Lincoln's Great Task

Bernhard Thuersam (bernhard1848@gmail.com)

The Republican party of Lincoln was not “anti-slavery,” but rather firmly against the expansion of African laborers into the new territories of the West and confining them to the South.  Immigrants were unfamiliar with Africans, did not want to compete with them for work, and formed an important nucleus of Republican political power.

Lincoln’s true motivation with early property confiscation efforts was to deem Africans within the lines of his armies free, and then colonizing them “at some place or places in a climate congenial to them.”  He added that “it might be well to consider too whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization.”

www.Circa1865.org   The Great American Political Divide

Lincoln’s Great Task

“The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, declare: “The political creed of Abraham Lincoln embraced among other tenets, a belief in the value and promise of colonization as one means of solving the great race problem involved in the existence of slavery in the United States . . . Without being an enthusiast, Lincoln was a firm believer in colonization.”

Speaking at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, Mr. Lincoln said: “I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect prevention of amalgamation . . . I can say a very large proportion of [Republican party] members are for it and that the chief plank in their platform – opposition to the spread of slavery – is most favorable to that separation. Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization . . . Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or at least, not against our interests, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task will be.”

Upon his assumption of the office of President Mr. Lincoln sought to carry into effect his colonization views. [Congress, at its] session of 1862, placed at the disposal of the President the sum of $600,000 to be expended at his discretion in colonizing with their consent free persons of African descent in some country adapted to their condition and necessities.

Mr. Lincoln, with a view of carrying out this act of Congress, invited a number of prominent colored men to meet him at the White House on the 11th of August 1862, and then urged upon them the wisdom of availing themselves of the opportunity thus offered to make for themselves a home beyond the borders of this country.

[As the] action of Congress in placing at his disposal a sum of money for the purpose of aiding the colonization of the people of African descent made it his duty, as it had for a long time been his inclination, to favor that cause.

Continuing, he said:

“And why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should you leave this country? This is perhaps the first question for proper consideration. 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 I think. Your race suffer very greatly . . . while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side.

The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is upon you. I do not propose to discuss this, but to present it as a fact with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would.

I ask you then to consider seriously not pertaining to yourselves merely, nor for your race or ours for the present time but as one of the things successfully managed, for the good of mankind – not confined to the present generation.”

(Virginia’s Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession, Beverly Munford, L.H. Jenkins 1909, excerpts pp. 77-81)

A Can of Worms - A History Lesson for Ted Cruz

By Samuel W. Mitcham 

I am always annoyed when a conservative political leader attacks Southern heritage. I don’t know why because with the present-day crop of cowardly politicians, it is becoming routine, but I am. Unwittingly or not, these modern day Scalawags adopt the “politically correct” line, even though they know (or should know) that political correctness is nothing more than a euphemism for cultural Marxism.

Recently, the courageous governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, swam against the politically correct stream, obeyed state law, and issued a proclamation calling for a day of observance in honor of Nathan Bedford Forrest as well as commemorating Confederate Decoration Day and Robert E. Lee Day. Governor Lee also stated that he would not be a party to “whitewashing history” by ripping down the bust of Forrest in the Tennessee State Capitol.

For his refusal to join this intellectual lynch mob, Governor Lee was immediately attacked by the usual anti-Southern bigots and Socialist/Democrat/Leftist house organs, such as the Washington Compost and the New York Slimes.[1] This was predictable. What was unusual and absurd about this particular assault on the memory of a brave man is a tweet by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who mounted his rhetorical Mount Siani and declared: “This is wrong!”

But was it, Senator? And what do you know about it, anyway?

