Just a run down of my trip yesterday as I thought about Kingston during the nine hour drive.
My journey originated geographically between the battles of Monmouth and Princeton. General Cox's corner would be the closest historical landmark. About an hour south of New York heading down past Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pennsylvania Avenue by mid day. Manassas and Fredrick burg (sorry, spell check won't allow the proper spelling of the town where my wife attended Mary Washington college) quickly were in the rear view mirror along with the absolutely crazy northern Virginia drivers.
Jeff Davis and Richmond passed an hour or so later and a pit stop occurred near the Petersburg battlefield. Selecting I85 the southern Virginia landscape slid by as pines mixed with turning hardwoods. This is my personal favorite stretch of Interstate.
Down in ric's neck of the woods I turned onto Route 1, or Robert E. Lee highway as his fellow red necks prefer to call it, for my last stretch. Raleigh sure is a pretty area, and Southern Pines welcomed me with their usual Southern hospitality.
It's great to be back down South again.
Sounds beautiful, William. God, I love road trips. Are you going for family, business, or fun?
ReplyDeleteGolf and fun, and later in the weekend a bit of family over in Charlotte.
DeleteEnjoy, William. It's a beautiful time of year to do it. I hope you stay dry.
DeleteThat actually does sound pretty nice. This place has little to no color or character, no wonder there isn't any state income tax here.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like our little burg here in Central NC. You know William we go back to Ohio, oops, probably I am not fond of the Robert E Lee Highway, and everything just looks old compared to NC. Maybe it's the harsh weather I don't know. I would say that It was because everything here had to be rebuilt after the civil war but the mayor of Raleigh surrendered the city to save it from destruction. What's in a name William if they want to call US one south of here Robert E Lee highway I'm all in.
ReplyDeleteBeing from Ohio William I probably am what they call here a damn yankee. Some Civil War history for you. US Grant was from Ohio although he entered the war serving in the Illinois volunteers where he had moved before the war started. More importantly three pretty badass generals who had just as much to do with defeating the south named Phil Sheridan, William Sherman and Don Carlos Buell are also all from OHIO!. We whipped 'em didn't we.
I was just down the Robert E Lee myself a couple weeks ago. About an hour west of you in Albemarle is a pretty nice State Park (Morrow Mountain) in the Uwharrie Mountains. Went over there for a day to hike a couple weeks ago. NC has a bad ass zoo not far from where you are in Asheboro also if you have spare time to kill.
Uwharrie is a particularly beautiful area. My Charlotte based son spends some wonderful down time their abouts.
DeleteAs for the zoo there are plenty of animals on the golf course here in Pinehurst.
William
ReplyDeleteMy thanks for the thought and the post. The Civil War is not of great interest to me, but the names and many of the places are old friends from my years of reading about your country.
The :fall: season as you describe it, is wonderful throughout the Northern Hemisphere, the color changes as the chlorophyll is modified could only occur in nature. I once watched a TV series of a Brit, Steven Fry driving a London Taxi through every US state. The run down the East coast through the fall was absolutely beautiful. I have received many invitations to visit America including one from yourself. Have never had the courage to take the plunge despite there being no financial obstacles.
On my wish list has always been a desire to stand in the Lincoln Memorial and listen to a citizen of Hodgenville read the Gettysburg address. This to my mind is one of the most moving speeches, despite its brevity, ever written. For the historians among us, the speaker immediately before Lincoln spoke for well over an hour and no one remembers his name or what he said.
On a personal note, I am currently undergoing endless tests to determine if a Quad coronary bi pass is failing. Have been a bit under the weather for a month or so and the picture at present is not good. At eighty, the idea of another bout of open heart surgery is not something I wish to entertain. Perhaps, I may yet send William a message from someplace else which will prove whether agnosticism is a viable philosophy!!
Cheers now from Aussie
All our best wishes from the east coast king. Get better in a hurry. A good friend of mine is going in for a heart bypass next week. He is all of 84 and a great golfer.
