Below are sections from an article published in full at my column on The Rogue Review. It is a tremendously important article on a subject that is vitally important today, because we are living in a world created by the losers of the Civil War, not the winners—we are still dealing with the war’s aftermath. The Democrats have been lying for over a century, and it is time, in the interests of truth and justice, that we set the record straight.
We’ve all heard of Andersonville. Have you ever heard of Elmira? Camp Douglas? The guards at Andersonville almost starved along with the prisoners. At Elmira, the Union Army tortured and killed Confederate soldiers as policy.
The summer of 1864 W. and W. Mears constructed an observatory across from the camp and citizens were given an opportunity to watch prisoners die of starvation and exposure for a fee of 10cents.
Federal Policy was Starvation of Prisoners
By Aug. 26, 1864, 793 POWs were reported suffering from scurvy. As a result of the lack of fruits and vegetables The prisoners suffered from ulcerative colitis amoebic dysentery and renal infection; among other serious illnesses. That summer the local newspapers reported bumper crops of apples, pears, peaches, and a variety of fresh vegetables including corn. Death in the month of August claimed 115 Elmira prisoners. On Sept. 1 the camp's census was 9,480;
The U.S. government purchased a half acre of Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery for the burial of Confederate prisoners of war. A carpentry shop was established in the middle of the camp for the express purpose of making pine coffins.
The stockade's well water was a thoroughly contaminated diseased pond, The authorities in Washington D.C. repeatedly refused to order the pond drained.
Seventy-five years later, Elmira prison camp survivor James Huffman would recall that the "well water looked pure and good but was deadly poison to our men."
In September of 1864 Union officer Bennett F.. Munger informed Elmira's Commandant Tracy that starvation was stalking the Confederate prisoners, that "during the past week there have been 112 deaths, reaching one day 29. There seems little doubt numbers have died both in quarters and hospital from want of proper food."
Elmira's death toll for September was 385. In an Oct. 1, 1864 letter to his wife, a ranking Union officer at Elmira wrote, "The rebs are dying quite fast, from 8 to 30 per day."
In an editorial in the Oct. 2, 1864 edition of the New York Times the Federal government was advised "that rebel prisoners should no longer live in luxury ..." The Elmira Daily Advertiser cheerfully informed its readers that the Confederate prisoners were contented, healthy and in good condition. The circus...like observation deck was closed to the public. It was now used by army sentries exclusively.
On Oct. 3, Commandant Tracy issued Special Order No. 336cutting back on the supply of food accorded the prisoners. Horigan writes: "Special Order No. 336 immediately became a factor in the camp's excessive death rate...No possible 'good' came from this order Tracy erred in blind allegiance...to a power structure in Washington bent on revenge. Starvation, manifested in stages, would become visibly evident inside the prison camp."
a series of murderous orders from Lincoln's high command ensued, ordering a reduction in the malnourished Confederate prisoners' rations throughout the POW camps of the North. The Commissary General, Col. Hoffman, is on record as early as April 29, 1864 advocating half-rations for Confederate prisoners on Johnson's Island. Stanton presented a similar proposal to Lincoln on May 5, 1864, which Lincoln apparently approved, because on June I, 1864 the Union high command officially ordered a 20% reduction in the rations of Confederate prisoners which had been inadequate to begin with. The situation was further exacerbated by the army's Circular No.4 of Aug. 10, 1864 forbidding the purchase of food by prisoners from the camp "sutler" (authorized civilian grocer).
There is no question that Hoffman intentionally withheld the--at that time-huge sum of $1,845,125 worth of food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies budgeted for Confederate prisoners
Elmira prison camp survivor Anthony Keiley, a former Southern newspaper editor, wrote in 1866, "In a nation whose boast is that they do not feel the war...and supplies of all sorts wonderfully abundant, it is simply infamous to starve the sick as they did at Elmira." Unlike the situation at Andersonville, this was starvation amidst plenty.
James W. Crawford of the 6th Virginia was one of the few to escape, having participated in a spectacular October getaway by ten prisoners via a hand dug tunnel system. It took him 23 days to make his way to Virginia. He told the Richmond Examiner: "I succeeded in getting out of the clutches of the meanest people that have ever lived...Our prisoners sicken and die twenty-five to thirty per day; but that seems to please them more than anything else." The enraged Crawford concluded by stating that the South "should fight forever before being subdued by such a nation." In October death claimed 276 Confederates inside Barracks No.3. As hundreds died, Elmirans enjoyed a rich harvest from the surrounding farms, and the Yankee officers assigned to Elmira hosted a gala dinner ball. Friends and invited guests of the 54th New York shared laughter and fine food.
Prisoners Poisoned by the Camp Doctor
In addition to all of the perils the Southern troops had to contend with in Elmira, it appears that the camp's chief medical officer, Maj. Sanger, may have been ordering the poisoning of Confederate hospital patients with arsenic.
Former prisoner Walter D. Addison was an orderly in the camp's ramshackle hospital. Addison testified in his memoirs that Sanger ordered another medical officer, Dr. Van Ness, to administer, "Fowler's solution of arsenic. He wrote (prescribed) forty-five (drops) and the patients in a very short time breathed their last. No investigation ensued...Dr. Van Ness continued his position."
Author Michael Horigan observes, "There was, according to Addison, a desire on the part of Union officers to kill Confederate prisoners." By way of corroboration, Horigan unearthed a confidential letter from Major Sanger to Brig. Gen. John L. Hodsdon confessing to the murder of hundreds of helpless Confederate prisoners in Elmira. Hodsdon concealed the letter's contents and they were not divulged outside U.S. government circles during Sanger's lifetime. Writing in mid-October,1864, Sanger told Hodsdon, "I now have charge of 10,000 rebels, a very worthy occupation for a patriot, particularly adapted to elevate himself in his own estimation, but I think I have done my duty having relieved 386 of them of all earthly sorrow... ,"
Clothing & Blankets Withheld in Winter
As the fierce New York winter approached the prisoners were denied insulation of the prison's buildings. Heat, blankets and warm clothing were all in scant supply. A Baltimore, Maryland relief organization consisting of private citizens sent a representative to Elmira to broach the possibility of providing a warm clothing shipment to the prisoners. They were forbidden access to the camp.
Their leader, John Van Allen, urgently appealed to the War department. He was told his group could proceed with the clothing donation if they complied with a maze of time- consuming regulations. The bureaucratic entanglements grew so complex that the Baltimore group, perceiving that the impediments were deliberate and never-ending, withdrew the offer. Van Allen described Secretary of War Stanton's attitude toward the proposed humanitarian relief: "Stanton was inexorable to all my entreaties."
The death toll at Elmira for December was 269 Confederates. A Dec. 4 report by Capt. Munger stated that at least 1,000 Elmira prisoners were "entirely destitute of blankets." The "rebels" would add freezing to death along with starvation, disease, contaminated water and physician administered arsenic to the list of Elmira's deadly threats.
On Jan. 19, 1865, Brig. Gen. Henry Wessells blocked winter clothing shipments to Elmira's prisoners. In late January, Major George Blagden, assistant to the commissary general of prisoners in Washington, "revealed that clothing requisitions ticketed for Elmira were deliberately being withheld by the War department through the months of December and January.." The commissary general's order on winter clothing for Confederate prisoners was outlined in a directive to the commandant of Camp Morton: "So long as a prisoner has clothing upon him, however much torn, you must issue nothing to him..."
Elmira death rate was a whopping 24%. With embargoes and war southerners had little food, not so in the north. The north had plenty, they chose to starve Confederate soldiers to death.
Northern prisons were established at Rock Island, Elmira, and Camp Douglas. Death rates ranged from 20 to 30 percent, North and South. The highest death rates were recorded in the Yankee prison Camp Douglas which topped 30%.
Calling Confederates traitors makes you look uneducated. The Confederacy never tried to overthrow the govt of the US, they simply left to form a new government. For that to be a traitorous act secession would have had to be illegal. Explain how it was illegal when our original constitution forbade secession, but could not be ratified. The clause was taken out. Three states built secession into their founding documents. Show us all where secession appears in the constitution then refer to the 10th amendment…anything not mentioned in the constitution Id left to the states. Therefore secession rested with the states. The argument was only settled after the war with a Supreme Court decision. There is still no constitutional amendment forbidding secession which is why states threaten it to this day. If you look back in history there were no less than FOUR secession threats before the south seceded. Yankee states threatened secession over the Louisiana Purchase, The War of 1812, the annexation of Texas, SC threatened secession over the tax of abomination in 1832.
Let’s look at the terrorists sent south called the Union League.
Most people today know something about the Ku Klux Klan, but very few know of the Union League also called the Loyal League. In fact, the birth and growth of the Klan was largely a response to Union League bullying, violence, and murder. The Union League perpetrated far more violence against both blacks and whites in the post Civil War Reconstruction years of 1865 to 1877 than the Klan. Why has the violence of the Union League been shoved deep into the memory hole of history? It is because the Union League was essentially a quasi-federal agency carrying out the policies of Reconstruction. The factual history of this political despotism, corruption, and violence is a moral and political embarrassment, which the powerful guardians of counterfactual political narratives have relentlessly sought to suppress. This is even truer in today’s social and political climate of hysterical political correctness that chains modern academics and media within narrow bounds of subject, reasoning, and speech.
In 1862, many in the North had become demoralized by Confederate victories in the field. Also pro-States Rights Democrats made substantial political gains in six Northern states. Many Republicans felt that the success of Union war policies and efforts were threatened by this. As a response, Union Clubs were formed in almost every town to support the war, the troops, and the Republican Party. These became the Union League of America. As the war was ending, Union League Clubs were also formed by Union loyalists in the South. These became a political arm of the Reconstruction and carpetbagger state governments. Their initial goal, shared with the Freedmen’s Bureau, was to make sure that blacks registered to vote and voted Republican. Most of the loyalist whites soon dropped out of the League, and except for the carpetbagger politicians and Federal Army officers who formed its key leadership, the League was composed almost exclusively of former slaves and black soldiers of the Federal Army.
