Pass Confederate History Month in Georgia and Other Southern States

Savannah Rep. Jesse Petrea and the other sponsors of a bill to create Confederate History Month in Georgia should do so post haste in the name of historical truth. Other Southern States should do so as well.

Not only should the Georgia legislature pass Petrea's bill, they should guarantee that the Southern view of the War Between the States is presented unashamedly in Confederate History Month because it has not been told fairly or truthfully in a long time.

What has been taught for the past few decades is a politically correct fraud that supports the racist identity politics of the Democrat Party. It nowhere resembles truth.

One of the most prominent American historians to ever live, Eugene Genovese (Roll, Jordan, Roll, et al.) said in 1994:

"The history of the Old South is now often taught at leading universities, when it is taught at all, as a prolonged guilt-trip, not to say a prologue to the history of Nazi Germany. . . . To speak positively about any part of this Southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity."

Dr. Genovese goes on to say that this cultural and political atrocity is being forced on us by "the media and an academic elite."

The Savannah Morning News just proved Dr. Genovese correct in their editorial of March 26, 2017 entitled "Teach more than myth on the Confederacy".

I am going to expose some of the deceit of the Savannah Morning News below but first, let me mention that my book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument. (218 footnotes, 207 sources in the bibliography, 86 sample pages on www.BonnieBluePublishing.com) makes the "conclusive case" that slavery was not the cause of the war.

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History of the University of South Carolina and primary editor of the Papers of John C. Calhoun writes about my book:

"Historians used to know - and it was not too long ago - that the War Between the States had more to do with economics than it did with slavery. The current obsession with slavery as the “cause” of the war rests not on evidence but on ideological considerations of the present day. Gene Kizer has provided us with the conclusive case that the invasion of the Southern States by Lincoln and his party (a minority of the American people) was due to an agenda of economic domination and not to some benevolent concern for slaves. This book is rich in evidence and telling quotations and ought to be on every Southern bookshelf."

Please buy my book and get it into the hands of legislators across the South who can craft legislation to get historical truth out there and stop the PC fraud parading as history today.

When these bills are crafted, they must guarantee that the Southern view of the causes of the War Between the States is presented. This history can not be told by academia and the news media, which have proven themselves to be complete frauds out for their own political advantage and not the truth of history.

These bills should guarantee that organizations such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans oversee the history or at least have significant input. The Sons of Confederate Veterans is descended from the United Confederate Veterans founded in the 1890s by soldiers who fought for the South: doctors, lawyers, generals, legislators, the most brilliant people in the South including legions of average soldiers whom I might remind people are AMERICAN VETERANS.

The Confederacy was the Confederate States of AMERICA.

Confederate soldiers are American soldiers whose ancestors fought the British in the American Revolution and won our independence. They deserve the same respect as all American soldiers.

I gave a radio interview that was broadcast live March 21st on iHeart station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa with Jan Mickelson. Just click this link which Mickelson entitled:

"Was the Civil War about Slavery?"

The condescending Savannah Morning News warns Rep. Petrea and the other sponsors of Confederate History Month in Georgia that they must preach the version of history promoted by the Savannah Morning News, and if they don't, they "should be ashamed of themselves for trying to perpetuate a distorted view of history with no care for the ignorance they spread or the pain they cause million of Georgians who wish the Confederacy would die, once and for all, or at least not be glorified."

The Savannah Morning News wishes the Confederacy would die once and for all.

The Southern history which they hate belongs to 80,000,000 Americans alive today who are descended from people who endured the invasion and destruction of the South by the Union Army for no reason except that the South wanted to govern itself.

Maybe the Savannah Morning News should read its own pages from the time period of the War Between the States. The Savannah Morning News was founded in 1850. There is no question that the Savannah Morning News of the 1850s to the 1970s would tell a far more truthful story of Southern history than its politically correct iteration of today.

In fact, Georgians should do research and publish the words of the Savannah Morning News when it was more truthful, and contrast those words with the politically correct Savannah Morning News of today.

