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