First of all, I suppose I should confess that I like Ted Cruz politically, generally speaking. We have not yet met but do have some mutual acquaintances, including Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame. Phil is my preacher at the University Church of Christ in Monroe, Louisiana, and he spoke for Mr. Cruz in Iowa. During the 2016 primaries, I was torn between voting for Cruz, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump. I was sorry when he and Donald Trump tore into each other, and I think the future president was wrong to attack Cruz’s father. I am also sorry that the senator from Texas cannot see that, in attacking the memory of Bedford Forrest, Senator Cruz is unwittingly making himself a “useful idiot” (to borrow a phrase from Lenin) for the Left, which has gone completely over the edge and is working night and day to turn this country into Venezuela.

But back to my original question: what do you know about it anyway, Senator Cruz?

It is also appalling to me when a conservative such as Glenn Beck or Ted Cruz—who would never allow the politically correct to deceive them on contemporary issues—routinely allow themselves to be hoodwinked on historical topics. Nathan Bedford Forrest is a prime example.

Forrest joined the Klan in 1866. If the Klan were the same organization then as it is today, Mr. Cruz would be correct in condemning it. But was it? To determine if Cruz’s denunciation of Forrest is valid, we must ask ourselves some questions. First, was the Klan of that day the same as the Klan of today? Second, what were the circumstances that induced Forrest to join that organization? Thirdly, when it became something he did not intend, what did he do?

What Mr. Cruz and his ilk too often fail to take into account is that organizations change over time. The year 1865 was pivotal in American history. It was the year the Civil War ended, the Confederacy died, the Ku Klux Klan was born, and the Democratic Party transitioned from the party of slavery to the party of white supremacy. Later, it became the party of separate but equal (with white people being more equal) and the party of segregation after that. Today, it is transforming itself again—into God knows what. It is not the same as it was in 1865.

Neither is the Klan. It was born in the law offices of Judge Thomas Jones in Pulaski, Tennessee. Half its original members were attorneys. Its initial standards were high. One had to be in the Confederate Army at the time of the surrender or in a Union prisoner-of-war camp to be eligible for membership. Its original mission statement called for it to be “an instrument of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy and patriotism” which was to “relieve and assist the injured, oppressed, suffering, and unfortunate, especially widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers.” (This the government in Washington would not do. They did, however, have a 47% tax on cotton, which they used to subsidize Northern railroads and other large corporations. On the other hand, they did provide pensions to Northern widows and orphans at the expense of Southern widows and orphans.) One had to apply for membership. As far as we can tell (written records are absent), its eighth member was John C. Brown, former Confederate brigadier general and, within eight years, governor of Tennessee. Also a lawyer.

The Klan started out as a social club, but that soon changed. It grew like wildfire and morphed into something else altogether.

The loss of the war and the death of the Confederacy were not isolated events. They also signaled the breakdown of the Southern economy and the collapse of law and order in many localities. Gangs of criminals and individual thugs had a field day throughout the South. Union deserters, Southern outlaws, recently freed slaves who did not know how to handle their freedom, and professional criminals ran amuck. Arson, robbery, rape, and murder were the order of the day. At the same time, Carpetbaggers and collaborators pillaged the public treasuries, increased taxes 300% to 400%, ran up huge public debts, pocketed the proceeds, stole land and farms, and enriched themselves at the expense of a helpless and impoverished people.

African Americans suffered most of all. Much of the South’s land was ruined during the conflict, and 1867 was a year of famine. The new Northern rulers had no interest in the Southern people, black or white. Tens of thousands of Negroes literally starved to death.[2] No effort was made on the part of the new rulers to even keep records of how many died. They were too busy stealing.

Public health was almost completely ignored. Smallpox epidemics periodically raged throughout the South in the 1862 through 1868 period. The weakened and malnourished black folks were especially susceptible, often dying at rates of three or four times higher than Southern whites, who were themselves not well nourished. Black children were particularly hard hit. In one six-month period in 1865, 30,000 African Americans died in North Carolina and South Carolina alone. The epidemic lasted six years.[3]

Not content with theft and neglect, a significant minority of Northern politicians openly advocated a second Civil War. They included Thaddeus Stevens, the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives; General Benjamin F. “Spoons” Butler; Governor Richard Yates of Illinois; carpetbagger Governor Andrew J. Hamilton of Texas; and Senator Jim Lane of Kansas, among others. U.S. Congressman William Anderson Pile advocated “death to all supporters of the South, past or present.”[4] General William T. Sherman wanted Southerners demoted to “demizens”: people who were given certain rights (such as the right to pay taxes) but not others (such as the right to vote).