It is provable beyond the shadow of a doubt that the North did not go to war to end slavery or free the slaves. They went to war to preserve the Union as Abraham Lincoln said over and over. The Union was essential to the North because their economy was dependent on manufacturing for the South and shipping Southern cotton. They became rich and powerful doing so. Without the South, the North was dead.

Without the North, the South was in great shape with control of the most demanded commodity on the planet: cotton.

Southerners seceded because they were fed up with Northern hate and terrorism such as promoted by John Brown and lauded in the North, as well as the Republican Party's adoption of Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis which called for the throats of white Southerners to be cut. The Republican Party printed hundreds of thousands of The Impending Crisis and distributed them to all corners of the country.

Southerners were not about to be ruled over by terrorists who hated them and wanted their throats cut.

That was a far more motivational factor than slavery, which was totally protected by the Constitution and in no danger in the Union.

The no-extension-of-slavery-in-the-West argument makes the North look moral but it was not moral, it was racist. Northerners did not want slavery in the West because they did not want blacks in the West. There is overwhelming proof to this effect. Northern anti-slavery included mostly people who wanted tariffs, bounties and subsidies for their business, or free land in the West. Historian Charles P. Roland said "There was a significant economic dimension in the Northern antislavery sentiment" and "a racial factor contributed to the Northern attitude" because:

"Many Northerners objected to the presence of slavery in their midst, in part, because they objected to the presence of blacks there."

Most Northern and Western states including Lincoln's Illinois had laws on the books forbidding free blacks from living there or even being there longer than a few days. Historian David M. Potter states that Northern anti-slavery was "not in any clear-cut sense a pro-Negro movement but actually had an anti-Negro aspect and was designed to get rid of the Negro."

So, let's look closer at the Savannah Morning News editorial.

They cherry-pick that tired old Cornerstone quote of Alexander Stephens, who, by the way, was a Unionist who did not even want to secede. People should read that entire speech because it is as brilliant as any ever written in American history on our foundation, constitution, etc.

The Savannah Morning News states:

"The Confederacy's 'cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition,' the newly named vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, explained in an 1861 speech in Savannah."

Abraham Lincoln states:

"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, [applause] - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and 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. 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."

This comes from Lincoln's Charleston, Illinois speech of Saturday, September 18, 1858, as quoted in black scholar Lerone Bennett's great book: Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000), 208.

What is the difference in Lincoln and Stephens? There isn't any, but nobody wants to stop studying Lincoln or tear his monuments down.

Lincoln strongly favored the Corwin Amendment which left black people in slavery forever, in places where slavery existed, even beyond the reach of Congress.

And Lincoln favored recolonizing blacks back to Africa his whole life. He wrote in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September, 1862 that "recolonization efforts would continue." This was three months before the actual Emancipation Proclamation, and speaking of the Emancipation Proclamation, it freed no slaves or few.

The Emancipation Proclamation deliberately left almost a million blacks in slavery in the five Union slave states - YES, I said UNION SLAVE STATES because when the guns of Fort Sumter sounded, there were more slave states in the Union (eight, soon to be nine) than in the Confederacy (seven).

Four slave states fought for the North throughout the war (Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky), and West Virginia came into the Union as a slave state during the war. This alone proves that ending slavery was not the mission of the North or cause of the war. If it had been, the North would have freed the slaves in its own country before worrying about the South.

Maybe the Savannah Morning News should talk about why the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves and indeed left almost a million black people in slavery in the Union slave states. The EP specifically exempted the Union slave states and other areas from freeing their slaves. It freed only the slaves in places where Lincoln had no control. Charles Dickens laughed at Lincoln as did his own secretary of state, William H. Seward, who said "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."

The Savannah Morning News talks about Georgia's Declaration of the Causes of Secession:

"That's a lengthy discourse of complaints, mostly related to the North's attempts to curtail slavery. When the document gets around to a simple list of reasons, the first is this: Northern "rulers. . . have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property," meaning slaves."

That's fake history to go along with SMN's fake news.

The Georgia Declaration of Causes of Secession is talking about slavery in the West and the whole statement is "they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union;".