Radical Republican leaders in Washington realized during the war that if the South came back into the Union with Democrat Congressmen, the Republicans would lose the political dominance they had enjoyed since the 1860 election. This is why the Radical Republicans in Congress wanted to shove Lincoln’s replacement, Andrew Johnson, aside. Johnson was a former Democrat, a constitutional conservative still sympathetic to States Rights, and committed to following Lincoln’s relatively lenient ideas about reconstructing the South. He was also incorruptible. They wanted control of Reconstruction. Their goal was first to punish, humiliate, and exploit the South, and then to remake it into a powerful political tool for permanent national dominance by a Republican Party tightly controlled by a small, but ruthless faction. The core leaders of that faction were radical abolitionists Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Edwin Stanton, Benjamin Wade, and Benjamin “Beast” Butler.
These ruthless radicals believed the key to making the South solid Republican was the black vote. Thus it was critical to insure that blacks voted Republican. The March 1867 Reconstruction Act disenfranchised Confederate veterans for the foreseeable future. Thus 85% of the white vote was eliminated. The Radical Republicans also thought it necessary to alienate blacks from white Southerners, Democrats, and especially their former masters. Previous to the war and especially immediately following the war, the relationships between former slaves and masters were cooperative and often affectionate. Most slaves in the South had been well treated, in many cases like family. The whites also appreciated the tremendous loyalty that most blacks had shown them during the war. The vast majority did not desert them during the war, and no Confederate Army in the field could have moved a mile without black wagon drivers and other logistical support. They served in many capacities. Some had proven their loyalty and combat effectiveness in Confederate infantry and cavalry regiments.
Union League meetings were conducted as a mystical secret society with secret rituals. Meetings were especially devoted to stirring up enmity between blacks and whites. A catechism written by Radical Republicans in Congress was used in Union League meetings to create an unreasonable sense of entitlement, grievance, and resentment. They were taught that Northern Republican whites were their friends and allies and that white Southerners and Democrats were enemies to be hated and despised. They were frequently promised that they would receive land and livestock confiscated from the whites. In some cases they were even promised racial dominance that would entitle them to the wives and daughters of their white enemies. This led to a number of violent racial incidents. Such racial incidents were frequently used by carpetbagger governments to demonstrate to Washington and the Northern press and public the continued need for Southern Reconstruction. Other promises were in the form of threats of a death penalty by hanging to any black who betrayed the League by voting Democrat.
With the coming of Radical Reconstruction and martial law, the role of the Union League became more aggressive. Union League militias were formed and were an enforcement arm of the carpetbagger governments. The militia was composed of former slaves and black troops stationed in each state. The Union League had 250,000 men in ten Southern States. North Carolina’s Scalawag Governor William W. Holden had a Union League militia of 80,000 at his bidding. The primary role of the Union League was now to keep the corrupt carpetbagger governments in power. This included suppression of competing carpetbagger factions.
In order to insure that all blacks voted Republican the Union League bullied and beat other blacks into submission. Even flogging with the lash was used. If that did not work, they exacted the death penalty, frequently by lynching. In order to intimidate whites from seeking power or influencing black voting, they conducted terror campaigns. Barns and sometimes houses of whites were burned. In some cases small towns were burned as in Warren and Hamburg, Arkansas. Men, women, and children were killed in raids on “insurrectionary” communities and counties. Their deaths were reported as “killed trying to escape.” There were Union League barn burnings and other destruction in every North Carolina County. During a single week of 1869 in Gaston County, North Carolina, nine barns were burned. In two months of the same year in Edgecombe County, two churches, several cotton gins, a cotton factory, and many barns and homes were burned. The Raleigh Sentinel reported on August 29 of the same year that ten Federal Army companies associated with the Union League had terrorized the Goldsboro area and committed violent depredations of all sorts. It reported the actions of the troops “so violent that it was unsafe for women to leave their homes.” This was all part of the Reconstruction mandate to remake the South.
In Myrta Lockett Avary’s 1906 book, Dixie After the War, she relates a tragic atrocity. In Upstate South Carolina, a group of Union League Federal soldiers marching and singing halted to discharge a volley of bullets into a country church during services, instantly killing a fourteen-year-old girl. At a nearby residence a squad of the same troops entered a home and bound the elderly owner as they ransacked his house and argued over who would first ravage his daughter. The girl when approached drove a concealed knife through the heart of her assailant. She was then beaten to death by the rest. But under corrupt military and carpetbagger rule, Southern whites had little recourse to justice. No Federal justice occurred.
By 1870, the corruption of the carpetbagger governments and the violence of the Union League were becoming a concern to a significant minority in the U. S. Congress. But as Klan activity increased in response to Union League and other Reconstruction misdeeds, the Radical Republicans formed a committee to investigate the Klan. A minority report by Northern Democrats and Conservative Republicans representing more than a third of the committee, however, noted that the Union League had “instilled hatred of the white race” and had “made arson, rape, robbery, and murder a daily occurrence.” They also noted the role of corrupt government and Union League violence in driving whites to take law into their own hands.
The Union League did do some terrible things, according to Confederate-leaning sources. They were also nowhere near on the scale of the anti-black and anti-Republican violence. Furthermore, Black people were not indoctrinated into voting Republican by and large. They voted Republican because the Democrat party vocally opposed giving Black people the vote to begin with, and spent decades imposing Jim Crow laws and other methods of disenfranchising Black people. There was no need to brainwash blacks as you claim, they knew who said they shouldn’t vote or own guns and who didn’t. It is a total myth that the white people of the south simply wanted to have tolerance after the war. The majority of white Confederates after the war were either directly involved with or supported the activities of militant Democrat groups. You have fallen victim to the myth that the confederates were simply misunderstood, well intentioned , principled people—they were not. And after the war, when the Confederates had made it their official and consistently practiced policy to kill every black person and white officer of black troops that it encountered, it is no wonder that the union should be worried about blacks in the south. Again, the union league did do terrible things. But the fact that the Democrats had once again taken control in the south by only a few years after the war, the fact that many confederate officers later served in high political positions , the fact that even up through the 1940s and 1950s Black people were banned or restricted from many important areas of US society at large, the fact that one of the most influential presidents in history, Woodrow Wilson was a rabid supporter of the KKK, the fact Confederate monuments litter the country, the fact that no Catholic seminary in the US would except black men for years after the war, and the fact that the Democrats are documented as stealing dozens of races post-Civil War shows that your claim the Union League exercised a rule of tyranny and terror over the south is completely bogus. If the Union League had as much power as you claim, none of the above events and realities would have happened.
How rich to point out Confederate “war crimes” without pointing out Union war crimes.
Let’s start with the first concentration camp right here in America….the Devils Punchbowl in Mississippi where Union troops walled off tens of thousands of former slaves in a natural embankment. Men were used as slave labor. Women and children languished behind walls with little food and water. Twenty thousand died there. The Union Army simply threw in shovels and told them to bury the dead where they fell.
Or let’s discuss Ebenezer Creek where Union troops cut pontoons filled with former slaves, drowning 2,000
We often hear of Andersonville prison…who here has heard of Elmira?
Elmira’s prison camp operated from July 6, 1864, until July 11, 1865, incarcerating a total of 12,121 Confederates.
Before resigning to avoid court-martial for his criminal treatment of sick prisoners, the chief surgeon at Elmira was overheard boasting the he had killed more Rebels than any Union soldier.....
An observation platform with chairs and binoculars was built outside the prison camp across Water Street west of Hoffman Street. Visitors were charged 10 cents apiece to look at the prisoners. Refreshments were sold to spectators while the Confederate soldiers starved.
When rats became a problem at the prison camp, a medium-sized black dog was used to catch them. Rat meat was sold to prisoners for 5 cents, but few could afford it. Eventually, two Rebel soldiers from North Carolina were sent to the guardhouse for 30 days after they captured and cooked the dog.
Insufficient food, extreme bouts of dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, smallpox, inadequate medical care and flooding of the Chemung River resulted in the deaths of 2,963 prisoners at the Elmira prison camp, a mortality rate of about 25 percent. Prisoners dubbed the camp “Hellmira.” People on both sides sought to find simple answers as to why prisons on both sides were bad, and these basic arguments emerged: Southerners believed that they did the best they could under the circumstances and that northerners had been intentionally negligent in retaliation. Northerners believed they had held captives humanely and that Confederate prisons were being run as death camps. Both sides oversimplified what was happening in the Civil War prisons, and the causes of suffering were far more complicated than simple vengeance or short supplies. Although both sides managed prisons very differently, they each suffered from the same core deficiency: a reliance on non-governmental sources for supplies. This can be illustrated by examining the two prisons with the highest death rates: Elmira & Andersonville.
Many people look at the death rate at Elmira and conclude that Confederate prisoners "starved in a land of plenty." This line even appears in several post war memoirs. However, there are several issues with this understanding. First, relatively few Confederate prisoners died from diseases or complications related to starvation. Most deaths at Elmira occurred as a result of pneumonia, smallpox, typhoid, and dysentery. Flooding in the spring of 1865 resulted in several dozen deaths, and almost fifty more died in a train wreck en route to the prison. The second issue with this understanding of Federal prisons is that the north was a "land of plenty" and the role this played in prison management. It's certainly true that the north was in much better shape logistically than the south. However, the Federal military bureaucracy relied on private vendors for food, clothing, and other supplies in both the armies and in the prisons. Failures of contractors to fulfill their obligations in a timely manner had a direct effect on the well-being of prisoners. It meant that barracks were built too slowly, and a significant number of prisoners and guards at Elmira were housed in tents well into winter – leading to outbreaks of pneumonia. When the drinking supply became polluted, prison officials began efforts to dig a drainage channel, but outside contractors were slow in procuring supplies and the project stalled until it was too late and the ground was frozen, which led to outbreaks of typhoid and dysentery. The Federal military prison system was a slow bureaucracy that often responded to problems, but because of a reliance on outside contractors for materials and labor, did so too slowly. The problems at Elmira and all of the other Federal military prisons were far more complicated than simple callousness, revenge, or intentional negligence.
