What’d ya’ll putthat dern Yankee on the home page for. I was feeling all patriotic until that remonded me of why us Virgibians are still celebrating July 4. 
Dear Mr. Newton,
Upon careful research we have come to find that your question implies that there is a lack of patriotic fervor generated from the image posted on the home page of this site. We are sorry that you find this difficult to swallow. Please note that the war you are concerned about ended approximately 141 years ago and management felt that most members of this site were not present during the greater part of that conflict.
In addition, Germany and Japan lost their most recent war and now they have a thriving economy due to the aid of the victors. It is not surprising that when we did further research we noted that the presidency, the congress and senate and much of the supreme court is dominated by those descended from the renegade states, or at a minimum express the politics of the southern region.
For all of those reasons it was felt that a small token to the “victors” should be allowed. We hope that you can find it in your heart to accept this image for only one week.
Version 2:
We won, you lost, get over it.
In jest (and a happy 4th to all)
jed
Ah, Colston, sounds like you celebrated the 4th with a 5th…
Jed and D Micus,
Now Ol’ Colston wasn’t tryin’ to dredge up old hostilities or nothin’ like thet! He wuz jest remindin’ us Damn Yankies thet we got our asses whupped pretty dern good most of the time in thet thar war ‘n we shud begin to know it by now! If’n I know enythin’ ‘bout Virginians a’tall he’s ready at the drop of a hat to come up here and whup us all again. O’course I know thet I can take him with one hand while castin’ a #24 midge with ta other! But thet don’ mean nothin.
Now Colston, why don’ you get your butt up here and show Jed and Micus whats what. (and bring some t’backy with ya).
Ol Bill
The real reason he made his point is that when he comes north to fish he seems to not do as well on yankee fish as he does on their southern counterparts. Just ask him, he will tell ya. It might also have something to do with his reluctance to use a pink worm too.
Jerry
Dream the Life, Live the Dream
Laugh at yourself first and all else falls into place
Board of Directors, Valley Forge Trout Unlimited
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Colston has reminded me of being a young soldier in Texas and Alabama. Southerners respect a man in uniform. They used to ask me “Where’re yall from?” I responded “Pennsylvania”. They responeded “Da** Yankee. Well Yankee let me buy you a beer”. Being that half of my family is from south of the mason-dixon line I knew this to be a show of respect and you never, ever turn them down. What great folks we have in the U.S.A.! I think of these kind folks often when I hear these words from John Wayne’s “Why Are You Marching Son?”:
What of a man that stood straight and tall,
And wept silent tears when he saw brave men fall,
No matter, no difference, the blue or the grey,
All were his brothers and how often he’d pray!
Bless you, Colston. 
Eric “nighthawk”
In the words of Patrick Henry,“Give me liberty, or give me death!”
[This message has been edited by nighthawk (edited 05 July 2005).]
[This message has been edited by nighthawk (edited 05 July 2005).]
Reminds me—
Way back in the dark ages when I was a Freshman in High School, I lived in the South. At that time, they taught American History in the Freshman year.
Then I moved to Northern Illinois for the rest of my high school “career”. As a Sophmore I had to take American History (again). I was nearly suspended from school for so actively arguing with the teacher who tried to tell us that the South “Lost the war” bringing the Civil War to a close. The previous year in the south I had learned that “Cessation of Hostilities” brought the War of State’s Rights to a close. Those Yankee educators finally convinced me that the North plain ol’ WON. But, I see that there are still some who doubt the facts of the case.
Still and all, I’m saving my Confederate Money 'cause you never know…
Snow on the roof but with fire still in the hearth
The “official” reason for using a Yankee
Bugler was because Taps was originated by a Yankee. Duh. Anyone actually read the article?
LadyFisher, Publisher of
FAOL
“Taps” sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.
Ever since I first visited Arlington National Cemetery, at age 14, I hear “Taps” playing when I look at those seemingly endless rows of white crosses. When I hear “Taps” being played, I think of those crosses at Arlington. It is indeed a haunting melody.
