Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 9 July 2015.
The Confederates were very clear that slavery was the cause of the war. Revisionists later tried to add other motives to the Southern cause, but Grant and all the contemporaries on both sides knew slavery was the crux of the matter. So the Confederate cause was the right to brutalize, torture, and even kill an unwilling labor force that was unpaid. No war in history had ever been fought for such a lowly cause and the Confederate leadership skills were amazing in keeping up morale without a decent cause to fight for.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
The Southern states were illegal rebels. A confederacy had always meant a voluntary association of otherwise independent entities. However technically the Southern states were not independent but in a state of illegal rebellion against the United States. Lincoln, a lawyer, could not being himself to refer to the South by their preferred name—the Confederacy. So this was how he and many in his administration referred to the South.
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American author and journalist. Coates gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy. Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and TIME. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications.