Outlawing slavery in the West was an insult to Southerners because the states are supposed to be equal, and arguably, more Southern than Northern blood and treasure had been spent winning the Western lands, where slavery was legal.

As stated, the North was not trying to curtail slavery so they could help black people but because they were racists, by today's standard, who did not want slavery in the West because they did not want blacks in the West.

The Savannah Morning News should mention that too.

Besides, slavery was not extending into the West. One historians called it a bogus issue because it was about an imaginary Negro in an impossible place. The West had been open to slavery for 10 years and there were 24 slaves in one territory and 29 in the other. Slavery was not expanding. It only worked on rich cotton soil, usually along rivers, where cotton could be transported.

The Industrial Revolution would have destroyed slavery without 800,000 men being killed and another million wounded on battlefields all over the country. Technological advances in farm machinery within 20 years of the end of the war would have enabled cotton planters to pick cotton much faster at a fraction of the cost of slavery.

Many historians agree that the War Between the States was a completely unnecessary war, and I am one of them.

Georgia's Declaration of the Causes of Secession is mostly concerned with Northern terrorism and how Southerners were not going to be ruled over by terrorists, though there is not a single word about that by the Savannah Morning News. The SMN left this out:

"For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these effort have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican Party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates."

And it ends:

"Their [Republican Party] avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquility. [Approved, Tuesday, January 29, 1861]"

There is also much in Georgia's Declaration of Causes of Secession on the economic unfairness in the Union, again ignored by the Savannah Morning News:

"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day."

The Savannah Morning News with their PC slavery red herring does not mention any of this and to make matters worse, 3/4th of the federal treasury was paid by the South, yet 3/4ths of the tax money in the treasury was spent in the North.

How long do you think Northerners would pay 3/4ths of the taxes if 3/4ths of the tax money was being spent in the South?

Other proof abounds of the economic unfairness of the Union. Texas Representative John H. Reagan told Northern representatives in Congress in early 1861: "You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue law, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers."

Two other famous Georgians chimed in. Senator Robert Toombs called it a suction pump sucking wealth out of the South and depositing it in the North, and it was made up of:

"Bounties and protection to every interest and every pursuit in the North, to the extent of at least fifty millions per annum, besides the expenditure of at least sixty millions out of every seventy of the public expenditure among them, thus making the treasury a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands."

Henry L. Benning, one of Robert E. Lee's most able brigadier generals and for whom Fort Benning, Georgia is named, said $85,000,000, a gargantuan sum in those days, was the amount flowing continually through Robert Toombs's suction pump: "Eighty-five millions is the amount of the drains from the South to the North in one year, - drains in return for which the South receives nothing." The prescient Benning also said:

"The North cut off from Southern cotton, rice, tobacco, and other Southern products would lose three fourths of her commerce, and a very large proportion of her manufactures. And thus those great fountains of finance would sink very low. . . . Would the North in such a condition as that declare war against the South?"

The Savannah Morning Fake News with its fake half-history really cheats Georgians who are glad to take their share of blame for slavery but will no longer tolerate their ancestors insulted by the politically correct liberal fraud in academia and the media.

The Savannah Morning Fake News does get one thing right. They state:

"To be sure, many of the brave Georgians who fought for the Confederacy did so not to preserve slavery but to defend the dignity of the South against an arrogant North" [and also to defend Georgia against the bloody invasion of the Union Army].

"Most of the CSA's soldiers owned no slaves . . . ."

Another thing proves slavery was not the cause of the war. When the seven cotton states seceded and formed the Confederacy, four states initially rejected secession: Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee. They did not secede until after Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, and their reason for seceding was federal coercion. They did not believe the federal government had a right to invade a sovereign state.

In Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee lived 52.4% of white Southerners, which means a majority of Southerners in power in 1861 seceded over federal coercion and NOT slavery.

Please buy my book and get it into the hands of legislators across the South and other leaders. It is time to strike a hard blow against the fake news and fake history promoted by PC liberals in academia and the media.