Like Elmira, Andersonville relied on outside sources for food and supplies. One of the reasons Andersonville was selected as a prison site was because of its proximity to agricultural production. The food shortages in Richmond and in the army in Virginia would be avoided by placing the prison in the middle of the breadbasket of the Confederacy. In theory, this would protect the prison from being cut off from the rest of the country if rail lines were destroyed. However, this failed in practice because the Confederate military relied on local farmers and companies that were less than willing to do business with the Confederacy. Simply put, area farmers did not want to sell their crops to the military at fixed government prices in Confederate currency. Further complicating this was that many of the large planters in Georgia refused to produce foodstuffs and insisted on continuing to grow cotton, which only drove prices for food higher. In an effort to alleviate this and to feed the prison, a "tithe" was placed on all food production, and area farmers were required to give 10% of their food crop to the Confederate military. This was seen by many as an overreach by a government that claimed to carry the mantle of states' rights, and further alienated area farmers. By mid-1864 it was virtually impossible for the Confederate army at Andersonville to acquire anything, even if it was readily available. The challenge of purchasing food for the prison was exacerbated by the Confederacy's decision to centralize prisoners into one location – nearly one million pounds of cornmeal were required at Andersonville in August 1864 alone. These issues extended beyond food. Efforts to purchase lumber to build barracks and a dam across the creek were stifled when the shipyards in Columbus, GA could pay higher rates than the army could, which was constrained by a fixed pricing system. There was enough food and lumber in the area around Andersonville to greatly improve conditions, but because none of it was nationalized, the Confederate government could not get access to it. Accounts from some civilians and soldiers in the area describe warehouses of food that the owners wouldn't sell for anything except gold or greenbacks, leaving prisoners hungry, and forcing guards to purchase necessary supplies on their own.
Both sides were wrong in arguing that they provided the best care that they could while criticizing the other for inadequate treatment. Both sides could have improved on their management techniques – Federal officials already nationalized some industries and could have further done so to eliminate some of the prison bureaucracy. The Confederate government could have allowed flexibility from its rigid pricing system, which would have greatly alleviated hunger in the prison and facilitated the construction of shelters for the prisoners and a dam across the creek. However, even today almost 150 years later, arguments continue as people defend some prisons and level charges of negligence at others. The truth is that prison management in the Civil War was incredibly complicated and subject to many outside forces. Any effort to distill it down to simple negligence or cruelty is simply inaccurate.
Let’s consider all the evidence before making judgments which arbitrarily condemn the activities of a group of people because of their skin color.
American Savery began in the "English Colonies" in 1619. Regional Slavery was accepted and controlled by around 0.0001% of the people in this new world, as it was and has been accepted by peoples since mankind has been on this earth, …..but remember there were never any black, brown, yellow or red slave holders throughout history, only white men ever owned 100% of the slaves (sarcasm). The North American continent was ruled by England until 1783, that's 164 years of slavery on this continent while under The king of England’s rule.
Many Africans, Middle East Muslims, North Korea, China and others have, and still are selling people into slavery as I write these words, have you got any issues with those countries slave practices?
The mentally and morally challenged globalist controlled MSM (cbs,nbc,abc,cnn,msnbc,nyt) have not picked up on that fact yet, can't imagine why!,absolutely positively amazing, they are a bunch of mentality weak sellouts!!!
It took the United States 82 years as a new country to end Slavery after we broke our foot off in the King of Englands ass as we became an independent Nation......not as a 400 year old nation as the poverty pimps you probably listen to suggest.
From the 1862 US census, only 1.56% of the white population ever owned slaves and 28% of the free blacks owned slaves during those years, 98.4% of the population of America, either never benefited from slavery, or ever saw a slave and or lived their entire life within ten miles of where they were born and were ignorant of the practices. Also, I'm pretty sure that high speed internet, texting and phones were not available during this time period, so how could most the 98.4% of the American population even have a clue about it or have been a part of slavery at the time?
If you want to talk about another race of people who suffered under slavery, check out the original Irish immigrants who came to America, the only difference between them and many who came from the African continent, who by the way were conquered rounded up and sold into slavery by none other than blacks and those of the Islamic faith originally......, but past that. The Irish are not a bunch of whiny (grifters) crybabies like many of those self deluded so called victims who originated from the African continent.
The Jim Crow laws the Democrats wrote and enforced for many years, revealed through FBI statistics that only 0.00027%of the white population ever imposed any atrocities on the black community, yet some, somehow believe that all whites should feel guilty, if that's the way of it, then all blacks should be guilty when a black commits a crime, what's fair is fair….right?
My ancestors were from Scotland and a few other places dating back to our Pangaea roots, and many of my ancestors were jipped, beat, murdered, raped, burned up and out, hung, whipped, put in prison for no good reason until some escaped to the (new world) United States only to be bonds servants for 7 years of which time many were again raped and killed, cheated, and made to suffer in many ways. Should I spend my life whining and bitching about the people in Europe and America who did terrible things to my ancestors, which were much more or as severe as what many Blacks have experienced here in the USA. Blacks make up only a percentage of those who have historically been kidnapped and abused.
It's been around six generations (150 years) since slavery was abolished, slavery that only 01.56% of the population were involved with and profited from. It's been 2 generations since the civil rights era. How much longer will hard earned American tax dollars flow to a bunch people scamming the system thanks to LBJ and the many banking institutions prior.
Nobody can be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors or we are all slaves. If anything, this is just another globalist wedge issue to distract the public away from the real iniquities and challenges of the day.....namely the wrongs and fraud committed by the banking and insurance system though Fiat factional monetary rules established by a corrupt congress and Federal Reserve system.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Of course people of all skin colors have owned slaves. There were hundreds of black slave owners in America alone. African tribes also sold fellow Africans into slavery. Furthermore, I am not demanding reparations from anyone today or pointing fingers at modern descendants. Also, you are incredibly wrong to believe most Southerners did not benefit from slavery—the whole economy of the South, to which the success of all city and country dwellers was tied, was based on the agricultural exports produced through slave labor. The Civil War itself makes that strikingly clear, as Confederate shopkeepers, journalists, laborers, and politicians with zealous openness defended slavery, cheerfully butchered or enslaved free blacks (see war crimes in my article), and vilified those who tried to condemn slavery. And again after the war, many members of the roving bands of racist terrorists had not been slave owners, yet they were furious slavery had been ended. Your statistics are also preposterous, and I should like to know where you get them. You appear to have missed the entire point of my article, which was to highlight a specific part of AMERICAN history, to explain how wicked the Confederate cause truly was and to try finally to hold the Democrat party to account, because it is race-obsessed now as it was then. The issue is that the Civil War never ended. The Confederates or Democrats simply switched to infiltrating politics and education and so we have never yet solved or properly addressed many of the problems that continue to plague our nation. There is no “whining and bitching” involved. There is serious historical research to shed light on why our nation is still divided and struggling with government-enforced race obsession. My purpose was not to give a comprehensive history of world slavery, and if you look back at the many pieces I have written on modern-day Chinese and Islamic slavery you would realize that I hate slavery in all its manifestations. There was a purposeful genocide against black Americans and their white Allies. Again, you missed the entire point of an article to shed light on a specific period with modern repercussions. White people suffer from inaccurate history of the Civil War just as black people do. You will note in my article I talk of the white Union officers murdered by Confederates and white Republicans targeted by post-war Democrats, their heroism and suffering also buried under false history. Or perhaps your apparent prejudices rendered you unable to focus on the history in the interests of an accusatory diatribe.
26 Dec 1860: MAJ Robert Anderson occupies Fort Sumter in violation of the armistice then in effect.
9 Jan 1860: The Star of the West with 200 US Army soldiers to reinforce Anderson is turned back by fire from the Charleston batteries.
ca. Feb 1861: Gustavus V. Fox, an ex-naval officer and anti-Southern war hawk, presents a plan to Gen. Winfield Scott for a naval expedition to reinforce Fort Sumter and seize Charleston Harbor. Pres. Buchanan vetoes the plan, but Pres-elect Lincoln approves Fox’s plan and orders Scott to proceed. Thus Lincoln puts the wheels in motion for an invasion of South Carolina and the Confederacy even before he became president.
4 Mar 1861: Lincoln’s inauguration.
11 Mar 1861: Lincoln sends Fox on a recon mission to Fort Sumter to firm up his plan for a naval expedition against Charleston.
15 Mar 1861: Lincoln polls his cabinet whether to reinforce Fort Sumter. All cabinet members advise against it in writing (except Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, who was Fox’s brother-in-law), stating their opinions that it will be an act of war. Lincoln ignores his cabinet.
Gideon Welles, US Secretary of the Navy wrote: "There was not a man in the Cabinet that did not know that an attempt to reinforce Sumter would be the first blow of war. Of all the Cabinet, Blair only is in favor of reinforcing Sumter."
William Seward, US Secretary of State: "Even preparation to reinforce will precipitate war. I would instruct Anderson to return from Sumter."
Salmon Chase, US Secretary of War: "I will oppose any attempt to reinforce Sumter, if it means war."
All cabinet members voted decisively against it, except Blair.