Of particular interest to Forrest was carpetbagger Governor William G. “Parson” Brownlow of Tennessee. A former Methodist preacher, slave owner, and newspaper editor, he believed slavery was “ordained by God.” He nevertheless supported the Union and a second Civil War. “I am one of those who believed that the war ended too soon,” he declared, and “the loyal masses” should not “leave one Rebel fence rail, outhouse, one dwelling, in the seceded states. As for the Rebel population, let them be exterminated.”

This kind of wild talk sounds incredible today, but people like Nathan Bedford Forrest had no choice but to take it seriously—especially in Tennessee.

The Southerners after the war were in the same position as the French Resistance was in World War II. The government were it was functioning at all was often in the hands of criminals, and they felt compelled to take the law into their own hands. There is a point between civilization and anarchy in which vigilantism is an acceptable, temporary measure, until law and order can be restored. Into that breach stepped Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was receiving a hundred letters a day from his former soldiers, relating eye-witness accounts of outrage and lawlessness. He was first told about the Klan by George Washington Gordon, a former Confederate general and war hero. Forrest applied for membership through John W. Morton, his former chief of artillery who celebrated his 21st birthday commanding a battalion of horse artillery in the Battle of Chickamauga.[5] In the spring of 1866, the leaders of the KKK met in the Maxwell House in Nashville, Tennessee, and created the position of “Grand Wizard,” a tribute to Forrest’s wartime nickname, “Wizard of the Saddle,” and gave it to the general.

The Klan had already transformed into a hybrid neighborhood protection/vigilante organization which met violence with violence and terror with terror. It was definitely a mixed bag. Under Forrest, it became, as he said, “a protective political military organization,” i.e., a paramilitary force, a counterbalance to Brownlow’s Loyal Legion. Governor Brownlow sought to pass a law making it legal for anyone to shoot a former Confederate on sight. If that law passed, Forrest declared, there would be a second war, although he did not want it, but he would look upon the activation of Brownlow’s militia as a declaration of war. He also declared that he could raise 40,000 Klansmen in Tennessee and 550,000 throughout the South in five days. No one wanted to fight a half a million man cavalry army under Nathan Bedford Forrest, especially Brownlow and his cronies. The militia was not activated. A second war was avoided.

In February 1869, Brownlow resigned as governor. His successor sought to work with the Democrats, was conciliatory to his former enemies, and restored voting rights to Southern veterans and Confederate sympathizers. Forrest, meanwhile, became concerned that white trash elements were taking over large parts of the organization and were using it for their own nefarious and hateful purposes. As a result, Nathan Bedford Forrest issued General Order Number One, disbanding the Ku Klux Klan. “There was no further need for it,” Forrest commented later, “. . . the country was safe.”

Certain branches of the KKK lived on after Forrest disbanded it, under such names as the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood, the White League, and the Knights of the White Camelia, and a few Ku Klux dens lingered on until 1877 and even after, but the original Ku Klux Klan effectively ceased to exist and faded into history. As Captain John Calhoun Lester, one of the original founders, wrote later: “There never was, before or since, a period of our history when such an order could have lived. May there never be again!”[6] Let us pray that the captain was right.