Gene Kizer, Jr.
Author
Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States
The Irrefutable Argument.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985363274?ie=UTF8&creativeASIN=0985363274&linkCode=xm2&tag=souhernewvie-20

Federal Usurpation Total Centralized Power

To: Henry Crain--Constitutional Historian-Leesburg GA.

Henry,

  

You may want to review the partial part of an article I posted below to use in your April 8 speech at the CSA memorial service at the park. It explains that the overthrow of States Rights was the plan and purpose of the Federal government to usurp total power and concentrate all power and control with the Federal government in Washington under the Socialist Republican Party of Lincoln. This was Lincoln's purpose for the war. Lincoln was a Socialist pen-pal of Karl Marx.

 

Recently the modern neocon and globalist Republican Newt Gingrich is said to have blurted out "The war wasn't fought over slavery. It was fought to concentrate and centralize all power in Washington D.C."  He was correct.

James King

SCV Camp 141 Commander

Albany Georgia

jkingantiquearms@bellsouth.net 

However, what we find during the Civil War is a departure from the growing concept that such predations were to be curbed and discouraged.

Instead, we find that official policy, fully sanctioned by the highest levels of the military command of the Federal forces commanded by President Lincoln and in concurrence with the policy set by the highest echelons of the civilian leadership enthusiastically engaged in the type of war crimes that are implicit in the conduct of a “Total War.”

We must ask ourselves how this concept of Total War was seen by both sides during the Civil War and understand how this concept differed from previous conceptions of what was considered proper warfare.

“Total War” was NOT a concept taught at West Point prior to the Civil War, where war on civilians was considered anathema to “civilized warfare.” It was certainly NOT taught to cadets such as Grant, Sherman, Halleck and Sheridan when they attended the Academy.

The code of military conduct at the time was set by the Articles of War of 1806, which was in force until it was replaced in 1863 by the “Lieber Code” (also known as “General Order 100.)

The 1806 Code stated:

“Any officer or soldier who shall quit his post or colors to plunder and pillage shall suffer death or other such punishment as shall be ordered by a sentence of a general court martial.”

However, this view ran contrary to the political desire to annihilate the enemy “root and branch”, which gripped the military and political elites in the North.  This was because it was not simply State Governments that were “in rebellion” against the Federal Government; it was the entire free population that was rejecting the domination of the Federal Government, which they felt had betrayed the compact they signed onto when they ratified the Constitution of 1789 by expanding Federal power over the states beyond the enumerated Constitutional limitations.  Having left British rule because they felt the British ruled WITHOUT the consent of the governed, the South came to the conclusion, after a long series of political crises, that the Federal Government of 1861 was now in the same position as the government of King George III.

They were determined to exercise their right to remove themselves from the control of the Federal Government in the same manner in which they removed themselves from the control of the British government.

To prevent the South from exercising this right, the Federal Government needed to defeat and subjugate the Confederacy and to establish a new constitutional order in its place… a constitutional order where the Federal Government moved from a position where it was limited to enumerated Constitutional powers regarding the individual states to one where it was perpetual, indivisible, dominant and exalted as “sacred.”

The war aim of the Federal Government in Washington was to break the “chains” of the Constitution which placed much governing power in the hands of the States and instead create a supreme National Government with the potential to exert almost unlimited authority.  Such authority would allow the backers of the Republican Party, those of the rising Northeastern Industrial and Railroad interests, to use the coercive power of the Federal Government to their own purposes over and against the power of the States to interfere.

To succeed in such a massive re-structuring of the Government meant that the South could not just be militarily defeated on the battlefield… it has to be annihilated, its culture demonized and eradicated, its economy desolated and its political will broken so thoroughly that there would never again remain any question regarding Federal dominance over the States.

As Adam Badeau , who was on General Grant’s staff and was present at Appomattox notes:

“It was not victory that either side was playing for, but for existence.  If the rebels won, they destroyed a nation; if the government succeeded, it annihilated a rebellion.”

Of course, the Confederacy in no way wanted to “destroy” the United States, which would have continued, albeit in attenuated form as a Nation, after the South left.