Lincoln did not call a cabinet meeting, nor did he call upon Congress. He knew that neither would favor war.
30 Mar 1861: Lincoln orders Fox to New York City to prepare the invasion fleet.
1-6 Apr 1861: Fox assembles a fleet of four warships with 39 guns and four troop ships with landing craft and over 1,200 military personnel, including 500 soldiers to be landed. This is obviously something greater than an attempt to “peacefully provision” a garrison that was already being supplied by Charleston merchants.
The Fox fleet consisted of:
The Steamship Baltic a troop ship with 200 troops of the 2nd US Artillery.
The sloop-of-war Pawnee with a crew of 181, and eight 9-inch Dahlgren guns and two 12 pounder guns.
The sloop-of-war Powhatan with a crew of 289 plus 300 additional sailors to be used as landing troops and reinforcements and one 11 inch smoothbore gun. Ten 9 inch smoothbore guns. Five 12-pounder guns. [Powhatan was later diverted to the attack on Fort Pickens].
The armed screw steamer Pocahontas, crew of 180 and four 32-pounder guns, one 10-pounder gun and one 20-pounder rifle.
The revenue cutter, Harriet Lane, crew of 95 with one 4 inch gun, one 9 inch gun, two 8 inch guns, and two 24 lbs. howitzers.
In addition to the war ships and troop transport there were also three sea-going steam tugs, Yankee, Uncle Ben, and Thomas Freeborn included in the flotilla. These were intended to be used to pull the deep draft war ships and transport over the bar and help transfer troops and munitions to shore. These tugs had their superstructures reinforced as protection against small arms fire and were also armed with boat howitzers. [The Thomas Freeborn did not sail from NY due to dispute with its owners; the Uncle Ben was caught by a gale and captured near Wilmington NC.]
Thus the attempt to “peacefully provision” Fort Sumter included four warships with 39 guns, four troop transports and landing craft and over 1,200 military personnel, 500 of whom were intended to be landed as reinforcements. This was very obviously something much more than an attempt to “peacefully provision” a garrison.
The Confederate peace commissioners who had been sent to Washington had been assured by the Lincoln Administration that neither Fort Sumter nor Fort Pickens in Pensacola would be reinforced and that those posts would soon be evacuated. Yet all the while Lincoln was busily preparing troops and ships to reinforce and hold both forts.
5 Apr 1861: US Secretary of State Seward informs the Confederate peace negotiators that the US had “no design to reinforce Fort Sumter.”
6-9 Apr 1861: The fleet departs New York to reinforce Fort Sumter, blockade Charleston harbor.
In a May 1st letter to Fox, Lincoln wrote, “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter [sic], even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. Very truly your friend A. LINCOLN.”
Northern newspapers back this up…
The American Standard in New Jersey wrote on April 12:
“If this result follows—and follow civil war it must—the memory of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and his infatuated advisors will only be preserved with that of other destroyers to the scorned and execrated . . . And if the historian who preserves the record of his fatal administration needs any motto descriptive of the president who destroyed the institutions which he swore to protect, it will probably be some such as this: ‘Here is the record of one who feared more to have it said that he deserted his party than that he ruined the country, who had a greater solicitude for his consistency as a partisan than for his wisdom as a Statesman or his courage and virtue as a patriot, and who destroyed by his weakness the fairest experiment of man in self-government that the world ever witnessed.’”
The Providence Daily Post editorialized on April 13:
“We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country . . . Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor . . . he clings to his party creed, and allows the nation to drift into the whirlpool of destruction . . . What, really, do we want of the fort? It is not worth to us, while South Carolina remains out of the Union, a brass farthing.”
On April 16, the Buffalo Daily Courier wrote:
The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy . . . If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces, had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished.”
the New York Evening Day Book wrote on April 17:
“We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South . . . We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding . . . Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it.”
The Confederates deliberately seceded before Lincoln even took office, they had no power to break the union under the constitution. They seceded before Lincoln even took office, and after themselves creating all the incitement to war. Just as the Democrats do today, they incite a disaster, and then claim they are being abused when there is a reaction to the crisis. The Confederates started the Civil War, and then were out raged that the union did not simply surrender to them immediately on their own arbitrary and unjust terms. Likewise, after the war, whenever Grant after excessive amounts of antiblack and anti-republican violence, felt himself forced to send federal troops down, even though it was not something he really wanted to do, the south after its constant murders and rapes and beatings, then immediately began screeching about what a tyrant Grant was, and how he was trying to take away the liberty of the south. You are pushing an alternative rewrite of history.
Then let’s look at what made Yankees wealthy. Wealthy Yankees earned every dollar off the backs of southern slaves. Import, export, banking, insurance, manufacturing, textile mills….all thrived off the backs of crops produced by southern slaves.
Yankees engaged in the lucrative slave trade until 1860 here in the states…NY harbor was one of the biggest slave trading hub in this hemisphere. Yankee ship builders built slave ships while Yankee ironworks outfitted them. They were Yankee owned and went to Africa and brought slaves to the Us until 1960 and to Brazil and Cuba until almost 1890. Yankee ivory manufacturers continued to buy slaves at the coast of Africa and take them inland to carry 100lb tusks to the coast where they were sold again int9 the next century.
You’ve looked at this incredibly one sidedly as most of your ilk does. I’m sure your next comment will be that the south started the war when nothing could be further from the truth. Fort Sumter was fired upon because Lincoln sent war ships, troops and landing craft into Charleston harbor. That was an act of aggression especially since whe was promising peace commissioners he was vacating Sumter. 29 March 1861, Secretary of State William Seward warned Lincoln “The dispatch of an expedition to supply at reinforce Sumpter would provoke an attack and so involve a war at that point”.
At the same time Lincoln sent same to Fort Pickens in violation of an armistice.
What you don’t know about history is a lot! The confederate cause of freedom was not wicked. The confederacy did not exist to simply promote slavery. If you had read the articles of secession, you’d know that only four out of 13 mention slavery at all. While you ignore every other cause they listed. The federal govt had been taking states rights all along. Lincoln was elected …NOT to do away with slavery, but to stop it from bleeding into the western states to keep those states white.
Apparently you are unaware that many in the higher echelons of the Union Army and some in Lincoln’s own cabinet were Marxists. The Republican Party was founded in part by Marxists straight from the 1848 revolution. Look up the Forty Eighters.
Let’s look at what Yankees said about blacks…
As a class the Blacks are indolent, improvident, servile, and licentious.”
—Abolitionist Horace Greeley of New York, 1855
“But the great mass, as they are seen at work, under overseers, in the fields, appear very dull, idiotic, and brute-like; and it requires an effort to appreciate that they are, very much more than the beasts they drive, our brethren—a part of ourselves. They are very ragged, and the women especially, who work in the field with the men, with no apparent distinction in their labor, are disgustingly dirty. They seem to move very awkwardly, slowly, and undecidedly, and almost invariably stop their work while the train is passing.”
—Abolitionist Frederick Law Olmsted of New York, 1856
“It is not whether we want to associate with the black man…sit by the fireside with them in the social circle, or intermarry with them. That is a question of taste.”
—Governor Alexander Randall of Wisconsin, 1859
“Down with amalgamation!” or “Separate the Races!”
—Proposed Republican 1860 campaign slogan by James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin
“Missouri for white men and white men for Missouri.”
—Campaign slogan for Republican Edward Bates, 1860
“It is certainly the wish of every patriot that all within the limits of our Union should be homogeneous in race and of our own blood.”
—Republican Francis P. Blair of Maryland, 1858
Colonization would “keep our Anglo-Saxon institutions as well as our Anglo-Saxon blood pure and uncontaminated.”
—Republican James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, 1858
“I want to have nothing to do with the free negro or the slave negro….We wish to settle the Territories with free white men.”
—Republican Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, 1858
“Republicans distinctly and emphatically disavow negro suffrage, negroes holding office, serving on juries and the like.”
—Republican David Davis of Illinois, Lincoln’s political advisor, 1858
“It is the institution of slavery which is the great parent of amalgamation. Gentlemen need not fear it from those opposed to that institution.”
—Republican newspaper New York Tribune, 1854
“…I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1862
“And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…”
Incidentally, you have yet to address a single one of the points I brought up to show that racist Democrats held absolute sway over the south. Because you cannot. They are facts that no lie will explain away
Of course, there were racist people in the union army and government. Lincoln himself did not fully understand the evil of treating blacks as second class citizens until the end of his life, when he supported full rights for Black people as he had not done before. The fact remains that the Civil War would never have happened without slavery. There was not war in the territories because of states’ rights besides slavery. That is, no matter how many other excuses they brought up, there would never have been a war had it not been for slavery. Therefore, the Civil War was about slavery. The retaliatory act that accuses the union of being evil because it armed slaves, demanding the enslavement of any more Black people encountered, and the many southern newspapers that explicitly said the war was about the glorious cause of slavery undermine your point. The Confederates themselves believe the war was about slavery. Your own racism and propaganda have blinded you
“Also, you are incredibly wrong to believe most Southerners did not benefit from slavery”
How so, the original construction projects in America were built by Old European craftsman and their tools, I’ve found little evidence of African influence or tools, also, the small percentage of blacks during America’s first centuries were to small to make any major labor claims towards building public or private infrastructure. 99+% of all American ancestors descendants are average blue/white collar folks who have been debt slaves to a corrupt world currency system, but some want to ignore that while focusing on Cherry picked groups hardships.
I believe your generalization and blanket prejudice toward the South can stand some adjustment. This is one of many thoughts you might consider from an honorable man:
Confederate war crimes….continued….
We’ve all heard of Andersonville. Have you ever heard of Elmira? Camp Douglas? The guards at Andersonville almost starved along with the prisoners. At Elmira, the Union Army tortured and killed Confederate soldiers as policy.