In 1915, Hollywood produced an infamous film, “Birth of a Nation.” Its contents were so incendiary that it led to several race riots, propelled the NAACP into national prominence, and led to the birth of a second Ku Klux Klan.[7] This racist organization became the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party and was (and is) largely a terrorist organization. Had it not pirated the name of the original KKK, we might look upon the original Klan much differently than we do. But it did. To associate Nathan Bedford Forrest’s name with the depredations of this second incarnation of the Klan of the 20th and 21st centuries is wrong, but many people do, even though it was created almost four decades after his death, and he clearly had nothing to do with it.

General Forrest’s racial views continued to evolve over time. He addressed an early civil rights organization, was denounced by a Freedman’s Bureau officer as being “too liberal” to the African Americans he employed, provoked the outrage of several editors by kissing a young black lady on the cheek after she presented him with a bouquet of flowers, was denounced by the (Confederate) Cavalry Survivors Association for his positive attitude toward African Americans, hired them in responsible positions in his railroad (i.e., as foremen, conductors, architects, and engineers), and was one of two former Confederate generals I know of who advocated allowing African-Americans to vote.[8] I bet you didn’t know that, Senator Cruz. When Forrest died in 1877, twenty thousand people lined the street for two miles with their hats off, respectfully mourning him as his hearse slowly passed by. These included more than 3,000 black mourners. One source placed this number at 6,000.

I would go on with your history lesson, Mr. Cruz, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. I would, however, suggest that you refrain from attacking heroes from other states until you learn more about Southern history. Texas, after all, had more than its share of slaveholding heroes. William B. Travis and Jim Bowie (my personal favorite), the commanders of the Alamo, leap to mind. Already, there are those agents of political correctness who would hand the Alamo over to the United Nations as a World Heritage Site, so they can “contextualize” it. Eventually—should they succeed—they will want to tear it down, on the grounds that it represents white supremacy, oppression of a minority group, or some other pretext. And don’t think for one moment they wouldn’t try it. The Left wants no heroes to exist except its own.

[1] Also known as the Washington Post and the New York Times.

[2] Exact numbers do not exist. The Carpetbaggers and Union Army were so indifferent to the fate of the black people they did not bother to keep records. Estimates as to the exact number who died vary between 80,000 and 1,000,000. Most of them were African American. See Jim Downs, Sick From Freedom: African-American Death and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction. Oxford: 2012, p. 8ff.

[3] Donald W. Livingston, “Confederate Emancipation Without War,” in Frank B. Powell, ed., To Live and Die in Dixie (Columbia, Tennessee: 2004), p. 462.

[4] Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: 1964), p. 372. Piles was a former Union general.

[5] Morton was later secretary of agriculture and secretary of state of Tennessee.

[6] John Calhoun Lester and Rev. D. L. Wilson, The Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth and Disbandment (New York: 1905), p. 132.

[7] See Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: 2017) and William Rawlings, The Second Coming of the Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (Macon, Georgia: 2017).

[8] The other one was P. G. T. Beauregard.

About Samuel W. Mitcham

Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., received his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. A retired professor of geography and military history, he is the author of 40 books on World War II and the War for Southern Independence, including Bust Hell Wide Open: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest. His next books, It Wasn’t About Slavery: The Great Lie of the Civil War, will be released by Regnery History in January 2020, and The Greatest Lynching, to be released by Shotwell Publishing.

The Opening Wedge of Revolution

Bernhard Thuersam (bernhard1848@gmail.com)

Feeling that the South had been “engulfed by the great maelstrom of bourgeois liberalism and capitalism, Frederick A. Porcher (1809-1888) and other Charlestonian began rebuilding their sense of community and political order.  An 1828 Yale graduate, he was a prewar planter who failed in that business and went to teaching at the College of Charleston. He served several terms in the South Carolina Legislature and counted among his many friends author William Gilmore Simms.

www.Circa1865.org  The Great American Political Divide


The Opening Wedge of Revolution

“Following the Civil War, Frederick Porcher continued to teach in Charleston, where it seemed that the Old South, his world, was unmistakably gone . . . “To the old Carolinian, everything was strange — he looked bewildered around him and about him, he felt he had become a stranger, that he had no home.”