For the South, however, the statement is entirely true: for the Federal Government to succeed in overturning the Constitution of 1789 and, in effect, create a “Second Republic” based on immensely increased Federal power, the Confederacy had to not just be defeated, BUT ANNIHILATED.

But if the earlier concepts of proper standards of war conflicted with those adopted by the Federal Government during the Civil War, what ARE “proper standards of war?”

Further, did the Federal Government, in adopting NEW standards of warfare, violate the very standards they adopted?

There were several standards of war that were in effect in the Western world during the time the Civil War took place:

1) “Customary use of long standing”

Customary Usage are practices that go back hundred and thousands of years not based on written treaties of conventions.  To meet the criteria of “Customary Usage” it must be a custom practiced by Nations; that is, there is an unwritten agreement among nations that such practice is mandated by custom.  For example, a white flag is a considered to be indicating a truce by longstanding custom.

2) The Geneva Convention of 1862 which narrowly focused on “The Amelioration of the condition of the wounded in armies in the field.”

This convention grew out of the Crimean War and was signed by 10 European States excluding Great Britain.  The United States also did not sign and therefore was not bound by its articles.

3) Emmerich de Vattel (1714-67)  “The Law of Nations”

Historically, the government of the United States had adhered to the international law code of the Swiss jurist, Emmerich de Vattel (1714-67), author of The Law of Nations, on the proper conduct of war. As late as 1862, the U.S. Supreme Court in rendering its opinion in the “Prize Cases” cited Vattel. Because of the emphasis it placed on the protection of non-combatants, the Vattel code was repudiated by Lincoln who issued a new law governing warfare that lacked international standing – GENERAL ORDERS No. 100, known as the “Lieber Code” of 1863.

Joesph Fallon, E-book “Lincoln Uncensored” endnote  21

4) The Lieber Code

Francis Lieber was a German-American legal scholar, jurist and political philosopher; the code that bears his name (AKA General Order 100) was a series of 156 articles published in 1863.  Lincoln signed it as part of his Constitutional duty under Article II, which states that the President must supply the rules and regulations for the governance of the military.

It read: “The following ‘Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field,’ prepared by Francis Lieber, LL.D., and revised by a board of officers, of which Maj. Gen. E. A. Hitchcock is president, having been approved by the President of the United States, he commands that they be published for the information of all concerned. By order of the Secretary of War: E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General, Washington, April 24, 1863.” The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, also known as Official records of the Union and Confederate armies or OR, Series III, Volume III, p. 148.

From the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln’s strategy was to defeat the Confederacy by targeting Southern civilians. One of his first acts was to order a blockade of Southern ports on April 19, 1861 to deny food and medicine, among other items, to civilians. Because such acts violated traditional U.S. military rules of conduct, Lincoln needed a new code to “legalize” his actions.

Lieber was the perfect choice for this task. The Prussian immigrant was contemptuous of the Constitution. He dismissed the federal system it had established as a “confederacies of petty sovereigns” based on the “obsolete ideas” of Thomas Jefferson. He shared Lincoln’s drive to centralize political power in the executive branch of the federal government. They alleged implied powers in the Constitution grant the president in wartime authority to enact legislation as well as to interpret the Constitution — to deny or suspend constitutional rights as the chief executive sees fit.

In 1904, the Geneva Convention with which we are most familiar adopted the Lieber Code almost word for word.

However, the Code contains conflicts within its articles.

Article 15 discusses “military necessity” and its definition allows “destruction of property” – that is, all property can be destroyed if determined to be of “military necessity.”

However, Article 22 states “The principle has been more and more acknowledged that they unarmed citizen is to be spared in person, property and honor as much as the exigencies of war allow.”

Further, Article 23 of the Code states “Private Citizens are no longer murdered, enslaved or carried off to distant parts and the inoffensive individual is as little disturbed in his private relations as the commander of hostile troops can afford to grant in the overruling demands of vigorous war.”

But the Code allows for an ultimate “out”: Article 5 states “To save the country (that is, the Union as conceived by the Federal Government) is paramount to all other considerations.”

