preserve the union due to high moral principles and deep compassion for the plight of slaves. This invasion by the northern army was based first and foremost of economics and politics. Read both sides of the story. I'll be very glad to recommend some fair and balanced literature to you.
Re: “Remembrance: Civil wars by other means”
"I, for one, will not apologize for my heritage and what the overwhelming majority of Southerners fought for in that war, the right to be free and sovereign states."
Sovereign states where it's free to own people as chattel you mean.
True, less that 6% of those that served had any part in slaveholding, but 100% of those that actually made the decision to secede did. The story of the Civil War isn't in the poor suckers sent to fight, it's in the ruling elite who sought to use them to accomplish their own immoral ends.
The Lost Cause was a myth. The argument was about slavery. The reason for secession was to preserve slavery. The goal of the CSA was to expand slavery west. The sooner "proud southerners" come to grips with that, the sooner we can address it's ugly and ongoing repercussions.
Re: “So, about that rebellion...”
The Smithsonian Institution American Civil War Studies also has a Twitter account at twitter.com/SmithsonianCW.
Re: “Remembrance: Civil wars by other means”
As I read the article about remembering the "Civil War" I think a couple of notes are in order. First, this was really the War for Southern Independence. As sovereign states, the states that formed the Confederacy had a clear constitutional right to secede and form a new country. The United States of America was not and is not a perpetual union. Yes, it is true that the states that seceded were discontent, but rightfully so. As the region of the country providing the lion's share of antebellum federal revenue the Southern states were unhappy that they were being invaded by Northern aggressors hell bent on keeping them in the union against their wishes and constitutional rights. The reason for the war? Not slavery as some may suggest. Less than 6% of those who served in the confederate forces had any part in slaveholding. It was really about states' rights and economics . To put it in Lincoln's words: Let the south go? Where then would we get our revenues? So as a native southerner and son of the confederacy whose ancestors gave their lives at Gettysburg, I am glad we still remember our failed attempt to form the Confederate States of America and our fallen heroes who valiantly died defending states' rights! I, for one, will not apologize for my heritage and what the overwhelming majority of Southerners fought for in that war, the right to be free and sovereign states.
Re: “So, about that rebellion...”
Explain your "nope"
Re: “So, about that rebellion...”
As I read the article about remembering the "Civil War" I think a couple of notes are in order. First, this was really the War for Southern Independence. As sovereign states, the states that formed the Confederacy had a clear constitutional right to secede and form a new country. The United States of America was not and is not a perpetual union. Yes, it is true that the states that seceded were discontent, but rightfully so. As the region of the country providing the lion's share of antebellum federal revenue the Southern states were unhappy that they were being invaded by Northern aggressors hell bent on keeping them in the union against their wishes and constitutional rights. The reason for the war? Not slavery as some may suggest. Less than 6% of those who served in the confederate forces had any part in slaveholding. It was really about states' rights and economics . To put it in Lincoln's words: Let the south go? Where then would we get our revenues? So as a native southerner and son of the confederacy whose ancestors gave their lives at Gettysburg, I am glad we still remember our failed attempt to form the Confederate States of America and our fallen heroes who valiantly died defending states' rights! I, for one, will not apologize for my heritage and what the overwhelming majority of Southerners fought for in that war, the right to be free and sovereign states.
Re: “Poisoning our pets”
I've been using Sevin dust on my dogs for over 25 years with no ill effects. It sounds like the OP is a bit over the top with her disdain for anything that isn't "organic".
That said, sorry your dog got sick but glad it got better.
Re: “2010 Readers' Choice poll winners”
Having had to call on a number of these services in our last three years in Durham, this entire list is seriously suspect -- from Electrician (never had that name recommended from anyone) to Yoga (really? Power?!?! yoga?) ... strange. Really... and really -- seemingly strange to select 9th Street Dance over anywhere in the Triangle, let alone Chapel Hill Ballet School. Everything here is slightly off.
Re: “Best of the Triangle 2011: Readers' Choice poll winners and finalists”
WTH? Orange Politics is not the best blogsite? LOL