DeleteAs for the Lincoln memorial I suggest the battlefield cemetery is the place to reinact the address versus that architectural embarrassment on the west end of the DC mall. The Jefferson monument is truly at work if art and embodies the difference between what the founders brought unto being and what Lincoln wrought.
The sun came out this afternoon and the lob lolly pines displayed their innate grandure. The NC Sandhills are a golfing paradise.
Hopefully King you will recover without the surgery. I am on my first stent and am trying like hell to make it the last. That's why I go down the Robert E Lee highway and spend the day hiking the Uwharries. Closest mountains to my home. I am hiking North Carolina (oh and doing some of it on a bike). for my health and to see things while I can. Father time never stops coming at us do he King. In a couple years I want to return for a portion of the Appalachian trail which was a favorite childhood haunt.
DeleteAlso King William bases his opinion of our monuments on his politics. Both monuments are worth seeing if you get the chance. As are all the others on our National Mall. But King to me the most moving is the WW2 memorial.
DeleteAmerican's don't belong in Greek temples. Love or hate Lincoln he killed more American's than any other president.
DeleteThe overwhelming majority of Southerners that he demonized never owned slaves. Those that died for that noble cause don't sit on a marble pedistal. No American should ever sit on a pedistal. Pedistal are for dictators, tyrants, and false Gods. No American president should ever, ever, ever look down on citizens. Never.
Do you hate Lincoln?
DeleteYou should find and read "Was Davis a Traitor?"
ReplyDeleteLincoln was a disaster. They should tear down that acropolis wannabe and throw that throne into the Patomac. No American should ever look down upon another American from on high. Lincoln is a unionists false God.
He was a deadly killer. Look up to backwoods murderer? I think not.
But but but William isn't there a large statue of Thomas in his memorial, standing by the way on a large pedestal. It's your politics William by which you gauge our monuments.
ReplyDeleteMore revisionist history William to fit it into your politics. William Lincoln didn't demonize the south for it's peculiar institution. Lincolns whole precept was that no state, no state has the right to secede from the union. The slavery issue was more on the mind of the south then it ever was Lincoln's. Lincoln never proposed to end slavery only to check it's spread into any new territories. But since the south thought that to be his #1 initiative they left the union. Lincoln only set out to save his country the south made it about slavery. So if slavery is a noble cause, because that is what the south fought for, (yeah I know they called it states rights), then I don't want to look up to anyone except the great Abraham Lincoln.
Rick
ReplyDeleteI think William is trying to rewrite History. Surely even William has learnt that Lincoln had but one purpose in leading the Nation through the Civil War. This purpose was the preservation of the Union. If we keep that single fact in mind, then all else pales into insignificance.
Perhaps the famous letter to Horace Greeley may be usefully reprinted here to make the point.
William may perhaps accuse me of bringing up a schoolboy fantasy and putting Lincoln on a higher pedestal than that he deserves. Fair enough but Lincoln remains in my mind the savor of the Union. A single nation united and indivisible as wrought in the fire of revolution by the founders.
William my friend, just for you, the letter to Greeley:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln
If the South was allowed to leave there would have been two parallel nations both strong in their own ways. Lincoln would of course had less power but hundreds of thousands would not have lost their lives and portions or the South would have not been under the thumb for a hundred years.
DeleteThey would have coexistenced and eventually may have recombined under more favorable circumstances.
Of course we know that generations were sacrificed and Lincoln himself no longer existed. The growth of the nation was stunted during reconstruction and to this day anomosity remains.
Rest in peace Abraham.
But William that was not Lincoln's fault. I think had e lived things would have been different. While he lived things at Appomattox ,Lee's surrender and at Bennett Place Joe Johnston's Surrender, terms were very favorable for the defeated. Lay down your weapons, take your horses and mules and go home. Probably no more favorable terms have ever been offered to a defeated army. Hell grant, Sherman and Joe Johnston became the best of friends. But who fucked it up. Ah yes the Republicans. yeah they did didn't they. Without the goodness of Abraham Lincoln to guide them they took the route of punishing the south, so much so that they tried to impeach a weaker president who tried to stand in their way.