Therefore, the Leiber Code, provides both the rationale AND the cover for Federal ambition.

The rationale for Total War conducted against the South was the concept of “military necessity.”

Military necessity was defined by General David Hunter in 1862 as “those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war” (Burrus M. Carnahan, “Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: The Origins and Limits of the Principle of Military Necessity” – The American Journal of International Law 92, no.2 April 1998, page 215)          

In 1863, Lincoln approved the Lieber Code which contained Article 14 that states:

“Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists in the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war; and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages if war… military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb or armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contest of the war… of the appropriation of whatever an enemy’s country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the army.”

In approving the Lieber code, Lincoln essentially was given the power to do whatever he deemed necessary to win the war, which was defined as the subjugation of the seceding states and establishing total control over them via the authority of the Federal Government’s new vision of the Constitution – that is, one that rejected the voluntary Union established in 1789 for the counter-revolutionary vision of a “perpetual” and “sacred” Union from which it separation was IMPOSSIBLE.

When urged by an Illinois congressman that he should “maul” the South, Lincoln replied “Tell the people of Illinois that I’ll do it” (Donald E. Sutherland, “Abraham Lincoln, John Pope, and the Origins of Total War” – The Journal of Military History, no 4 (October 1992) Page 581)

Given the ferocity of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Ulysses S. Grant decided that the depth of Southern determination to break free of the control of the Federal Government was so deep that simple military victory would be insufficient to defeating it; he decided that to defeat the South he would follow a strategy that would annihilate the South.  He would “consume everything (of civilian property) that could be used to support of supply the armies. (Janda page 13)

He and his generals proved themselves in sync with the views of the political leadership in the summer of 1863 when they proceeded to demonstrate how the doctrine of military necessity would be enforced.

Grant wrote to his subordinate commanders (Sherman and Sheridan) that the South was getting what it deserved and that “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war. (Janda page 18)

Acting in a manner his commander – and Commander in Chief – would approve, on July 23 1862, General Pope issued Order No. 11, which ordered the US Army Commanders to ‘proceed immediately to arrest all disloyal male citizens within their lines or within their reach in rear of their respective stations.’ If such citizens did not swear an oath of allegiance to the US government, they would be expelled from their homes; if they returned to their homes, they were to be shot as spies; for him who took an oath and violated it “he shall be shot and his property seized…”

The result of this order was that Pope’s troops went on a rampage throughout Tennessee and parts of Virginia, citing his orders to justify acts of plunder and indiscriminate destruction.

A Union general in Stafford Country Virginia observed “our men… now believe they have a perfect right to rob, tyrannize, threaten and maltreat any one they please, under the orders of Gen. Pope.” (Janda page 12)

Further, there were numerous charges of rape and violence against both Black and White women.

Again, the Lieber Code is filled with restrictions that are obviated by the over-riding requirement of “military necessity” which in reality justifies violating all its more humane rules.

As we list the myriad violations of the code to come, keep in mind that the General Order 100 purports to be a document which on the one hand places limits on military actions and on the other absolves all violations of such limits under the doctrine of “military necessity.”

The code states:

“All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offence.”

What is left unsaid by this unequivocal statement was nonetheless not lost on Lincoln or Grant or his subordinates: EXCEPT WHEN REQUIRED BY MILITARY NECESSITY, which undid virtually ALL the protections for civilians and non-combatants that were written in the code.

The fatal contradictions in the Leiber Code allowed for all its apparent protections to be subverted.  All Southerners were to be treated as rebels and traitors and as such deserved no protections beyond what the commanders in the field found convenient to grant them.

Paragraph 151 of the code defined the Southern states as ineligible for the very protections the code was supposedly written to enforce:

“The tern rebellion is applied to an insurrection of large extent, and is usually a war between the legitimate government of a country and portions of its provinces of the same who seek to throw off their allegiance to it and set up a government of their own.”

Of course, the great historical irony here is that this is the PRECISELY the concept of Liberty that the colonial governments had in 1776 when they adopted the Declaration of Independence and created the very Union that was now, in a curious case of national patricide, trying to overthrow and destroy.