The summer of 1864 W. and W. Mears constructed an observatory across from the camp and citizens were given an opportunity to watch prisoners die of starvation and exposure for a fee of 10cents.
Federal Policy was Starvation of Prisoners
By Aug. 26, 1864, 793 POWs were reported suffering from scurvy. As a result of the lack of fruits and vegetables The prisoners suffered from ulcerative colitis amoebic dysentery and renal infection; among other serious illnesses. That summer the local newspapers reported bumper crops of apples, pears, peaches, and a variety of fresh vegetables including corn. Death in the month of August claimed 115 Elmira prisoners. On Sept. 1 the camp's census was 9,480;
The U.S. government purchased a half acre of Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery for the burial of Confederate prisoners of war. A carpentry shop was established in the middle of the camp for the express purpose of making pine coffins.
The stockade's well water was a thoroughly contaminated diseased pond, The authorities in Washington D.C. repeatedly refused to order the pond drained.
Seventy-five years later, Elmira prison camp survivor James Huffman would recall that the "well water looked pure and good but was deadly poison to our men."
In September of 1864 Union officer Bennett F.. Munger informed Elmira's Commandant Tracy that starvation was stalking the Confederate prisoners, that "during the past week there have been 112 deaths, reaching one day 29. There seems little doubt numbers have died both in quarters and hospital from want of proper food."
Elmira's death toll for September was 385. In an Oct. 1, 1864 letter to his wife, a ranking Union officer at Elmira wrote, "The rebs are dying quite fast, from 8 to 30 per day."
In an editorial in the Oct. 2, 1864 edition of the New York Times the Federal government was advised "that rebel prisoners should no longer live in luxury ..." The Elmira Daily Advertiser cheerfully informed its readers that the Confederate prisoners were contented, healthy and in good condition. The circus...like observation deck was closed to the public. It was now used by army sentries exclusively.
On Oct. 3, Commandant Tracy issued Special Order No. 336cutting back on the supply of food accorded the prisoners. Horigan writes: "Special Order No. 336 immediately became a factor in the camp's excessive death rate...No possible 'good' came from this order Tracy erred in blind allegiance...to a power structure in Washington bent on revenge. Starvation, manifested in stages, would become visibly evident inside the prison camp."
a series of murderous orders from Lincoln's high command ensued, ordering a reduction in the malnourished Confederate prisoners' rations throughout the POW camps of the North. The Commissary General, Col. Hoffman, is on record as early as April 29, 1864 advocating half-rations for Confederate prisoners on Johnson's Island. Stanton presented a similar proposal to Lincoln on May 5, 1864, which Lincoln apparently approved, because on June I, 1864 the Union high command officially ordered a 20% reduction in the rations of Confederate prisoners which had been inadequate to begin with. The situation was further exacerbated by the army's Circular No.4 of Aug. 10, 1864 forbidding the purchase of food by prisoners from the camp "sutler" (authorized civilian grocer).
There is no question that Hoffman intentionally withheld the--at that time-huge sum of $1,845,125 worth of food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies budgeted for Confederate prisoners
Elmira prison camp survivor Anthony Keiley, a former Southern newspaper editor, wrote in 1866, "In a nation whose boast is that they do not feel the war...and supplies of all sorts wonderfully abundant, it is simply infamous to starve the sick as they did at Elmira." Unlike the situation at Andersonville, this was starvation amidst plenty.
James W. Crawford of the 6th Virginia was one of the few to escape, having participated in a spectacular October getaway by ten prisoners via a hand dug tunnel system. It took him 23 days to make his way to Virginia. He told the Richmond Examiner: "I succeeded in getting out of the clutches of the meanest people that have ever lived...Our prisoners sicken and die twenty-five to thirty per day; but that seems to please them more than anything else." The enraged Crawford concluded by stating that the South "should fight forever before being subdued by such a nation." In October death claimed 276 Confederates inside Barracks No.3. As hundreds died, Elmirans enjoyed a rich harvest from the surrounding farms, and the Yankee officers assigned to Elmira hosted a gala dinner ball. Friends and invited guests of the 54th New York shared laughter and fine food.
Prisoners Poisoned by the Camp Doctor
In addition to all of the perils the Southern troops had to contend with in Elmira, it appears that the camp's chief medical officer, Maj. Sanger, may have been ordering the poisoning of Confederate hospital patients with arsenic.
Former prisoner Walter D. Addison was an orderly in the camp's ramshackle hospital. Addison testified in his memoirs that Sanger ordered another medical officer, Dr. Van Ness, to administer, "Fowler's solution of arsenic. He wrote (prescribed) forty-five (drops) and the patients in a very short time breathed their last. No investigation ensued...Dr. Van Ness continued his position."
Author Michael Horigan observes, "There was, according to Addison, a desire on the part of Union officers to kill Confederate prisoners." By way of corroboration, Horigan unearthed a confidential letter from Major Sanger to Brig. Gen. John L. Hodsdon confessing to the murder of hundreds of helpless Confederate prisoners in Elmira. Hodsdon concealed the letter's contents and they were not divulged outside U.S. government circles during Sanger's lifetime. Writing in mid-October,1864, Sanger told Hodsdon, "I now have charge of 10,000 rebels, a very worthy occupation for a patriot, particularly adapted to elevate himself in his own estimation, but I think I have done my duty having relieved 386 of them of all earthly sorrow... ,"
Clothing & Blankets Withheld in Winter
As the fierce New York winter approached the prisoners were denied insulation of the prison's buildings. Heat, blankets and warm clothing were all in scant supply. A Baltimore, Maryland relief organization consisting of private citizens sent a representative to Elmira to broach the possibility of providing a warm clothing shipment to the prisoners. They were forbidden access to the camp.
Their leader, John Van Allen, urgently appealed to the War department. He was told his group could proceed with the clothing donation if they complied with a maze of time- consuming regulations. The bureaucratic entanglements grew so complex that the Baltimore group, perceiving that the impediments were deliberate and never-ending, withdrew the offer. Van Allen described Secretary of War Stanton's attitude toward the proposed humanitarian relief: "Stanton was inexorable to all my entreaties."
The death toll at Elmira for December was 269 Confederates. A Dec. 4 report by Capt. Munger stated that at least 1,000 Elmira prisoners were "entirely destitute of blankets." The "rebels" would add freezing to death along with starvation, disease, contaminated water and physician administered arsenic to the list of Elmira's deadly threats.
On Jan. 19, 1865, Brig. Gen. Henry Wessells blocked winter clothing shipments to Elmira's prisoners. In late January, Major George Blagden, assistant to the commissary general of prisoners in Washington, "revealed that clothing requisitions ticketed for Elmira were deliberately being withheld by the War department through the months of December and January.." The commissary general's order on winter clothing for Confederate prisoners was outlined in a directive to the commandant of Camp Morton: "So long as a prisoner has clothing upon him, however much torn, you must issue nothing to him..."
Elmira death rate was a whopping 24%. With embargoes and war southerners had little food, not so in the north. The north had plenty, they chose to starve Confederate soldiers to death.
Northern prisons were established at Rock Island, Elmira, and Camp Douglas. Death rates ranged from 20 to 30 percent, North and South. The highest death rates were recorded in the Yankee prison Camp Douglas which topped 30%.
Calling Confederates traitors makes you look uneducated. The Confederacy never tried to overthrow the govt of the US, they simply left to form a new government. For that to be a traitorous act secession would have had to be illegal. Explain how it was illegal when our original constitution forbade secession, but could not be ratified. The clause was taken out. Three states built secession into their founding documents. Show us all where secession appears in the constitution then refer to the 10th amendment…anything not mentioned in the constitution Id left to the states. Therefore secession rested with the states. The argument was only settled after the war with a Supreme Court decision. There is still no constitutional amendment forbidding secession which is why states threaten it to this day. If you look back in history there were no less than FOUR secession threats before the south seceded. Yankee states threatened secession over the Louisiana Purchase, The War of 1812, the annexation of Texas, SC threatened secession over the tax of abomination in 1832.
Let’s look at the terrorists sent south called the Union League.
Most people today know something about the Ku Klux Klan, but very few know of the Union League also called the Loyal League. In fact, the birth and growth of the Klan was largely a response to Union League bullying, violence, and murder. The Union League perpetrated far more violence against both blacks and whites in the post Civil War Reconstruction years of 1865 to 1877 than the Klan. Why has the violence of the Union League been shoved deep into the memory hole of history? It is because the Union League was essentially a quasi-federal agency carrying out the policies of Reconstruction. The factual history of this political despotism, corruption, and violence is a moral and political embarrassment, which the powerful guardians of counterfactual political narratives have relentlessly sought to suppress. This is even truer in today’s social and political climate of hysterical political correctness that chains modern academics and media within narrow bounds of subject, reasoning, and speech.
In 1862, many in the North had become demoralized by Confederate victories in the field. Also pro-States Rights Democrats made substantial political gains in six Northern states. Many Republicans felt that the success of Union war policies and efforts were threatened by this. As a response, Union Clubs were formed in almost every town to support the war, the troops, and the Republican Party. These became the Union League of America. As the war was ending, Union League Clubs were also formed by Union loyalists in the South. These became a political arm of the Reconstruction and carpetbagger state governments. Their initial goal, shared with the Freedmen’s Bureau, was to make sure that blacks registered to vote and voted Republican. Most of the loyalist whites soon dropped out of the League, and except for the carpetbagger politicians and Federal Army officers who formed its key leadership, the League was composed almost exclusively of former slaves and black soldiers of the Federal Army.