Mike
As I have heard the story, the officer who wrote “Taps” fought for the Union, the bugler was a Union soldier, the first time that it was used was to bury the officer’s son, who fought for the Confederacy. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it is certainly touching.
As to winners and loosers, we still have the bourbon distilleries, but we’re quite willing to share.
We ought to have a “Bury the Hatchet” party. Tennessee can bring the bourbon. Kentucky can bring the rest of the bourbon. Texas can bring the chili. Who else is bringing what?
I was teasing…glad ya’ll realized it. (I did go back and read the article. Nicely done and that’s my understanding of how taps originated…Last time I was at Harrisons Landing I was at a Ruritan Bull roast)
Here’s my take on the 4th:
My favorite days of the year have always been my birthday and the Fourth of July.
The Fourth is second, but not by much, and I?m pretty sure that I?d like it even better than my birthday, which is beginning to take on ominous overtones, if we could still legally celebrate it in decent fashion with honest-to-God,-they?ll-blow-your fingers-off fireworks, the only kind really fit to use.
(The British weren?t shooting nurfballs at Bunker Hill, you know.)
But, even in its safety above patriotic excess modern mode, I still excited about the Fourth of July and generally get all weepy at least once in the course of the day when I see Old Glory, red, white, blue and bold blowing in the wind.
I?ve often wondered how somebody as imbued with an anti-federal, unreconstructed attitude as I am, someone firmly of the conviction that Alex Hamilton and the Federalists sold us a bill of goods with the Constitution, could be so moved by the flag.
I think, however, that I?ve figured it out.
The Fourth of July isn?t the birthday of the United States. It?s the birthday of American freedom and our identity as Americans, a people in our own right rather than second class Englishmen. The United States was born later,with the Constitution, after we?d whipped the British and needed some sort of structure that would enable us to cooperate in preserving the liberty and identity that we?d won.
Recalling that is, I think, important.
Government structures change, but our essence as men and women willing to tackle a buzz saw for our freedom even if that buzz saw is, from time to time, our own government.
Since the controversy over our invasion of Iraq developed, some of those favoring the war have attacked those more dubious about it as somehow disloyal because they distrust ?the government? or ?the United States.?
?The United States? is, however, nothing but a name for a union of smaller sovereignties, and, while its general form is important, so long as we can have peaceful revolutions such as the one we had in 2000 when the Republicans ousted the Democrats from the White House, there is nothing sacrosanct about the name or even its precise form.
What is sacrosanct and the government is legitimate only so long as it defends it, is our individual liberty as free men and women.
What we celebrate on the Fourth of July is that liberty and our identity.
The way we elect presidents and senators and who gets to vote have all changed since we became the United States and those changes and others aren?t worth fighting over.
But the rights of free speech, to bear arms, to a free press, to assemble, to religious freedom, to counsel and trial by jury, to be free from being forced to give evidence against ourselves, to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, to be free from having soldiers quartered in our homes ? those are rights worth dying for.
And we claimed them all July 4, 1776, not after the Revolution when, after we?d made our claim to those great great, natural and inalienable rights stick, we invented the United States.
Colston, Well said! I’ve heard somewhere that the mark of a southern gentleman is the fact that he will remain polite until you get him mad enough to kill you. So, I hope you’re not “just being polite”… Us northerners give more warning before we lose it…(picture a Boston cabbie stuck in traffic gesturing here)
“Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is understanding”
Nope, I’m not mad. By the way, I’d never heard that about Southern gentlemen, but, it’s accurate.
Colston, As an aside, I had a roomate in college who told an anecdote about his Dad. Dad, who flew in reconaissance planes and choppers in Vietnam, had this to say about southerners. “If you ever get shot down, the best thing to happen to you is to have a southerner nearby. They are the only ones I know of that will crawl though burning wreckage to get you out…” (Evidently, even if you were a Massachsetts yankee)
“Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is understanding”