Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[ken_sylvania]

So the answer is "No, JohnHurt did not claim that there were Confederate units filled with black soldiers."

And I did not claim HE used those specific words. I claimed it was an an old historic southern myth that has long since been debunked by many historians. The mythmaking and historical revisionism about the war began almost as soon as it ended. And it has been a project of many organizations such as the Daughters of the Confederacy for more than a century.

To tie this into this thread, I would point out that the similarities between Confederate revisionism and Russian revisionism is actually quite striking. All of it in service of slavery, racism, and genocide.

No, you didn't say that JohnHurt used those specific words, but you did say that he had made that claim. Otherwise the following wouldn't make any sense . If your revised opinion is that JohnHurt didn't claim Confederate units were full of Black soldiers, then he only made two of the tree claims in this "trifecta" that you are talking about.

Wow John:
You hit the trifecta for southern revisionism. Is this the kind of stuff you learned in southern schools?

First the notion that Black soldiers were too stupid, uneducated, and untrained to actually fight as real soldiers is the oldest southern tripe in the book. [snip]
Second, the idea that there were Confederate units full of Black solders is one of the oldest and shoddiest of historical myths.[snip]
Finally the idea that southern Black slaves were fighting for the Confederacy for.....how did you put it? for "freedom from a tyrannical government that was taxing them to death"

[ohio jones]

I am assuming ...

Engage with what people actually say, not what u assume they are saying. Ask for clarification if they didn't say what you thought they should have said.

[Ken]

I am assuming ...

Engage with what people actually say, not what u assume they are saying. Ask for clarification if they didn't say what you thought they should have said.

Fine. If it makes you happy, let's engage with John Hurt's actual words see if that changes anything:

John Hurt is incorrect when he wrote:

The negroes at Fort Pillow were recent slaves, and totally untrained in how war was fought, or how to surrender.

When Fort Pillow surrendered, the Union forces laid down their arms. As the Confederates moved into the fort to take possession, some of the negros, not understanding what "surrender" meant, picked up their arms and started firing again.

The Confederates were enraged at this behavior and gave no quarter for a second surrender.

The "shame" of what happened at Fort Pillow is not a blemish on the Confederates, but on the Union Army, for ever taking slaves who could not even read or write, and putting a rifle in their hands to kill the Confederates, with no substantial military training on how to fight or how to surrender.

The reason these poor negroes died, is because the Union put them into a military situation without proper training. It is the fault of the Union

The Black troops that were at Fort Pillow were part of the 6th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment which was formed in June 1863 and had undergone both infantry and artillery training: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Th ... frontcover They had been in uniform and under arms for nearly 9 months when they were deployed to Fort Pillow in March 1864. The notion that they had received "no substantial military training on how to fight or how to surrender" is factually incorrect. They had not seen much action prior to Fort Pillow but they were not untrained. They were American troops in the American army.

The reason they lost the battle of Fort Pillow is that they were outnumbered about 4 to 1 and were unable to control the high ground surrounding the fort and were placed in an untenable position by the army commanders, not because they lacked training.

John is incorrect when he wrote:

There were many black Confederate soldiers that fought for the South, and fought for the same reasons as the 95% of Southerners that did not own slaves but still fought against the Union.

Curious how the actual Black soldiers who fought for the United States Army were " poor negroes" who were "totally untrained in how war was fought" but the imaginary Black troops in the south were "Black Confederate solders" who "fought for their freedom" against the United States.

In any event, I have already provided two citations refuting this notion. There are plenty of others. But simply put, the Confederacy had outlawed the arming of Black troops until the very last weeks of the war when the south had all but collapsed and Lee was engaged with what was left of his army in a series of rear guard actions trying to retreat to the west until he was finally trapped and surrounded by Grant's forces at Appomattox. There is no historical evidence that there were ANY Black Confederate Soldiers who "fought for their freedom" on the side of the Confederacy. Much less "many" of them.

And he is incorrect when he wrote:

The black Confederate soldiers fought for their own freedom from a tyrannical government that was taxing them to death.