Radical Republican leaders in Washington realized during the war that if the South came back into the Union with Democrat Congressmen, the Republicans would lose the political dominance they had enjoyed since the 1860 election. This is why the Radical Republicans in Congress wanted to shove Lincoln’s replacement, Andrew Johnson, aside. Johnson was a former Democrat, a constitutional conservative still sympathetic to States Rights, and committed to following Lincoln’s relatively lenient ideas about reconstructing the South. He was also incorruptible. They wanted control of Reconstruction. Their goal was first to punish, humiliate, and exploit the South, and then to remake it into a powerful political tool for permanent national dominance by a Republican Party tightly controlled by a small, but ruthless faction. The core leaders of that faction were radical abolitionists Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Edwin Stanton, Benjamin Wade, and Benjamin “Beast” Butler.
These ruthless radicals believed the key to making the South solid Republican was the black vote. Thus it was critical to insure that blacks voted Republican. The March 1867 Reconstruction Act disenfranchised Confederate veterans for the foreseeable future. Thus 85% of the white vote was eliminated. The Radical Republicans also thought it necessary to alienate blacks from white Southerners, Democrats, and especially their former masters. Previous to the war and especially immediately following the war, the relationships between former slaves and masters were cooperative and often affectionate. Most slaves in the South had been well treated, in many cases like family. The whites also appreciated the tremendous loyalty that most blacks had shown them during the war. The vast majority did not desert them during the war, and no Confederate Army in the field could have moved a mile without black wagon drivers and other logistical support. They served in many capacities. Some had proven their loyalty and combat effectiveness in Confederate infantry and cavalry regiments.
Union League meetings were conducted as a mystical secret society with secret rituals. Meetings were especially devoted to stirring up enmity between blacks and whites. A catechism written by Radical Republicans in Congress was used in Union League meetings to create an unreasonable sense of entitlement, grievance, and resentment. They were taught that Northern Republican whites were their friends and allies and that white Southerners and Democrats were enemies to be hated and despised. They were frequently promised that they would receive land and livestock confiscated from the whites. In some cases they were even promised racial dominance that would entitle them to the wives and daughters of their white enemies. This led to a number of violent racial incidents. Such racial incidents were frequently used by carpetbagger governments to demonstrate to Washington and the Northern press and public the continued need for Southern Reconstruction. Other promises were in the form of threats of a death penalty by hanging to any black who betrayed the League by voting Democrat.
With the coming of Radical Reconstruction and martial law, the role of the Union League became more aggressive. Union League militias were formed and were an enforcement arm of the carpetbagger governments. The militia was composed of former slaves and black troops stationed in each state. The Union League had 250,000 men in ten Southern States. North Carolina’s Scalawag Governor William W. Holden had a Union League militia of 80,000 at his bidding. The primary role of the Union League was now to keep the corrupt carpetbagger governments in power. This included suppression of competing carpetbagger factions.
In order to insure that all blacks voted Republican the Union League bullied and beat other blacks into submission. Even flogging with the lash was used. If that did not work, they exacted the death penalty, frequently by lynching. In order to intimidate whites from seeking power or influencing black voting, they conducted terror campaigns. Barns and sometimes houses of whites were burned. In some cases small towns were burned as in Warren and Hamburg, Arkansas. Men, women, and children were killed in raids on “insurrectionary” communities and counties. Their deaths were reported as “killed trying to escape.” There were Union League barn burnings and other destruction in every North Carolina County. During a single week of 1869 in Gaston County, North Carolina, nine barns were burned. In two months of the same year in Edgecombe County, two churches, several cotton gins, a cotton factory, and many barns and homes were burned. The Raleigh Sentinel reported on August 29 of the same year that ten Federal Army companies associated with the Union League had terrorized the Goldsboro area and committed violent depredations of all sorts. It reported the actions of the troops “so violent that it was unsafe for women to leave their homes.” This was all part of the Reconstruction mandate to remake the South.
In Myrta Lockett Avary’s 1906 book, Dixie After the War, she relates a tragic atrocity. In Upstate South Carolina, a group of Union League Federal soldiers marching and singing halted to discharge a volley of bullets into a country church during services, instantly killing a fourteen-year-old girl. At a nearby residence a squad of the same troops entered a home and bound the elderly owner as they ransacked his house and argued over who would first ravage his daughter. The girl when approached drove a concealed knife through the heart of her assailant. She was then beaten to death by the rest. But under corrupt military and carpetbagger rule, Southern whites had little recourse to justice. No Federal justice occurred.
By 1870, the corruption of the carpetbagger governments and the violence of the Union League were becoming a concern to a significant minority in the U. S. Congress. But as Klan activity increased in response to Union League and other Reconstruction misdeeds, the Radical Republicans formed a committee to investigate the Klan. A minority report by Northern Democrats and Conservative Republicans representing more than a third of the committee, however, noted that the Union League had “instilled hatred of the white race” and had “made arson, rape, robbery, and murder a daily occurrence.” They also noted the role of corrupt government and Union League violence in driving whites to take law into their own hands.
The Union League did do some terrible things, according to Confederate-leaning sources. They were also nowhere near on the scale of the anti-black and anti-Republican violence. Furthermore, Black people were not indoctrinated into voting Republican by and large. They voted Republican because the Democrat party vocally opposed giving Black people the vote to begin with, and spent decades imposing Jim Crow laws and other methods of disenfranchising Black people. There was no need to brainwash blacks as you claim, they knew who said they shouldn’t vote or own guns and who didn’t. It is a total myth that the white people of the south simply wanted to have tolerance after the war. The majority of white Confederates after the war were either directly involved with or supported the activities of militant Democrat groups. You have fallen victim to the myth that the confederates were simply misunderstood, well intentioned , principled people—they were not. And after the war, when the Confederates had made it their official and consistently practiced policy to kill every black person and white officer of black troops that it encountered, it is no wonder that the union should be worried about blacks in the south. Again, the union league did do terrible things. But the fact that the Democrats had once again taken control in the south by only a few years after the war, the fact that many confederate officers later served in high political positions , the fact that even up through the 1940s and 1950s Black people were banned or restricted from many important areas of US society at large, the fact that one of the most influential presidents in history, Woodrow Wilson was a rabid supporter of the KKK, the fact Confederate monuments litter the country, the fact that no Catholic seminary in the US would except black men for years after the war, and the fact that the Democrats are documented as stealing dozens of races post-Civil War shows that your claim the Union League exercised a rule of tyranny and terror over the south is completely bogus. If the Union League had as much power as you claim, none of the above events and realities would have happened.
How rich to point out Confederate “war crimes” without pointing out Union war crimes.
Let’s start with the first concentration camp right here in America….the Devils Punchbowl in Mississippi where Union troops walled off tens of thousands of former slaves in a natural embankment. Men were used as slave labor. Women and children languished behind walls with little food and water. Twenty thousand died there. The Union Army simply threw in shovels and told them to bury the dead where they fell.
Or let’s discuss Ebenezer Creek where Union troops cut pontoons filled with former slaves, drowning 2,000
We often hear of Andersonville prison…who here has heard of Elmira?
Elmira’s prison camp operated from July 6, 1864, until July 11, 1865, incarcerating a total of 12,121 Confederates.
Before resigning to avoid court-martial for his criminal treatment of sick prisoners, the chief surgeon at Elmira was overheard boasting the he had killed more Rebels than any Union soldier.....
An observation platform with chairs and binoculars was built outside the prison camp across Water Street west of Hoffman Street. Visitors were charged 10 cents apiece to look at the prisoners. Refreshments were sold to spectators while the Confederate soldiers starved.
When rats became a problem at the prison camp, a medium-sized black dog was used to catch them. Rat meat was sold to prisoners for 5 cents, but few could afford it. Eventually, two Rebel soldiers from North Carolina were sent to the guardhouse for 30 days after they captured and cooked the dog.
Insufficient food, extreme bouts of dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, smallpox, inadequate medical care and flooding of the Chemung River resulted in the deaths of 2,963 prisoners at the Elmira prison camp, a mortality rate of about 25 percent. Prisoners dubbed the camp “Hellmira.” People on both sides sought to find simple answers as to why prisons on both sides were bad, and these basic arguments emerged: Southerners believed that they did the best they could under the circumstances and that northerners had been intentionally negligent in retaliation. Northerners believed they had held captives humanely and that Confederate prisons were being run as death camps. Both sides oversimplified what was happening in the Civil War prisons, and the causes of suffering were far more complicated than simple vengeance or short supplies. Although both sides managed prisons very differently, they each suffered from the same core deficiency: a reliance on non-governmental sources for supplies. This can be illustrated by examining the two prisons with the highest death rates: Elmira & Andersonville.
Many people look at the death rate at Elmira and conclude that Confederate prisoners "starved in a land of plenty." This line even appears in several post war memoirs. However, there are several issues with this understanding. First, relatively few Confederate prisoners died from diseases or complications related to starvation. Most deaths at Elmira occurred as a result of pneumonia, smallpox, typhoid, and dysentery. Flooding in the spring of 1865 resulted in several dozen deaths, and almost fifty more died in a train wreck en route to the prison. The second issue with this understanding of Federal prisons is that the north was a "land of plenty" and the role this played in prison management. It's certainly true that the north was in much better shape logistically than the south. However, the Federal military bureaucracy relied on private vendors for food, clothing, and other supplies in both the armies and in the prisons. Failures of contractors to fulfill their obligations in a timely manner had a direct effect on the well-being of prisoners. It meant that barracks were built too slowly, and a significant number of prisoners and guards at Elmira were housed in tents well into winter – leading to outbreaks of pneumonia. When the drinking supply became polluted, prison officials began efforts to dig a drainage channel, but outside contractors were slow in procuring supplies and the project stalled until it was too late and the ground was frozen, which led to outbreaks of typhoid and dysentery. The Federal military prison system was a slow bureaucracy that often responded to problems, but because of a reliance on outside contractors for materials and labor, did so too slowly. The problems at Elmira and all of the other Federal military prisons were far more complicated than simple callousness, revenge, or intentional negligence.
