Debate: Is the confederate flag racist? or is it heritage?
Side: Yes its racest

PART 1I cannot continue debating when you're going to cite sources that don't even back your claims.This is either laziness, incompetence, dishonesty, or willful ignorance on your part.References to slavery from secession documents of the states:Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union:"We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations [return of slaves], and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.""The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: 'No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."' ""This stipulation [return of slaves] was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made.""an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations""enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive [slave] is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution [return of slaves]""The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress.""In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals""inciting servile [slave] insurrection in the State of Virginia""Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.""The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor [runaway slaves].""We affirm that these ends [slavery] for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States""Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions [slavery]""and have denied the rights of property [slavery] established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution""they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery""they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property [slaves] of the citizens of other States.""They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile [slave] insurrection.""it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government" [election of Lincoln]"a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself" [likely a reference to the Personal liberty laws enacted after the Prigg ruling]"A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States [Lincoln], whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.""he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.""has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons [blacks] who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs [slavery] and safety. ""On the 4th day of March next, this party [Lincoln] will take possession of the Government.""It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory [expansion of slave states], that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.""The guaranties of the Constitution [return of slaves] will then no longer exist""The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy."A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union:"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.""These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.""we do not overstate the dangers to our institution [slavery]""The hostility to this institution [slavery] commenced before the adoption of the Constitution""It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right [slavery] on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.""It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.""It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union""It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes [slave] insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.""It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of [slave] emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.""It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.""It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture [slavery], to prostrate our industrial pursuits [slavery] and to destroy our social system [slavery].""We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property [slavery] worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this [slaves] as well as every other species of property."A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Georgia to Secede from the Federal Union:For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations [return of slaves] to us in reference to that property [slaves]""A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization [Republican Party] into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.""The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party.""While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose.""By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state.""The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution.""While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen.""The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact.""But a distinct abolition party was not formed in the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation.""The Constitution delegated no power to Congress to excluded either party from its free enjoyment; therefore our right [slavery] was good under the Constitution.""Our rights [slavery] were further fortified by the practice of the Government from the beginning.""Slavery was forbidden in the country northwest of the Ohio River by what is called the ordinance of 1787.""In all of these acquisitions the policy of the Government was uniform. It opened them to the settlement of all the citizens of all the States of the Union. They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves).""All were equally protected by public authority in their persons and property [slaves] until the inhabitants became sufficiently numerous and otherwise capable of bearing the burdens and performing the duties of self-government, when they were admitted into the Union upon equal terms with the other States""In 1820 the North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy [with the Missouri Compromise] and demanded that the State of Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her limits by her constitution.""After a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated in her special object [abolition], but her policy and position led to the adoption of a section in the law for the admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the territory acquired from France lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude and outside of Missouri.""Mr. Jefferson condemned the restriction and foresaw its consequences and predicted that it would result in the dissolution of the Union. His prediction is now history.""The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time.""The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists.""The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.""This particular question, in connection with a series of questions affecting the same subject, was finally disposed of by the defeat of prohibitory legislation.""The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction [of slavery] and their party friends.""Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere.""This is the [Republican] party to whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.""The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees it its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.""The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.""The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total absence of any express power to exclude us.""for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property.""Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property [slaves] or who use it to destroy us.""This clause of the Constitution [return of slaves] has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us""A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor [slaves].""This provision [return of slaves] and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution.""In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision [return of slaves].""This act [return of slaves] depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency.""The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty.""Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers.""This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility.""Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union.""We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it [return of slaves], but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him.""In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant [slave] who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments.""For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us.""Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers.""These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.""by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property [slaves] in the common territories of the Union""put it [slavery] under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere""they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it [slavery] to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants""their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property [slaves] but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides"A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union:"She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.""Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.""The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions [slavery] of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.""By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.""When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.""deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] [their annotation in this case, not mine] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof""thereby annulling a material provision of the compact [the fugitive slave clause], designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision [the fugitive slave clause] founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation.""Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision [the fugitive slave clause] of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.""In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party""now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery""proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law""They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.""For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.""they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments""They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.""They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile [slave] insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.""They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.""They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.""They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.""by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.""We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.""That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.""By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South."