Porcher’s fellow conservatives countered nascent black political organization with meetings and announcements of their own. A November 1867 convention of conservatives in Charleston outlined the postwar conservative beliefs. Local rule through States’ rights . . . and the fear of democracy all survived the war. The convention also gave hints of a developing industrial-age conservatism cherishing property rights and accepting as inevitable the labor/capital antagonism of a capitalist economy.

In its postwar defense of the States’ rights philosophy, the conservative convention granted that the emergency of war necessitated that the federal government reign “supreme.” But, as the Charleston Daily Courier reported, “Is this law, or is this usurpation? Is this good government, or is it revolution?”

A strong central government during a crisis of war was one thing. Conservatives asked if South Carolinians were now willing to endorse “so monstrous a proposition into our government polity.” Calhoun could not have stated any clearer the States’ rights view that conservative South Carolinians still held in 1867: To admit as a fact, as has been assumed to be the result of the war, that the Government of the United States is supreme, and that the States have no rights; or, if they have rights, that they are subordinate to the will of a majority having control of the Government, is to admit the abrogation of the Constitution, and to ignore the facts of history.”

Centralization of political power at the national level, especially with the inclusion of black voters, was the opening wedge leading to other revolutions. The Reconstruction Acts, conservatives argued, placed the power to tax “in the hands of those who own no property,” while it took power away from “those who hold the property and must pay the taxes.” To them, this was not just a bad idea, but a dangerous one.

Porcher used his history lectures to address the new political power of the black community. “A great experiment,” Porcher observed, “is now making in this country to commit the highest responsibilities of civilization to a race which in its native soil has never shown any capacity for improvement. You who hear me will be able to witness the result.”

[He] guided his young students with the strong suggestion that it too, would fail: “Civilization is an Innate Faculty, not an acquired Habit. It is a gift of God, not the result of human teaching.”

(In The Great Maelstrom: Conservatives in Post-Civil War South Carolina, Charles J. Holden, University of South Carolina Press, 2002, excerpts pp. 30-37)

Immaculate Patriots and Crude Partisans

Bernhard Thuersam (bernhard1848@gmail.com)

The infamous Union League movement originated in the secret fraternities of mid-1850s anti-immigrant Know Nothing lodges, later becoming a political party and which merged with the Republicans. New members had to be voters and recite a pledge of allegiance in elaborate rituals of burning incense, US flags and the Bible. Each swore to “sustain the existing [Republican] administration in putting down the enemies of the government and to thwart the designs of “traitors and dis-loyalists.”

Prior to Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, the Republican party disguised itself as a “Union” party to paint Democratic opposition with disloyalty. The Union League later moved into the occupied and conquered South to organize freedmen into the League and Republican party.  That freedmen vote enabled Grant’s slim victory over Democrat Horatio Seymour in 1868, and helped maintain Republican political hegemony.

www.Circa1865.org  The Great American Political Divide


Immaculate Patriots and Crude Partisans

“The first Union League was founded in Pekin, Illinois by a Republican Party activist, George F. Harlow. As war weariness deepened, and the restraint that had held back dissenters in the early months of the war fell away, loyal Republicans became alarmed by the resurgence in support for the Democratic Party.

To combat this, they formed a secret society “whereby true Union men could be known and depended on in an emergency.” The new movement gained the support of Illinois Governor Richard Yates . . . Traveling agents administered the league’s oath to local political leaders and provided the new councils with league chapters. By the end of 1864 the Leagues claimed more than a million members.

In the face of what many [Lincoln] administration supporters saw as organized disloyalty from the Democratic Party and its allies, the leagues put into practice the exhortation from John Forney’s Philadelphia Press. In May 1863, the Press urged that the North unite “by any means” and called on Unionists to “silence any tongue that does not speak with respect of the cause and the flag.” The League’s existed, they proclaimed, “to bind together all Loyal men, of all trades and professions, in a common union to maintain the power, glory and integrity of the Nation.”