By defining the Southern position as “rebellion” rather than “secession” the Lieber Code becomes a self-annihilating document, which allows the Federal armed forces to make war on civilians; that is, it considers them “disloyal citizens.”

Paragraph 156 of the Code states that the commander in the field:

“will throw the burden of the war as much as lies within his power on the disloyal citizens” – that is, the very citizens whose place in the “sacred, perpetual union” the Lincoln Government was waging a very bloody and destructive war to preserve.

Lastly, the Code considers any sort of resistance, “armed or unarmed,” to be war against the Federal Government of the United States and therefore an act of treason.      

Before leaving the codes of warfare as they were understood by the opposing armies, we should take a look at the code that was understood to be in force by the Confederacy.

The South, whose military commanders were from families steeped in military tradition, took the codes of conduct towards civilians that were taught in West Point and other military colleges in the South very seriously.  They did NOT operate under the doctrine of “military necessity,” which over-rode all other humanitarian considerations in pursuit of victory.

The Confederacy did NOT seek to annihilate the North, nor exercise their influence upon it, nor foist its cultural and social values on it, nor rule it; they sought to LEAVE IT.

Robert E. Lee gives us a clear view of how the South understood the rules of war in his General Order 73, issued in 1863 during the Pennsylvania campaign:

“No troops could have displayed greater fortitude or better performed the arduous marches of the past ten days.

Their conduct in other respects has with few exceptions been in keeping with their character as soldiers, and entitles them to approbation and praise.

There have however been instances of forgetfulness on the part of some, that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties expected of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own.

The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed, and defenseless [sic] and the wanton destruction of private property that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.

Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present movement.

It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain.

The commanding general therefore earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject.” – (The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York: Bramhall House, 1961, pages 533-534)

Rebuttal to Editor of Shawnee News-Star, Don Clark

Rex Cash; Lt Commander                                                         7 March 2017
Oklahoma Division
Sons Of Confederate Veterans


Kent Bush; Editor
Shawnee News-Star

Sir,

It doesn’t trouble me you didn’t cover the Sons Of Confederate Veterans Rally.  As you say, it’s your paper.  I do find it rather peculiar you devoted so much space justifying your choice.  I believe if you did the same with every piece of news you didn’t print your paper would be filled only with excuses.  To quote Shakespeare you “protest too much, methinks”

What does alarm me is your unjust and unprincipled argument for not covering it.  You claim your decision was “based on my belief the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of racially based hate” and your “core beliefs” therefore prevented you from covering the rally.  If you are as principled as you profess then your “core beliefs” must surely dictate that you not cover stories involving the US Flag and Christian Cross as both have much longer and bloodier histories with any offense you dare level at the Confederate Battle Flag.

Speaking of your black child you claim you are “not willing to further normalize any banner that people would deem him inferior.”  How then do you reconcile your “core belief” with the fact it was the US flag, not the Confederate Battle Flag, which presided over the Supreme Court in 1857 that ruled blacks were not citizens and had no rights.  It was the US Flag which presided over the Supreme Court in 1896 that ruled segregation was constitutional.  It was the US Flag that presided over the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments. It was the US Flag that flew over a segregated US military until 1947 and a segregated US public schools system until 1954.  And last year when Hilary Clinton denounced what she called the “systemic racism in our criminal justice system” she was not talking about the Confederate criminal justice system.   But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred!

You call the Confederate Battle Flag a “symbol of racially based hate” but the KKK didn’t hijack the Confederate Battle Flag until about 1950.  According to the Tuskegee Institute, there have been 4,742 lynchings in the US.  According to that same source, 99.8% of those lynching, in other words all but 13, occurred before 1950.  Prior to that, the KKK swore their one and only flag was the US flag, a fact incontestably verified by the presence of only the US Flag in their membership manuals, literature and events photos.  Go find every photo and video of KKK events you can and compare the number of US and Confederate Battle Flags.  Start with the KKK rallies in Kokomo IN (that’s right Indiana not Mississippi) in1923 attended by 200,000 Klansmen and in Washington DC in 1925.  You won’t find a single Confederate Battle Flag at either.  What you will find is more US flags at just these two rallies than Confederate Battle Flags at all other Klan rallies combined!  But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred!