DeleteThe south had no right to try to leave the union, it was understood even during the days of the Articles that this Union was perpetual, forever. The constitution was adopted to make this union more perfect.
Every American has the right to separate. Every State has the right to separate. Don't keep peddling the same horse shit over and over.
DeleteRead the book I referenced above. Was Davis a traitor? Was Lee? Was Calhoun? Dam right they weren't. They exercised their natural rights. They represented those whose rights were being trampled. Just please stop peddling this perpetual union horseshit. As mick promotes evolution, and Obama spews, "I evolved," nothing in nature is perpetual.
Would you support the killing of hundreds of thousands to support today's union ric? Of couse you would as a collectivist. It's your mindset. You'll go to the grave with it. That's the mindset that enables the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Mao's. All butchers of history right along side Lincoln.
William.
DeleteA house divided against itself cannot stand. Again a Lincoln speech. Lincoln was correct, the Nation half slave and half free was an impossibility. The strengths of two separate nations would have been vastly inferior to the power of one undivided nation. The economics of the two nations wood have led to one rich and one poor. The economic base of two separate nations would have been too disparate that the constant need for duplication of services would have ensured ruin for both.,
Above all William, what was to be the fate of the South when the cotton failed and or the Slaves were freed?
William,is this your own philosophy or is it perhaps Tea Party rhetoric. (I do wiswh you would occasionally admit to having responsibilities rather than "Rights". I think it is important to remember that for every "right" we have,some one else has to pay either in service or in coin for us to enjoy that right
Cheers from Aussie
Everything you posit king is mere conjecture. Of course Lincoln promoted union, that was his power base for heavens sake. The North wanted to tax the South into oblivion to feed their teeming pre industrial cities.
DeleteWe both know that there were slaves in the North so please stop with the holier than though attitude. The founders laid out the long term plan but Lincoln and his butcher buddies saw to it that history would take a deadly leap forward. In proportion this great leap forward predated and exceeded Mao's in carnage.
It took one hundred years for the combined nation to forward civil rights. Why was that? Why so long if this great dynamo was as Simon pure as you propose?
Was Davis a traitor or not king?
You make a point of claiming Davies was no Traitor. Who has claimed that he was? certainly not I. As far as I can see ,the South decided to secede as a block in defiance of moderation, reason and common sense. I can see no traitorous conduct in the decision in the same way I can see no reason for antipathy towards the Northerners for the retaliatory action they took following the Fort Sumter episode. In fact, the beginning of the war, as with so many other conflicts began poorly for the Union side, the ultimate victors. Having the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if today we can justify the war either as a military operation, a grandiose attempt at social reform or as is often claimed, a conflict between the haves and the have nots.
DeletePerhaps the question we should examine, what can we learn from this period in history? Brother against brother and father against son. The woman torn between the two sides and having the worst of the conflict. Women can see and feel the effects of war more acutely than can men. All in all a total waste of money and manpower. The residual bitterness lingers even now with people such as you sitting on your lonesome rock pissing into the wind. My friend, all you will achieve is to get your own back!
In my last post, I asked a quite reasonable question as to the origins of your beliefs on this subject. I am interested if there is a consensus amongst followers of the Tea Party beliefs that Lincoln was the tyrant you paint him?
One thing perhaps overlooked in these debates is my neutrality in the Political argument. I can and do take serious issue with both sides in US Politics. Sometimes, no mostly, I learn from these exchanges, thereby justifying the time spent checking references and trying to understand some far out viewpoints.
Cheers from Aussie
king, i spent the better part of three months being a potty mouth to point out the immature nature of max, and pfunky, and ric (at times). Wizzzzzzzzz,,,,right over your head.