Perhaps John can tell us what Federal taxes these southern Blacks "fighting for their freedom" were subject to at the end of 1860 when southern states began to secede. There was no Federal income tax. Nor was there a Federal sales tax. Tariffs were the major source of Federal revenue during years leading up to the Civil War and those were collected on imported goods at the major ports just like today. They weren't imposed on ordinary Americans or on products produced in the United States. And in the years leading up to the Civil War they were among the lowest in the world at 17% which was also historically low by 19th Century American standards. They were not raised until the Morrill Tariffs were passed 1861 AFTER the southern states had already seceded.

We can also ask where these ideas came from. Are they uniquely John's. No they are not. They are all part of the mythology of the "lost cause" that has been taught to generations of American school children, especially in the south. Put forward by neo-Confederate organizations such the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

[ohio jones]

Do not argue with Mods.
Use I statements. Speak for yourself and don't decide what someone else is meaning to say or exaggerate what someone else posts.
Do not state that someone else is wrong. State your own thoughts and opinions.

No more Civil War on this thread.

[JohnHurt]

Somehow the notion that blacks were too stupid to fight for the Union where they were permitted to learn to read, but smart enough to fight for the confederacy where there was laws preventing them from learning doesn’t make much sense.

I’m sure there were a few black slaves who fought but I really really doubt there was over a few hundred at the upper most.

It also doesn’t make any sense that slaves would have fought for the Confederacy because they were mad about taxation — did slaves pay taxes?

Slaves did not pay taxes, but black people certainly did, as in this case.



And he wasn't stupid, he was very successful.

And he was black, and he owned slaves. And he was not at all stupid.

What is stupid is to take a recently freed slave, who has never shot a gun, put a gun in their hands without any military training, and tell them to defend a fort. That is a recipe for disaster, and shows how little the Union cared about recently freed black slaves.

The problem is not black or white, the problem is slavery and warfare.

And "according to Ken", this man also never existed:

https://www.timesnews.net/living/featur ... 83e59.html
Louis Napoleon Nelson, a slave turned freedman who rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, an integrated unit. According to records Nelson fought at Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, Brice's Crossroads and Vicksburg. He later became the 7th Tennessee Cavalry’s chaplain. When Nelson died in 1934, he had a military procession and his coffin was draped with a Confederate flag.

Yes, he rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the same group that attacked Fort Pillow.

The article continues:

Nowhere in the Tennessee Declaration of Independence or the Ordinance of Secession is slavery listed as a reason for the state leaving the Union. In fact, slavery is not mentioned at all in either document.

But Tennessee went one step further when the legislature passed an act allowing “male free persons of color” to enter into military service for the state.

In 1861 the 33rd General Assembly passed the Act for the Relief of Volunteers. One section stated, “Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That from and after the passage of this act, the governor shall be, and he is hereby authorized, at his discretion, to receive into the military service of the state, all male free persons of color between the ages of fifteen and fifty years — or such number as may be necessary, who may be sound in his mind and body, and capable of actual service.”

The third section of the act said, “Be it further enacted, That such free persons of color shall receive, each, eight dollars per month as pay, for such person shall be entitled to draw, each, one ration per day, and shall be entitled to a yearly allowance each for clothing.”

An interesting side note: When the Lincoln administration finally allowed colored troops to serve in the Union army in 1863, they were paid $10 a month, but had $3 deducted from the monthly pay for a clothing allowance. The clothing deduction was finally abolished in September 1864.

Now I will be among the first to say that many of these black men who joined the military in Tennessee in 1861 were used primarily as teamsters, laborers, musicians and cooks. But there were a few who fought as well.

When Nathan Bedford Forrest organized his cavalry in Memphis, he gave slaves the opportunity to join, saying that if the South lost they would be free and if the South won he would grant them their freedom.

The number varies according to which historians you read, but either 43 or 45 slaves joined Forrest. About 25 served as teamsters and tended to the horses, but 20 reportedly took up arms and fought alongside Forrest in battle, including at the infamous Battle at Fort Pillow. With the exception of one deserter, all the blacks who joined Forrest stayed with him throughout the war.

A descendent of one of those colored troopers, Nelson Winbush, has spoken and been interviewed about his grandfather, Louis Napoleon Nelson, a slave turned freedman who rode with Forrest in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, an integrated unit. According to records, Nelson fought at Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, Brice’s Crossroads and Vicksburg. He later became the 7th Tennessee Cavalry’s chaplain. When Nelson died in 1934, he had a military procession and his coffin was draped with a Confederate flag.