Like Elmira, Andersonville relied on outside sources for food and supplies. One of the reasons Andersonville was selected as a prison site was because of its proximity to agricultural production. The food shortages in Richmond and in the army in Virginia would be avoided by placing the prison in the middle of the breadbasket of the Confederacy. In theory, this would protect the prison from being cut off from the rest of the country if rail lines were destroyed. However, this failed in practice because the Confederate military relied on local farmers and companies that were less than willing to do business with the Confederacy. Simply put, area farmers did not want to sell their crops to the military at fixed government prices in Confederate currency. Further complicating this was that many of the large planters in Georgia refused to produce foodstuffs and insisted on continuing to grow cotton, which only drove prices for food higher. In an effort to alleviate this and to feed the prison, a "tithe" was placed on all food production, and area farmers were required to give 10% of their food crop to the Confederate military. This was seen by many as an overreach by a government that claimed to carry the mantle of states' rights, and further alienated area farmers. By mid-1864 it was virtually impossible for the Confederate army at Andersonville to acquire anything, even if it was readily available. The challenge of purchasing food for the prison was exacerbated by the Confederacy's decision to centralize prisoners into one location – nearly one million pounds of cornmeal were required at Andersonville in August 1864 alone. These issues extended beyond food. Efforts to purchase lumber to build barracks and a dam across the creek were stifled when the shipyards in Columbus, GA could pay higher rates than the army could, which was constrained by a fixed pricing system. There was enough food and lumber in the area around Andersonville to greatly improve conditions, but because none of it was nationalized, the Confederate government could not get access to it. Accounts from some civilians and soldiers in the area describe warehouses of food that the owners wouldn't sell for anything except gold or greenbacks, leaving prisoners hungry, and forcing guards to purchase necessary supplies on their own.
Both sides were wrong in arguing that they provided the best care that they could while criticizing the other for inadequate treatment. Both sides could have improved on their management techniques – Federal officials already nationalized some industries and could have further done so to eliminate some of the prison bureaucracy. The Confederate government could have allowed flexibility from its rigid pricing system, which would have greatly alleviated hunger in the prison and facilitated the construction of shelters for the prisoners and a dam across the creek. However, even today almost 150 years later, arguments continue as people defend some prisons and level charges of negligence at others. The truth is that prison management in the Civil War was incredibly complicated and subject to many outside forces. Any effort to distill it down to simple negligence or cruelty is simply inaccurate.
Let’s consider all the evidence before making judgments which arbitrarily condemn the activities of a group of people because of their skin color.
American Savery began in the "English Colonies" in 1619. Regional Slavery was accepted and controlled by around 0.0001% of the people in this new world, as it was and has been accepted by peoples since mankind has been on this earth, …..but remember there were never any black, brown, yellow or red slave holders throughout history, only white men ever owned 100% of the slaves (sarcasm). The North American continent was ruled by England until 1783, that's 164 years of slavery on this continent while under The king of England’s rule.
Many Africans, Middle East Muslims, North Korea, China and others have, and still are selling people into slavery as I write these words, have you got any issues with those countries slave practices?
The mentally and morally challenged globalist controlled MSM (cbs,nbc,abc,cnn,msnbc,nyt) have not picked up on that fact yet, can't imagine why!,absolutely positively amazing, they are a bunch of mentality weak sellouts!!!
It took the United States 82 years as a new country to end Slavery after we broke our foot off in the King of Englands ass as we became an independent Nation......not as a 400 year old nation as the poverty pimps you probably listen to suggest.
From the 1862 US census, only 1.56% of the white population ever owned slaves and 28% of the free blacks owned slaves during those years, 98.4% of the population of America, either never benefited from slavery, or ever saw a slave and or lived their entire life within ten miles of where they were born and were ignorant of the practices. Also, I'm pretty sure that high speed internet, texting and phones were not available during this time period, so how could most the 98.4% of the American population even have a clue about it or have been a part of slavery at the time?
If you want to talk about another race of people who suffered under slavery, check out the original Irish immigrants who came to America, the only difference between them and many who came from the African continent, who by the way were conquered rounded up and sold into slavery by none other than blacks and those of the Islamic faith originally......, but past that. The Irish are not a bunch of whiny (grifters) crybabies like many of those self deluded so called victims who originated from the African continent.
The Jim Crow laws the Democrats wrote and enforced for many years, revealed through FBI statistics that only 0.00027%of the white population ever imposed any atrocities on the black community, yet some, somehow believe that all whites should feel guilty, if that's the way of it, then all blacks should be guilty when a black commits a crime, what's fair is fair….right?
My ancestors were from Scotland and a few other places dating back to our Pangaea roots, and many of my ancestors were jipped, beat, murdered, raped, burned up and out, hung, whipped, put in prison for no good reason until some escaped to the (new world) United States only to be bonds servants for 7 years of which time many were again raped and killed, cheated, and made to suffer in many ways. Should I spend my life whining and bitching about the people in Europe and America who did terrible things to my ancestors, which were much more or as severe as what many Blacks have experienced here in the USA. Blacks make up only a percentage of those who have historically been kidnapped and abused.
It's been around six generations (150 years) since slavery was abolished, slavery that only 01.56% of the population were involved with and profited from. It's been 2 generations since the civil rights era. How much longer will hard earned American tax dollars flow to a bunch people scamming the system thanks to LBJ and the many banking institutions prior.
Nobody can be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors or we are all slaves. If anything, this is just another globalist wedge issue to distract the public away from the real iniquities and challenges of the day.....namely the wrongs and fraud committed by the banking and insurance system though Fiat factional monetary rules established by a corrupt congress and Federal Reserve system.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Of course people of all skin colors have owned slaves. There were hundreds of black slave owners in America alone. African tribes also sold fellow Africans into slavery. Furthermore, I am not demanding reparations from anyone today or pointing fingers at modern descendants. Also, you are incredibly wrong to believe most Southerners did not benefit from slavery—the whole economy of the South, to which the success of all city and country dwellers was tied, was based on the agricultural exports produced through slave labor. The Civil War itself makes that strikingly clear, as Confederate shopkeepers, journalists, laborers, and politicians with zealous openness defended slavery, cheerfully butchered or enslaved free blacks (see war crimes in my article), and vilified those who tried to condemn slavery. And again after the war, many members of the roving bands of racist terrorists had not been slave owners, yet they were furious slavery had been ended. Your statistics are also preposterous, and I should like to know where you get them. You appear to have missed the entire point of my article, which was to highlight a specific part of AMERICAN history, to explain how wicked the Confederate cause truly was and to try finally to hold the Democrat party to account, because it is race-obsessed now as it was then. The issue is that the Civil War never ended. The Confederates or Democrats simply switched to infiltrating politics and education and so we have never yet solved or properly addressed many of the problems that continue to plague our nation. There is no “whining and bitching” involved. There is serious historical research to shed light on why our nation is still divided and struggling with government-enforced race obsession. My purpose was not to give a comprehensive history of world slavery, and if you look back at the many pieces I have written on modern-day Chinese and Islamic slavery you would realize that I hate slavery in all its manifestations. There was a purposeful genocide against black Americans and their white Allies. Again, you missed the entire point of an article to shed light on a specific period with modern repercussions. White people suffer from inaccurate history of the Civil War just as black people do. You will note in my article I talk of the white Union officers murdered by Confederates and white Republicans targeted by post-war Democrats, their heroism and suffering also buried under false history. Or perhaps your apparent prejudices rendered you unable to focus on the history in the interests of an accusatory diatribe.
Here is a handy time-line of the events:
26 Dec 1860: MAJ Robert Anderson occupies Fort Sumter in violation of the armistice then in effect.
9 Jan 1860: The Star of the West with 200 US Army soldiers to reinforce Anderson is turned back by fire from the Charleston batteries.
ca. Feb 1861: Gustavus V. Fox, an ex-naval officer and anti-Southern war hawk, presents a plan to Gen. Winfield Scott for a naval expedition to reinforce Fort Sumter and seize Charleston Harbor. Pres. Buchanan vetoes the plan, but Pres-elect Lincoln approves Fox’s plan and orders Scott to proceed. Thus Lincoln puts the wheels in motion for an invasion of South Carolina and the Confederacy even before he became president.
4 Mar 1861: Lincoln’s inauguration.
11 Mar 1861: Lincoln sends Fox on a recon mission to Fort Sumter to firm up his plan for a naval expedition against Charleston.
15 Mar 1861: Lincoln polls his cabinet whether to reinforce Fort Sumter. All cabinet members advise against it in writing (except Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, who was Fox’s brother-in-law), stating their opinions that it will be an act of war. Lincoln ignores his cabinet.
Gideon Welles, US Secretary of the Navy wrote: "There was not a man in the Cabinet that did not know that an attempt to reinforce Sumter would be the first blow of war. Of all the Cabinet, Blair only is in favor of reinforcing Sumter."
William Seward, US Secretary of State: "Even preparation to reinforce will precipitate war. I would instruct Anderson to return from Sumter."
Salmon Chase, US Secretary of War: "I will oppose any attempt to reinforce Sumter, if it means war."
All cabinet members voted decisively against it, except Blair.
Lincoln did not call a cabinet meeting, nor did he call upon Congress. He knew that neither would favor war.
30 Mar 1861: Lincoln orders Fox to New York City to prepare the invasion fleet.
1-6 Apr 1861: Fox assembles a fleet of four warships with 39 guns and four troop ships with landing craft and over 1,200 military personnel, including 500 soldiers to be landed. This is obviously something greater than an attempt to “peacefully provision” a garrison that was already being supplied by Charleston merchants.