And let’s not forget, the Confederate Battle Flag is a military flag and therefore apolitical.  It enslaved no one.  The US Flag, on the other hand, is the symbol of the US government which legalized and protected 136 million man-years of slavery over a period of 75 years.  Likewise, it was the US Flag, not Confederate Battle Flag that presided over Native American policy, like the Indian Removal Act (1830), which decimated Native populations by as much as 90%.  But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred.

In a similar manner, it can be demonstrated the sins of the Confederate Battle Flag pale in comparison to those perpetrated under the Christian Cross.  The exact number of victims from 700 years of Christian Crusades, Inquisitions and witch hunts is known only to God, but on 20 August 1191, Christian Crusaders killed some 5,000 men, women and children; more than all the lynchings in the entire history of the US.  Also, the Christian Cross is the most dominate and continuously used symbol of the KKK.  They’ve always asserted their “core belief” is Christian.  Look at their robes, past and present, almost all are adorned with a Cross.  And let’s not forget those burning Crosses.  How many beatings and lynchings have they illuminated?  But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred!

Perhaps it is best you did not cover the rally.  There was hatred and bigotry there.   It was brought there by protestors so blinded and enslaved by political correctness they can’t see the facts.  Adopting the tactics of the KKK, some hid their faces under masks while others stooped to derogatory names and malicious insults clearly intended to injure.  On the other side were the Confederate Battle Flag supporters, gathered peacefully and respectfully to honor the noblest of human qualities, devotion duty, courage, sacrifice and love of family.  It might be difficult to reconcile to your readers that reality with your “core beliefs.”  It would be even more difficult to explain to ones child that the former group was good and represented fairness and the latter group was bad and represented hate.  Yes, I can see why you didn’t put yourself in that position.

It is only a hopelessly arbitrary and hypocritical sense of justice that can condemn the Confederate Battle Flag when other cherished symbols are guilty of far more numerous and egregious misdeeds.  Obviously, it is not out of any “core beliefs” the Confederate Battle Flag is hated and censored but a choice and a very malignant and prejudicial one at that.  Anyone who claims there is some benign principle in the inquisition against the Confederate Battle Flag…well, the emperor has no clothes.   Even worse, those that so cravenly surrender the Confederate Battle Flag to hate groups give aid and comfort to very forces of hate they claim to oppose.  If you truly wish to further neutralize and consign to obscurity the forces of hate, do not empower them this way!  I say join us in repudiating and denying the use of this powerful symbol for any wicked purpose just as we do with the US Flag and Christian Cross. 

Rex Cash; Lt Commander
Oklahoma Division

Sons Of Confederate Veterans

“War Comes to Laurinburg - 1865”

         Saturday, 18 March 2017:10AM to 5PM

An Annual War Between the States Living History and Reenactment - Free Admission

The Historic John Blue House, 13040 X-Way Road, Laurinburg, NC.  10AM to 5PM

Periodic artillery firing and skirmishes, Gen. W.J. Hardee’s Field HQ’s and staff,

CSA Surgeon/Field Hospital display, Youth CSA Enlistment Table, Certificates, and Organized Drills.  The Sons of Mars NC Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp will discuss local men and the companies and regiments they served in.

Lectures and Presentations:

“Northern Prison Camps During the War,” author Richard Triebe of Wilmington.

“Wheeler’s Cavalry in the Carolinas,” author Keith Jones of Burlington.

“War Comes to Laurinburg” historian Bernhard Thuersam of Wilmington.

A 5PM artillery salute to North Carolina veterans will close the day’s events.

This event is sponsored by the Scotland County Tourism Development Commission, Scotland County Historical Properties Commission, Griffin Estep Group Insurance, Cape Fear Historical Institute, Sons of Mars Camp, NC Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Scotland County Genealogical Society.

For more info, email bernhard1848@gmail.com or 910.619.4619