A nonpartisan style colored every utterance of these organizations . . . [pledging] that their only object is to unite to support the National Government in its efforts to suppress the rebellion now being waged against its authority by a portion of the people of the Union, and not to create a political party.

Union Leagues institutionalized the denial of legitimate partisanship by conflating political opposition to the Union Party with disloyalty to the United States. [The] Leagues quickly established themselves as a powerful political force [to advance] a radical agenda. “The triumph of the Union League is complete,” concluded an editorial in the Chicago Tribune after the Union League of America persuaded Lincoln to remove a conservative general, John M. Schofield, from command of the western Department.

The League’s construction of a patriotic national community – the claim to be the “real” nation – alienated their opponents as surely as it enthused their supporters. Samuel J. Tilden, a wealthy New York railroad lawyer . . . complained to a correspondent in June 1863 that the Union League’s were creating a climate in which it was impossible for normal political campaigns to take place.

Another Democrat, David Turnure, also resented the administration’s demand that he should give “unhesitating fealty to and unquestioning endorsement of all their acts.” To him, the “immaculate patriots” who carped about loyalty were simply crude partisans, who had “abolitionized” the government and were now subverting the Constitution “under the sacred mantle of patriotism.”

Even stronger words came from Maryland Democrat, Severn Teackle Wallis . . . [who wrote to Republican] Senator John Sherman in early 1863. “You have . . . borrowed from the vocabulary of despotism the name “disloyalty,” he thundered. Such a word was “not known to free institutions” but had been created by Unionists to describe the activities of those who “question . . . the wisdom . . . or, if need be, resist the corruption and usurpation of those who temporarily hold and prostitute power.”

(No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North, Adam I. P. Smith, Oxford University Press, 2006, excerpts pp. 68-71)

My Lifetime As A Proud Southerner

I first became interested in Confederate history from listening to a Great-Aunt, Pearl Whitley & Great Uncle, Earnest Whitley who were brother & sister still living on the old Whitley family home place in Cool Springs Alabama, near Ashville tell of our ancestors in the 7th Georgia Infantry Regiment Company H (The Roswell Guards)

Of course, there were other Whitley family members who were in other Confederate Units raised in the Atlanta area. Plus, my Price Family ancestors in the Pinson, Clay/Chalkville area of what is now Eastern Jefferson County Alabama had served in the Confederate Army. This just raised more interest on the subject.

The book that really sparked my interest was my 4th grade history book, “The History of Alabama” in the early 1960`s while attending Springville Elementary School. It set me on fire on the subject of Confederate history for most of the remaining years of my life until the present. I have since that time read, learned & devoured everything I could about Southern History, especially Confederate history.

I first learned of the Sons of Confederate Veterans from an old set of 1958 World Book Encyclopedias my parents had bought when I was a young child. In the very early 1980s I sent a letter to Mississippi to the gentleman who was still keeping the S.C.V. embers alive asking to join.

I was first assigned to a camp in Mobile, Al. I think. the Admirable Raphael Sims Camp. After about a year with them I asked to be transferred to a camp closer to home so I could attend a meeting every once in a while. I was then reassigned to the Gen. Forest Camp in Homewood, Al. and made a few meetings at their old library building when I could.

In the early 1980s one of my ex-high school teachers, Stanley Horn had placed an ad in our local St. Clair county newspapers that he was looking for people interested in starting a Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp in Ashville, Al. I contacted him and set about recruiting members as having a camp in my own backyard meant I could attend most meetings.

At that time it took 10 members to create a camp and 5 camps to have an Alabama State Division of S.C.V. I think our St. Clair Camp #308 was either the 4th or 5th camp in the state, so our camp helped reactivate the Alabama Division. Speaking of reactivations, St. Clair Camp #308 after its reactivation carries the name the original Confederate veterans gave it. Our camp met for a while in the Old Ashville City Hall, then for a time at the St. Clair County Board of Education Building, thanks to Dr. Stanley Horn.

