The Southern Heritage Preservation Group on Nazis

Recently a poster here deplored the name-calling he claimed went on between various groups in the blogosphere.  The poster in question is a member of the Southern Heritage Preservation Group.

The request seems perfectly understandable. Goodness knows we wouldn’t want to upset anyone.

Gary Adams held forth on this very issue yesterday.

Many of you surely have encountered the comparison of the Confederacy with Nazis, since there is no real comparison I can offer you little as how to proceed except again the truth.

Yet on that very newsgroup, within twenty-four hours of offering this declaration, what do we see on the SHPG’s Facebook page?

Three likes within two hours.  Interesting.

But Kevin’s late to the party, so to speak.  After all, there was this comment yesterday:

Another three likes.

You all will remember Mr. John C. Hall (of Dublin, Georgia) as the member of the SHPG who was obsessed about people’s ancestry, who has made comments about people being Jewish, and who has complained when he is quoted on that score.

Ah, yes, the Southern Heritage Preservation Group … the gift that keeps on giving. What a way to honor Confederate heritage.

Another Sesquicentennial Moment

I wonder how many people will recall the 150th anniversary of this document.

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Whereas it has become necessarry to call into service not only volunteers, but also portions of the militia of the States by draft in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of law from hindering this measure and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection:

Now, therefore, be it ordered, first, that during the existing insurrection, and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors, within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia draft or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commissions; second, that the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now or hereafter during the rebellion shall be imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement by any military authority or by the sentence of any court-martial or military commission.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 24th day of September, A.D. 1862, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State.

Many critics of the Lincoln administration linked this document with the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation as evidence of the administration’s centralizing tyrannical tendencies.  “Discouraging” enlistments, after all, could take many forms, including criticism of the war effort … something that could be expected on the eve of midterm congressional elections, and which one would expect might increase in the wake of the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation some forty-eight hours earlier.

Was this proclamation wise? Was it necessary? Do Lincoln’s critics have a point?