The Fox fleet consisted of:
The Steamship Baltic a troop ship with 200 troops of the 2nd US Artillery.
The sloop-of-war Pawnee with a crew of 181, and eight 9-inch Dahlgren guns and two 12 pounder guns.
The sloop-of-war Powhatan with a crew of 289 plus 300 additional sailors to be used as landing troops and reinforcements and one 11 inch smoothbore gun. Ten 9 inch smoothbore guns. Five 12-pounder guns. [Powhatan was later diverted to the attack on Fort Pickens].
The armed screw steamer Pocahontas, crew of 180 and four 32-pounder guns, one 10-pounder gun and one 20-pounder rifle.
The revenue cutter, Harriet Lane, crew of 95 with one 4 inch gun, one 9 inch gun, two 8 inch guns, and two 24 lbs. howitzers.
In addition to the war ships and troop transport there were also three sea-going steam tugs, Yankee, Uncle Ben, and Thomas Freeborn included in the flotilla. These were intended to be used to pull the deep draft war ships and transport over the bar and help transfer troops and munitions to shore. These tugs had their superstructures reinforced as protection against small arms fire and were also armed with boat howitzers. [The Thomas Freeborn did not sail from NY due to dispute with its owners; the Uncle Ben was caught by a gale and captured near Wilmington NC.]
Thus the attempt to “peacefully provision” Fort Sumter included four warships with 39 guns, four troop transports and landing craft and over 1,200 military personnel, 500 of whom were intended to be landed as reinforcements. This was very obviously something much more than an attempt to “peacefully provision” a garrison.
The Confederate peace commissioners who had been sent to Washington had been assured by the Lincoln Administration that neither Fort Sumter nor Fort Pickens in Pensacola would be reinforced and that those posts would soon be evacuated. Yet all the while Lincoln was busily preparing troops and ships to reinforce and hold both forts.
5 Apr 1861: US Secretary of State Seward informs the Confederate peace negotiators that the US had “no design to reinforce Fort Sumter.”
6-9 Apr 1861: The fleet departs New York to reinforce Fort Sumter, blockade Charleston harbor.
In a May 1st letter to Fox, Lincoln wrote, “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter [sic], even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. Very truly your friend A. LINCOLN.”
Northern newspapers back this up…
The American Standard in New Jersey wrote on April 12:
“If this result follows—and follow civil war it must—the memory of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and his infatuated advisors will only be preserved with that of other destroyers to the scorned and execrated . . . And if the historian who preserves the record of his fatal administration needs any motto descriptive of the president who destroyed the institutions which he swore to protect, it will probably be some such as this: ‘Here is the record of one who feared more to have it said that he deserted his party than that he ruined the country, who had a greater solicitude for his consistency as a partisan than for his wisdom as a Statesman or his courage and virtue as a patriot, and who destroyed by his weakness the fairest experiment of man in self-government that the world ever witnessed.’”
The Providence Daily Post editorialized on April 13:
“We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country . . . Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor . . . he clings to his party creed, and allows the nation to drift into the whirlpool of destruction . . . What, really, do we want of the fort? It is not worth to us, while South Carolina remains out of the Union, a brass farthing.”
On April 16, the Buffalo Daily Courier wrote:
The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy . . . If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces, had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished.”
the New York Evening Day Book wrote on April 17:
“We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South . . . We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding . . . Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it.”
The Confederates deliberately seceded before Lincoln even took office, they had no power to break the union under the constitution. They seceded before Lincoln even took office, and after themselves creating all the incitement to war. Just as the Democrats do today, they incite a disaster, and then claim they are being abused when there is a reaction to the crisis. The Confederates started the Civil War, and then were out raged that the union did not simply surrender to them immediately on their own arbitrary and unjust terms. Likewise, after the war, whenever Grant after excessive amounts of antiblack and anti-republican violence, felt himself forced to send federal troops down, even though it was not something he really wanted to do, the south after its constant murders and rapes and beatings, then immediately began screeching about what a tyrant Grant was, and how he was trying to take away the liberty of the south. You are pushing an alternative rewrite of history.
Then let’s look at what made Yankees wealthy. Wealthy Yankees earned every dollar off the backs of southern slaves. Import, export, banking, insurance, manufacturing, textile mills….all thrived off the backs of crops produced by southern slaves.
Yankees engaged in the lucrative slave trade until 1860 here in the states…NY harbor was one of the biggest slave trading hub in this hemisphere. Yankee ship builders built slave ships while Yankee ironworks outfitted them. They were Yankee owned and went to Africa and brought slaves to the Us until 1960 and to Brazil and Cuba until almost 1890. Yankee ivory manufacturers continued to buy slaves at the coast of Africa and take them inland to carry 100lb tusks to the coast where they were sold again int9 the next century.
You’ve looked at this incredibly one sidedly as most of your ilk does. I’m sure your next comment will be that the south started the war when nothing could be further from the truth. Fort Sumter was fired upon because Lincoln sent war ships, troops and landing craft into Charleston harbor. That was an act of aggression especially since whe was promising peace commissioners he was vacating Sumter. 29 March 1861, Secretary of State William Seward warned Lincoln “The dispatch of an expedition to supply at reinforce Sumpter would provoke an attack and so involve a war at that point”.
At the same time Lincoln sent same to Fort Pickens in violation of an armistice.
What you don’t know about history is a lot! The confederate cause of freedom was not wicked. The confederacy did not exist to simply promote slavery. If you had read the articles of secession, you’d know that only four out of 13 mention slavery at all. While you ignore every other cause they listed. The federal govt had been taking states rights all along. Lincoln was elected …NOT to do away with slavery, but to stop it from bleeding into the western states to keep those states white.
Apparently you are unaware that many in the higher echelons of the Union Army and some in Lincoln’s own cabinet were Marxists. The Republican Party was founded in part by Marxists straight from the 1848 revolution. Look up the Forty Eighters.
Let’s look at what Yankees said about blacks…
As a class the Blacks are indolent, improvident, servile, and licentious.”
—Abolitionist Horace Greeley of New York, 1855
“But the great mass, as they are seen at work, under overseers, in the fields, appear very dull, idiotic, and brute-like; and it requires an effort to appreciate that they are, very much more than the beasts they drive, our brethren—a part of ourselves. They are very ragged, and the women especially, who work in the field with the men, with no apparent distinction in their labor, are disgustingly dirty. They seem to move very awkwardly, slowly, and undecidedly, and almost invariably stop their work while the train is passing.”
—Abolitionist Frederick Law Olmsted of New York, 1856
“It is not whether we want to associate with the black man…sit by the fireside with them in the social circle, or intermarry with them. That is a question of taste.”
—Governor Alexander Randall of Wisconsin, 1859
“Down with amalgamation!” or “Separate the Races!”
—Proposed Republican 1860 campaign slogan by James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin
“Missouri for white men and white men for Missouri.”
—Campaign slogan for Republican Edward Bates, 1860
“It is certainly the wish of every patriot that all within the limits of our Union should be homogeneous in race and of our own blood.”
—Republican Francis P. Blair of Maryland, 1858
Colonization would “keep our Anglo-Saxon institutions as well as our Anglo-Saxon blood pure and uncontaminated.”
—Republican James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, 1858
“I want to have nothing to do with the free negro or the slave negro….We wish to settle the Territories with free white men.”
—Republican Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, 1858
“Republicans distinctly and emphatically disavow negro suffrage, negroes holding office, serving on juries and the like.”
—Republican David Davis of Illinois, Lincoln’s political advisor, 1858
“It is the institution of slavery which is the great parent of amalgamation. Gentlemen need not fear it from those opposed to that institution.”
—Republican newspaper New York Tribune, 1854
“…I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1862
“And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…”
—Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, 1858
Incidentally, you have yet to address a single one of the points I brought up to show that racist Democrats held absolute sway over the south. Because you cannot. They are facts that no lie will explain away
The points you want addressed are only small microcosm of the total points of facts available, math has no biases n laying blame.
Of course, there were racist people in the union army and government. Lincoln himself did not fully understand the evil of treating blacks as second class citizens until the end of his life, when he supported full rights for Black people as he had not done before. The fact remains that the Civil War would never have happened without slavery. There was not war in the territories because of states’ rights besides slavery. That is, no matter how many other excuses they brought up, there would never have been a war had it not been for slavery. Therefore, the Civil War was about slavery. The retaliatory act that accuses the union of being evil because it armed slaves, demanding the enslavement of any more Black people encountered, and the many southern newspapers that explicitly said the war was about the glorious cause of slavery undermine your point. The Confederates themselves believe the war was about slavery. Your own racism and propaganda have blinded you
“Also, you are incredibly wrong to believe most Southerners did not benefit from slavery”
How so, the original construction projects in America were built by Old European craftsman and their tools, I’ve found little evidence of African influence or tools, also, the small percentage of blacks during America’s first centuries were to small to make any major labor claims towards building public or private infrastructure. 99+% of all American ancestors descendants are average blue/white collar folks who have been debt slaves to a corrupt world currency system, but some want to ignore that while focusing on Cherry picked groups hardships.
I believe your generalization and blanket prejudice toward the South can stand some adjustment. This is one of many thoughts you might consider from an honorable man:
https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/
Another is the largest slaveholder in 1860s SC was a black man, William Ellison from the upstate region. He was a cruel master holding 68 slaves at the time: https://face2faceafrica.com/article/the-fascinating-history-of-how-a-black-man-became-one-of-the-largest-slaveowners-in-south-carolina-in-1860s
Here’s another to change stereotypical views https://historycollection.com/10-black-slaveowners-that-will-tear-apart-historical-perception/6/
Can I post without signing up
I don’t think so, she needs to allow other platforms like D on.