There were blacks locally who served in the Confederate military, one of them being Robert “Bob” Stover.

Stover was a former slave who served the Confederacy as a teamster and after the war filed an application to receive a pension for his service to the Southern army. His pension was approved, but he died before he could collect it. He is buried in the former “colored section” of Drake Cemetery in Carter County. A Confederate tombstone marks his grave.

Of course the looming question is why would any black man fight for a Confederacy infected with slavery. Edward C. Smith, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., has studied the issue extensively.

Smith said during an online interview, “I think that most people when they hear that there were blacks fighting in the Confederacy they are outraged. They think that these fighters were forced to fight. In some instances they probably were. But it’s very hard for people today to accept that a black could volunteer for Confederate service because he felt some kind of patriotism toward the South. That he felt loyalty towards a master. Or that he wanted to prove to the establishment that he was deserving of eventually receiving his freedom.”

Smith then continued, “What many Americans forget is that there were 5,000 black soldiers that fought with George Washington during the Revolutionary War. And of course in (the War of) 1812 Andrew Jackson, who praised the blacks in his service profusely, also knew that those blacks were taking a risk fighting for the United States government. So if blacks can fight for George Washington, it’s hard for me to reject the idea that their grandsons could not have fought for Robert E. Lee.”

In his interview, Smith made a point that I agree with when he said, “I think the problem we have today is that most Americans have a difficult time accepting the past because we read into the past the prejudices of the present. The moment you do that you’re not dealing with history.”

In case you are wondering, yes, Smith is black.

Yes, the problem we have is to view history through the eyes of our modern prejudice.

We need to look at history with a very open mind about what actually happened, and ignore the propaganda of the winning side.

And no, I won't respond to Civil war questions after this.

The point is that the same Federal Government that waged war crimes against its own people during the Civil war is now doing the same against the people of Ukraine. There would not be a war in Ukraine without the US interference, like the violent coup the USA created against the democratically elected President of Ukraine in 2014. And they are still putting people in detention camps and torturing them.

If you won't believe that torture by starvation happened in the Civil War, I can start showing you pictures of people being tortured by the USA in Guantanamo, in case you have forgotten.

And we can talk about the bio labs in Ukraine that Obama funded.

Yes, lets get back on Ukraine.

[Ken]

And we can talk about the bio labs in Ukraine that Obama funded.

Yes, lets get back on Ukraine.

This program that Russian Propaganda has been lying about? https://wapo.st/3QS0sRp

How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie

On Aug. 29, 2005, Barack Obama, then a Democratic senator from Illinois, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, visited a laboratory at Kyiv’s Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Station in Ukraine. This facility was not well secured and, by the nature of its public health work, held dangerous pathogens. Andy Weber, a U.S. Defense Department official, showed Mr. Obama a tray of small vials: samples of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax. “I saw test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded — dangers we were told could only be secured with America’s help,” Mr. Obama recalled.

There was deep concern after 9/11 that terrorists could obtain such materials. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma asked the United States to check the security of his nation’s chemical and biological facilities, and Mr. Weber, who had helped uncover the illegal Soviet biological weapons system, spent two weeks with a small team scrutinizing Ukraine’s facilities in late 2001. The lab in Kyiv that Mr. Obama visited held pathogens that cause not only anthrax but also tularemia, brucellosis, listeriosis, diphtheria, cholera, typhoid and others.

On the day of Mr. Obama’s visit, Ukraine signed an agreement with the United States to upgrade and modernize the labs. For example, cattle in Ukraine occasionally became naturally infected with anthrax and the Ukrainian scientists had been culturing the anthrax bacillus for diagnostic purposes, which meant they kept cultures of it, a potential target for terrorists. The U.S. assistance would help them move toward using safer molecular diagnostic methods, such as polymerase chain reaction and antigen testing. The United States also pledged to improve the locks on the doors and beef up capabilities so they could detect disease outbreaks sooner, as well as spot the cause.