In the mid-1980s my wife, Sue McKay Price use to carry orders of food to Miss Sally V. Inzer who still lived in what today is known as the Inzer Museum. She was the Granddaughter of Col. John W. Inzer Commander of the 58th Ala. Inf. Regt. One day she mentioned to my wife that she would like to see the home become a Confederate Museum in honor to her Grandfather.

I relayed this request to Dr. Stanley Horn, our first camp commander and Gene House who became our second camp commander. In 1986 Sally V. Inzer’s brother Jack Inzer and the Inzer Family heirs deeded the historical Antebellum home to St. Clair Camp #308 S.C.V.

There have been many people since 1986 who have worked, raised money and saw this beautiful old home restored & used as a Confederate Museum. It’s come a long way since the early days when we were working on its infrastructure.

We replaced the roof, the front porch, the base of one of the columns, replaced the floor in the building next to the outside kitchen, kept the old house painted and numerous other odds and ends that had fallen into disrepair. Everyone involved at the start, middle and end of this project have created a historical gem that should be treasured for generations to come.

Myself and my family were also Confederate re-enactors, we would not portray Union. Of course, there are fewer re-enactors today so if you want a skirmish or battle that looks historically realistic it’s best if you portray both sides when called on to do so.

Through the 1980s-90s we belonged to the 28th Ala. Inf. Regt, 10th Ala. Inf. Regt, 58th Ala. Inf. Regt, and the 30th Ala. Inf. Reg. which I commanded. I was the person instrumental in bringing the first Civil War Re-enactment to Ashville in 1991 and was over all the committees involved.

I am extremely proud of all my accomplishments continuing and helping to save our Southern history, heritage, culture & symbols of it, even my many Op-Ed`s in defense of it. From being a Charter Member of St. Clair Camp #308 to the Sgt-at-Arms and 1st Lt. in our S.C.V. Camp to being a Confederate Re-enactor.

You will always find me somewhere in this fight and struggle, sometimes seen, other times unseen, but I`ll be in it somewhere until the end doing what I can.

Billy E. Price

Ashville Alabama   

cscitizen@windstream.net

WAR FOR SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 1861-1865 aka CIVIL WAR