DeleteNow you accuse this writer of bitterness. Well king,,,bitterness? How about the fact that both major parties still spend out their behinds despite the efforts of the electorate to stifle the 20 Trillion dollar abomination. Bitter?,,,,,Bitter,,,? hahahhhahahaha,,,,,
How about we take a second to correlate the potty mouth William with the bitter William. How about we look deeper into the methods of moving the conversation forward past the progressive, liberal, socialist, democrat, communist,,,,,marxist,,,,,talking points of the left.
Sometimes you have to punch someone in the eye to get their attention king,,,the punch in the eye of this upcoming election cycle will be the outsiders. The left is in the process of having a cow over this. HRC is the ultimate insider king. Where do you think she's going with this except into the dust bin of history?
William
DeleteDiscussing anything with you is akin to herding a group of cats!.
No matter how I phrase a question you deliberately dodge the answer if it has a bearing on the subject matter you have formulated the answer to in your mind.
Why bring into the debate the others with whom you disagree? Rick,Max and Pflunky are all thoughtful contributors. Why is it only you William who gets ornery as soon as someone asks a question or worse, points out your behaviours which on occasions resemble a demented gopher.
My last two posts here have asked reasonable questions, do you think for once you could try to pass on your message in a manner it can be understood.
Cheers from Aussie
Your question was stupid king. One voice cannot speak for a wide ranging movement. I know the Alinsky followers would like pretty little answers to put in their pretty little boxes
DeleteReal life is more complicated. Follow along the best you can.
William here in lies the hypocrisy of the tea party. You only want to espouse the parts of the constitution and the writings of it's understanding that honor and support your positions. See as far as the constitution goes I believe it is all or nothing. You want to repeal certain amendments that don't fit into your perfect dream world. You want to disregard and argue about everything that doesn't fit that dream.
DeleteOh no William not the tax argument. The south said " If Lincoln wins we leave. It had nothing to do with taxes. The debate at that time was slavery not taxes and you know it. that is the most hideous rewrite of American history yet. It's not true and you damn well know it. Lincoln was a republican. the south was solid democrat so much so that they ran their own democratic candidate in the election of 1860, John Breckinridge as the southern democrat. Breckinridge took the position of states rights citing the illegality of the federal government to interfere with slavery. Breckinridge won every state that eventually left the union. The border states, Tennessee and Virginia were won by John Bell who campaigned in the south against succession because the Constitution protected slavery. Stop the rewrite bull shit William.
DeleteYou sound confused ric. Jeff Davis was a democrat US senator from mississippi. Was he a democrat or republican?
DeleteYou have a highway running right through your city that honors Bobby Lee, a Virginian slave holder.
I know you come from Ohio but haven't you had time yet to reform your adopted State? Since you don't believe in States rights I guess it really doesn't matter.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteYes he was and Breckinridge was a democrat from Kentucky. I never mentioned Jeff Davis. don't have a highway to Lee in my city as we are not located along US 1 but Clayton my city is on US 70. There is not a Lee Highway in Raleigh if that is what you mean, US 1 is called Capital Blvd in Raleigh and Claude E Pope Highway through the southern suburbs. I don't think it gets the name "Lee Highway" but it is actually Jefferson Davis Highway south of Sanford to Southern Pines in "Lee" County. William I hear this "Tax bullshit" quite often around here .Stop the re write William..
DeleteAlternate names for US 1
Though the highway is commonly known as "Highway 1" or "U.S. 1" throughout the state, the highway does have other known names it uses locally in areas.
Capital Boulevard – Road name from I-440 to the Franklin County line.
Claude E. Pope Memorial Highway – Official North Carolina name of US 1, from I-40 in Cary south to the Chatham County line.
Cliff Benson Beltline – Road name of Raleigh northern inner-beltline, cosigned with I-440.
H. Clifton Blue Memorial Boulevard – Official North Carolina name of US 1 through Southern Pines.
Jefferson Davis Highway – Official North Carolina name of US 1, from South Carolina state line to Sanford.
So now one hundred and fifty years after the end of the civil war the former slave supporting democrats have a new method of placing Americans in servitude. Progressive socialism politics that substitutes debt for chains.
DeleteCongratulations ric, your party has come a long way.