The agreement with Ukraine grew out of the 1992 Nunn-Lugar legislation, sponsored by Mr. Lugar and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to clean up the Cold War legacy of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union, an effort that became known as Cooperative Threat Reduction. In the 1990s, thousands of nuclear warheads and missiles were liquidated, followed by vast stocks of chemical weapons. Later, the Nunn-Lugar program expanded into reducing biological threats in Russian laboratories, as well as other former Soviet republics. Among other efforts, a public health reference laboratory — named the Lugar Center — was opened in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2011. Pathogens stored in a Soviet-era research institute in the center of Tbilisi were moved to a purpose-built, secure facility.

The Nunn-Lugar program was partially in the U.S. interest. But it was also an act of benevolence. The sole remaining superpower extended a hand to nations that were weak and struggling, providing about $1 billion a year to the former Soviet republics. Since 2005, the U.S. agreement with Ukraine has led to $200 million in aid for 46 biomedical and health facilities. The assistance was not forced on anyone — it was designed to make people safer and healthier. The recipients were eager for it. The aid to Russia was terminated by President Vladimir Putin in 2014 but continued elsewhere.

In more recent years, the Nunn-Lugar program became a frequent target of Russia’s disinformation campaigns. Because the funding came partially through the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Russia frequently claimed that military research was underway in the recipient facilities. The Lugar Center was a major focus. In December 2009, an item in the Russian newspaper Pravda claimed “biological weapons are being secretly developed on Georgia territory.” The article contained no fewer than nine discrete false allegations.

In 2018, Russia aimed a fresh burst of disinformation at the Lugar Center. On Jan. 16, South Front, a website connected to Russian intelligence agencies, posted a 49-page document titled “The Pentagon Bio-Weapons.” It was a subtle mix of authentic historical documents describing the pre-1969 U.S. biological weapons program — before a 1972 treaty outlawed germ warfare — with falsehoods implying that the United States was continuing work on bioweapons at the Lugar Center. In September, a former KGB officer and onetime Georgian security official, Igor Giorgadze, appeared on Russian television channels RT and Sputnik with documents that he claimed showed the Lugar Center “could be a cover for a bioweapons lab” doing experiments on humans. He also alleged the U.S. government had granted patents for biological weapons devices. Soon after, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said the United States was using the Georgian people “as guinea pigs.” Then, Russian Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense forces, announced that the Lugar Center had been “testing a highly toxic chemical or highly lethal biological agent under the guise of treatments.”

These claims were fictitious, but they made headlines. On May 26, 2020, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a three-page statement about the Lugar Center containing no less than 16 false statements, some absurd, such as about the germ warfare “patents.”

The Lugar Center’s mission was to protect people from disease. Nine Russian scientists had visited it since 2016, and some of them had actually worked there. The Russian government knew its allegations were lies but used them to create a disinformation bomb about biological weapons. The Russian effort, Mr. Leitenberg concluded, “repeatedly displays a brazen, disdainful, spit-in-your-eye character.”

As Putin’s troops stormed into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia’s disinformation warriors used the same approach as they had in Georgia.

The Russian defense ministry announced on March 6 that it had obtained documents from workers at Ukrainian laboratories showing that dangerous pathogens were destroyed on the day of the invasion. Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the documents “confirm that components of biological weapons were developed in Ukraine bio laboratories in close proximity from the territory of Russia.” He said the pathogens, such as plague, anthrax, tularemia and cholera, were destroyed to conceal the U.S. involvement.

This was a total fiction. But thanks to social media, the claims raced around the globe at the speed of light. On March 8, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian repeated the Russian lies, saying the United States “has 26 bio-labs and other related facilities in Ukraine, over which the U.S. Department of Defense has absolute control,” and, “the biological military activities of the U.S. in Ukraine are merely the tip of the iceberg,” with 336 biological labs in 30 countries. He called on the United States to “fully clarify its biological militarization activities both inside and outside its borders.” Within hours, at least 17 Chinese state media outlets posted his accusations, and on China’s Weibo social media, the topic gained more than 210 million views.

[Theophilos]

[temporal1]

New related thread:

”Conscientious Objectors in Ukraine” / Current Events
viewtopic.php?t=6815

[Soloist]

True conviction is always separated by the sword. May the Lord preserve the faithful witness.

[temporal1]

2024 Mothers’ Day