Charleston, South Carolina

Jack Hinson sure put it to you bitches!

War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

I intend to make Georgia howl.

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

And I must ask , as I have had conversations with my black friends about slavery, where would blacks be today in the USA had it not been for slavery?

But then let's not pass the opportunity to turn any tragedy into a game of partisan sport

Indentured Servants' Experiences 1600-1700
BEFORE THE JOURNEY: "Many of the spirits [people who recruited indentured servants] haunted the London slums and those of Bristol and other seaports. It was not difficult to find hungry and thirsty victims who, over a dinner and much liquor, would sign anything before them. The spirit would then hustle his prey to his headquarters to be added to a waiting company of others, safely kept where they could not escape until a ship was ready for them. An easier way was to pick up a sleeping drunk from the gutter and put him aboard a vessel for America, where, with no indenture, he could be sold to his own disadvantage and with the American planter's gain. Children were valuable and could be enticed with candy to come along with a spirit. Sometimes they, and older people too, were seized by force."

THE JOURNEY: The ocean journey to America usually took eight to twelve weeks. Indentured servants were packed into the ships tightly, often being held in the hold without a chance to get fresh air. "Every two weeks at sea the [indentured servant] passengers received an allowance of bread. One man and his wife, having eaten their bread in eight days, staggered before the captain and begged him to throw them overboard, for they would otherwise starve before the next bread day. The captain laughed in their faces, while the ship's mate, even more of a brute, gave them a bag of sand and told them to eat that. The couple did die before the next ration of bread, but the captain charged the other passengers for the bread the two would have eaten if they had survived."

UPON ARRIVAL IN AMERICA: Some indentured servants had their contract of service worked out with waiting American colonists who would be their masters for four to seven years. Others, upon arrival, were bought and sold much in the same manner as slaves. An announcement in the Virginia Gazette read, "Just arrived at Leedstown, the Ship Justitia, with about one Hundred Healthy Servants, Men Women and Boys. . . . The Sale will commence on Tuesday the 2nd of April."

TREATMENT BY THEIR MASTERS: Indentured servants had few rights. They could not vote. Without the permission of their masters, they were not allowed to marry, to leave their houses or travel, nor buy or sell anything. Female indentured servants were often raped without legal recourse. Masters often whipped and beat their indentured servants. One man testified: "I have seen an Overseer beat a Servant with a cane about the head till the blood has followed, for a fault that is not worth the speaking of...."

WORK IN AMERICA: In the 1600s, most indentured servants were put to work in the tobacco fields of Virginia and Maryland. This was hard manual labor under the grueling hot summer sun, under which Europeans were not accustomed to working. Overseers were often cruel, beating the servants to make them work faster and harder.

AFTER CONTRACT WAS COMPLETED: Although many masters craftily figure out ways to extend an indentured servant's bondage (through accusing the servant of stealing, impregnating a female indenture servant, etc.), most indentured servants who survived the frrst four to seven years in America were freed. The master was required (depending upon the rules of the colony) to provide his former servant with the following: clothing, two hoes, three barrels of corn, and fifty acres of land.

Confederate flag debate sweeps South: South Carolina, Mississippi
By Jeremy Diamond and Eugene Scott, CNN
Updated 6:48 PM ET, Tue June 23, 2015
Where the Confederate flag is still seen

Story highlights
South Carolina House voted 103-10 to debate taking the Confederate flag down from the capitol grounds
Virginia's governor announced Tuesday that it would remove the flag from state license plates

Washington (CNN)State legislators across the South are now taking up the debate over the prominence of the Confederate flag in their states after conservative leaders displayed a sudden swell of support on Monday for removing the Confederate flag from the State House grounds in South Carolina.

The South Carolina House passed an amendment on Tuesday allowing debate on removing the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds. The vote passed 103-10.

Lawmakers will next consider one or more of several proposals currently being discussed around the State House. Whichever emerges as the consensus bill will likely have to go through the full, formal legislative process -- committee mark-up in both the House and the Senate -- before receiving votes for full passage. A two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of the Legislature will be necessary in order for the measure reach Haley's desk and subsequently remove the flag from the Capitol grounds.

In Mississippi, GOP House Speaker Philip Gunn said it was time for his state to change its flag, which includes the Confederate insignia -- a sign of the slave-holding South.

"We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us," Gunn said Monday night in a Facebook post. "As a Christian, I believe our state's flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi's flag."

South Carolina's House of Representatives passed an amendment Tuesday afternoon that would allow debate on whether to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds. Representatives passed the resolution by 103-10 votes. The state's Senate still must vote on the issue.

As national Republican leaders -- from the chairman of the Republican National Committee to most 2016 GOP contenders -- backed South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's calls to remove the flag, the debate has now fully busted out of the Palmetto State and broached party lines.

South Carolina legislators will meet Tuesday to debate removing the flag, just hours after rallies were planned for the Statehouse grounds.

"This is a circumstance where the people let the politicians," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said on CNN's "At this Hour" on Tuesday. "I came to conclude after going to Charleston that we had to act and sooner rather than later, and God help South Carolina if we fail to achieve the goal of removing the flag."

RELATED: Why the Confederate flag still flies

Civil rights leaders and black elected officials are now seizing the moment to renew their calls for the flag's removal, driving off a resurgence of activism sparked by the racially-motivated killing of nine African-Americans by avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof, who had previously posted pictures online holding the Confederate flag.

Mississippi State Sen. Kenneth Wayne Jones, a Democrat and the chairman of the state legislature's black caucus, said Tuesday that South Carolina took a "bold step" forward and said his state will now follow that lead.

"They realize how offensive it is plus they also realize that most of the things that done now based on race, or hate crimes as we say, you see symbols like this and no longer can we afford to have everybody in a state represented by these symbols," Jones said Tuesday on CNN's "New Day."

Mississippi in 2001 voted to keep the Confederate symbol as part of the state flag in a 2001 referendum, but Jones said recent events present an opportunity to reignite the debate -- one that should focus on the idea of removing exclusive symbols from the Mississippi flag.

A decade after the end of the Civil War, a veteran of the Confederate States of America examines a Union water bottle in front of a Confederate flag in 1875. Here's a look at the evolution of that flag:
Evolution of the Confederate flag 6 photos
EXPAND GALLERY
"Nothing represents African-Americans in that flag and in that Confederacy but the fact that the states didn't hide the fact that from an economic development standpoint they were going to keep on owning people of color to do the work to make the money," Jones said.

"What we're saying is that in this day and time and in light of horrific events that has the dialogue going, it's time for all of us to sit down -- Progresssive individuals, Republicans, democrats, black, white -- and say OK, let's get a flag that represents the state as a whole and not just have a one-sided thing that stands for so much dark history in Mississippi," Jones added.

Republican and Democratic leaders in the Tennessee's Legislature are also taking a closer look at the Tennessee state flag, which includes Confederate symbols, and are calling for the removal of a bust of Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest which currently sits outside the state senate chamber.

Activists are also calling for a closer look at the state flags of six other Southern states, in addition to those of Mississippi and Tennessee, which also include symbols evoking those states' Civil War battle flags. They include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina.

And in Virginia, Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe tied the shootings to a recent Supreme Court ruling on the use of the flag on state license plates, when he called for end to its use in that format in his state.

"I have directed Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne to develop a plan for replacing the currently-issued plates as quickly as possible," McAuliffe said at an event Tuesday morning.

Even steven my man Cleburne (yes, a Southern general I admire) would roll Sherman up like a blanket.