By James King

There were many parallels between the American Revolution for American Independence and the War for Southern Independence. After many years of economic abuse by England the 13 American colonies seceded from England and fought a war 1775-1783 to achieve Independence and form a new nation The United States of America. From the earliest colonial days until 1861 major political, economic and cultural differences existed between the Northern New England colonies and the Southern colonies. By 1860 immigration in the north had increased the population to approximately 3 times that of the Southern states. After many years of political, economic and criminal abuse by the Northern states the Southern states made a decision to secede from the Union and form a new nation, The Confederate States of America. It is a well-established fact that the winner of a war writes the history. The Northern and Southern perspectives concerning the causes and reasons for the war commonly known as the Civil War differ greatly. The war has been primarily presented as a war to defend and maintain slavery with some emphasis on the issue of States Rights. There was only one cause of the war. The South was invaded and responded to Northern aggression. But there were 10 causes for Southern secession. One of the primary reasons was the tariff tax issue. After the war of 1812 Southerners had agreed to a 10% tariff to stimulate American industrial production. By 1820 the tariff became a greed factor for the North which is today referred to as corporate welfare. South Carolina almost seceded from the Union 1828-1832 due to the tariff rate being raised to 40% which was known in the Southern states as “The Tariff of Abomination”. Lincoln had promised the Northern industrialists that he would raise the tariff if elected and the upcoming Morrill Tariff Tax was to be 47%-51%. The South was being treated as an agricultural colony and bled dry and forced to pay 75% to 85% of the money to operate the Federal government by this unfair sectional tariff. The excessive tariff tax was almost as abject as that of the Roman provinces under their Proconsuls nearly 2000 years ago except that New England added hypocrisy to robbery. The war for Southern Independence was a cultural war. Most Southerners were descendants of Celtic immigrants from western England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. New Englanders were primarily of Anglo-Saxon and Viking decent from eastern big city England and major cultural differences existed. States’ Rights vs. Centralization was another major issue. America was formed as a Constitutional Federal Republic, but Northerners wanted to change American Government to a Socialist Democracy. In 1848 in Europe the Socialist Revolution led by Karl Marx failed. In 1849 and 1850 he sent about 2,000 European Socialists, primarily Germans, to New York City. These Socialists were highly educated and intelligent. They joined with American Socialists led by Horace Greeley and Charles Anderson Dana. Dana had been to Europe before the war and had met Karl Marx. Abraham Lincoln had been a pen pal to Karl Marx since the late 1840’s. The European and American Socialists formed the Republican Party in 1854 which was very similar to the modern Socialist Atheist Democratic Party. Within 6 years they had figured out how to start a war and blame it on the south. The Ft. Sumter incident was a set up as proven by correspondence between Lincoln and Admiral Gustavus Fox. Within several years after Southern defeat in 1865 America was changed to a Socialist Democracy in which virtually all powers of sovereignty were removed from the states and power concentrated in Washington DC. The 14th Amendment removed most of the States Rights from the states and the people as recognized in the 9th and 10th Amendments. Major religious differences existed between the North and the South. The South was primarily Orthodox Christian whereas many Northerners were Atheist, Unitarians, Transcendentalists, Secular Humanists, and various other religious cults and isms. Between the early 1800’s and 1860 numerous groups of Northerners formed Socialist groups which considered women and children community property and advocated free love. Southerners were concerned about what type of country America would become if these people had their way. Control of Western territories was another major issue. New England formed Immigrant Aid Societies and paid for Northern people who had political ties to New England to move to Kansas and Nebraska. The South was made to feel unwelcome in these new territories and New England sent psychopath John Brown to Kansas where he murdered Southerners who were not even slave owners. The Civil War began in 1854 in Kansas not on April 12, 1861 at Ft. Sumter SC. The great English writer Charles Dickens summed up the situation in one sentence “The Northern onslaught against Southern slavery is a specious piece of humbug designed to mask their desire for the economic control of the Southern states”. New England wanted the South’s resources, cotton, land, timber, and coal, for pennies on the dollar and had for many years slandered and condemned the South in Northern newspapers which had created sectional animosity. Southerners were tired of reading about what bad and evil people they were because their neighbors owned a few slaves. Hypocritical New Englanders were primarily responsible for the development of slavery in America and the port cities of New England had grown wealthy due to the slave trade but after it became unprofitable they accused Southerners of grave moral sin while the money they made from the slave trade was still in their pocket. Even though the economic infrastructure of the port cities of New England had been based on the slave trade, small groups of extreme radicals and fanatics in New England demanded instant abolition of slaves as opposed to gradual emancipation which was already occurring in the South. 68 Out of 117 Republicans signed a resolution advocating terrorism against the South with plans to create a massive slave rebellion which would have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Southern men, women and children as had occurred in Haiti (Saint Dominigue) between 1791 and 1803. After 7 of the lower Southern states seceded from the Union Lincoln caused the secession of the upper Southern states by calling for 75,000 volunteers to put down what he called a rebellion. Southern secession was legal by the 10th Amendment and in 1865 and 1867 U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon Chase stated that secession was not rebellion and if any former members of the Confederate governmental or military were brought to trial what the North had won on the battlefield would be lost in a court of law. Jefferson Davis was released from prison and no former confederates were ever tried for treason.

Contact James W. King at jkingantiquearms@bellsouth.net for an unedited copy of my article “The 10 Causes of Southern Secession” and other articles.