and then became a traitor and fought for the union in the great state of Tennessee!

He is registered on both rolls, but his widow pension papers show a pension for fighting with the union regiment and crossed out is his prior service with the confederate regiment from Georgia.

Good to see people are freaking out. This is a very bad part of our history.. We need to understand we are not responsible for our ancestors actions, but we are responsible for how we treat people today. And to recognize the holdover of these very sick beliefs that still to this day sickens our culture.

the long journey to different parts of the world with the Christian's blessing, etc.

Civil war over 600,000 Americans died. damn.

Let's get real here. The "heritage" they speak of is the heritage that enslaved the blacks, indentured the irish, lynched the italians, wiped out the native american, interned the asian, and now openly hates the amerindian. Someone tell me what the hell is worth preserving?

He was an immigrant who was promised citizenship and 160 acres if he fought for the Union. From what I heard, he didn't give a crap about slaves or slavery, he just wanted the citizenship and the land. And he got both. Ironically, he ended up having his own group of "slaves" on his farm. In those days, they were called "farm kids".

How do they know? Just because the family never mentioned it? Like desertion, it's not part of the family history that most southern families pass on.

Slave ownership in the Confederate states was actually more common than most people realize. It is often understated by comparing the number of "Slave owners" to the total population. But this ignores the fact that only the head of household was counted as a slave owner and families were typically large. In fact, almost 1/3 of southern families owned slaves and in South Carolina and Mississippi, ownership approached 1/2 of families.

http://www.civilwarcauses.org/stat.htm

I can't place the reference at this moment, but I have seen statistics that indicated over 50% of Confederate soldiers were from slave owning families (probably even higher for officers). As for the rest, there was a constant and tremendous propaganda effort from political and southern religious leaders that warned the poor non-slave owning whites that if the the Negroes were ever set free, they would take their jobs, murder and rape. That particular trope survived long after the War to bring about the KKK and sadly, Charleston last week.

but I'm 100% positive that my one Confederate ancestor didn't fight for slavery. He didn't own any slaves. He DID live in Clayton County, Georgia, right in the path of Sherman's march to the sea. He joined the Georgia state militia when he was 46 and past military age to defend his home and family against an invading army. I'm sure there were a lot of Confederate soldiers in similar situations. I can understand that, while at the same time deploring the Confederacy and what it stood for.

You may have some letters or documentation that support your view about this particular ancestor, but lacking that, it is still very likely that, like almost all southerners of the era and for generations after, he was terrified of the idea of slaves being free - even if his family did not own slaves.

Well done.

Thank you. I respect my ancestors, but on some stuff they were dead wrong.

I do it all the time, all of the ignorant, hatefully arrogant portion of my friends and family hate it when I call them out for being assholes.

A pat on the back to you!

through ancestry.com found out my ancestors owned slaves and fought as confederates that damn flag represents hatred and bigotry to African americans it is the same as a swastika for the jews and it needs to go

[link:http://www.cracked.com/article_19223_6-civil-war-myths-everyone-believes-that-are-total-b.s._p3.html|

The flag used today was adopted later thanks to the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan.

and the KKK was founded by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee.

The first KKK was made up of Veterans of the Southern Army during Reconstruction. The KKK was a "secret organization" organized on local levels. There is no record of them using anything as a flag, they tended to be small groups and if they flew any flag is was the Black Flag on no quarters (i.e. they were going to kill everyone, which is the traditional meaning of a Black Flag).

Now, in the 1915 Movie, the "Birth of a Nation" the Klan is shown in white hoods and capes, using burning crosses and most of what we take as KKK dress today. There is NO record the original Klan EVER dress in any one color, the reports from the period 1866-1871 often report disguises of various colors and just sacks over their heads, NOT the hooded hoods of the modern Klan (The Klan hood is first seen in the Movie "The Birth of a Nation&quot .

Now the Burning Cross has a long history. It was used to gather the back country people of present day North Carolina and Tennessee to fight the Battle of King's mountain in 1780:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kings_Mountain

The battle of King's Mountain had been fought by people in the "back country" of North Caroline and Tennessee, many of whom ancestors had left Scotland after 1700 and settled in the mountains of Tennessee of North Carolina. As highland Scots they retain the memory of how the clans were called together to go to battle, by runners running around with burning crosses. Thus Burning Crosses were used to gather the back country men for the battle of King's Mountain. That memory was known during the post Civil War era, and it became the symbol most tied with the First Klan NOT the Confederate Battle flag. As to the Klan, it is first seen in the movie "The Birth of a Nation".

The first time we see the Confederate Battle flag and the KKK was the KKK second foundation on Stone Mountain in 1915. Nathan Bedford Forest had ordered the first Klan dissolved in 1871 (Some are reported to have survived till 1872). We see "Red Shirts" and other terrorist groups after 1871 but the Klan is mostly missing after 1871. Between Forest's dissolution order (he is believed to be the head of the first Klan) AND the passage of the Anti-KKK act of 1871 (the Civil Rights Act of 1871), the Klan disappears till it is re founded in 1915 (This was aided by the various efforts of the Reconstruction governments to suppress the Klan AND the reinstatement of Democratic party control of Southern State Governments in the 1870s.

Please note, just because the KKK ceased to exist after 1870 did not mean similar groups with similar agendas did not exist, The Red Shirts was one such Southern Group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Shirts_(Southern_United_States)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_League

I am just commenting that the FIRST KLAN did not appear to have used the Confederate Battle Flag, it operated on to small a level to need a flag and given its policy of hit and run, the main military use of a flag, as a rally point for troops, was not needed in such activities. Thus no need for any flag, and if one was used it was the Traditional Black Flag of no Quarters (i.e. fight to the death).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#End_of_first_Klan

Rather than bowing to reality and decency, those damn Confederate leaders started a war they had little chance of winning. And yet their names and faces are commemorated all over the South. Because of the war the Confederacy started, 620,000 American lives were lost. The Confederacy not only lost the war, but the South was devastated.

The ratio of Confederate soldiers who died compared to Union soldiers was 3:1.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/death-numbers/

Those much-celebrated Confederate generals had a lot more Southern blood on their hands than Union blood.

But this issue existed before the Confederacy and continues to exist, as Obama noted yesterday.
Apologies for not linking the earlier post. Anyone?