In Defense of Lee And Jackson

[sevenator]

The Civil War was fought over states' rights.

As stated, the main issue at hand was whether or not one of those states' rights was the right to maintain the legality of slavery.

The over-arching reason that slavery was a big deal in the South was that it was an agrarian economy and, as it was prior to the industrial revolution, slave labor made the economy go.

There WERE slaves in the North, and Lincoln didn't free them with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. They weren't legally freed until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on December 6, 1865. Many people don't know this (or don't care).

But there are other factors at work when looking at just the war itself and not the political causes and fallout. I personally have 11 direct-line ancestors that fought in the armies of the Confederate States, one of whom was killed in the Battle of Arkansas Post. None of them were slaveholders.

I could go on, but I won't. Wouldn't really matter to anyone but me, anyway. Suffice it to say, we should have just picked our own cotton.

As for Jackson and Lee, they fought for their homes. As generals, Jackson and Lee were both capable and respected leaders. Sherman, on the other hand, was a terrorist. But I digress...Lee wrote a now somewhat famous letter to his daughter in which he stated (paraphrasing) that he felt slavery would have come to an end with or without the war having taken place, as good Christians would come to see the practice as unacceptable.

Meh...tired of typing....check out Ken Burns' "The Civil War". It's probably on Netflix. If not, it can be found.

[Silver]

The Civil War was fought over states' rights.

But there are other factors at work when looking at just the war itself and not the political causes and fallout. I personally have 11 direct-line ancestors that fought in the armies of the Confederate States, one of whom was killed in the Battle of Arkansas Post. None of them were slaveholders.

I could go on, but I won't. Wouldn't really matter to anyone but me, anyway. Suffice it to say, we should have just picked our own cotton.

It matters to me. My great, great-grandfather, Lewis Miles Corder, died at the Battle of Jenkins Ferry, 30Apr1864, trying to repel Yankees like George. He was a poor dirt-scratch farmer and didn't own slaves either.

[harakim]

harakim,

Perhaps we are more on the same page than we think. In a way, I could consider slavery the primary reason.

So not only has the lord specifically, and on numerous occasions including the New Testament said slavery was a fine institution or even a blessing, he has never to my knowledge officially declared of the kind on climate change.

No, No, NO please no!

Silver and I may disagree about the proximate causes of the Civil War. We may or may not agree about how noble Lincoln was, but I am sure that he doesn't think that slavery was a fine institution or a blessing. I believe his arguments more go along the line that slavery would have disappeared wirthout the war, rather than that it was a noble or fine institution.

For that reason, I can spiritedly disagree with him; agree with a lot of his ideas related to fiat currency and the corruption of the government and the fed, shake hands and move on.

However, what you stated is so morally repugnant that I must try and not throw up, and respectfully state that we are NOT even close to being on the same page and I find your point of view disgusting.

It is people like you who give ammunition to the racists multiculturalists to hate white people. And if everybody were like you they might be right.



Regards,

George Clay

I am not claiming that Silver or I thinks that slavery was a fine institution or a blessing, because we don't. I am saying that Brigham Young, who you believe was a prophet of God, thought that slavery was a fine institution AND a blessing. I do not agree with any of the quotes that I copied.

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback in history when it's now obvious that slavery is wrong, but when it's so widespread even the prophet believes wholeheartedly in slavery, then it is not as black and white. You cannot assume the southerners knew it was a bad thing. So you can't assume they were malicious and that malice is the primary cause for the civil war.

I'm not sure if you missed that or there is some other reason you think I espouse Brigham Young's views on slavery.

[gclayjr]

harakim,

So not only has the lord specifically, and on numerous occasions including the New Testament said slavery was a fine institution or even a blessing, he has never to my knowledge officially declared of the kind on climate change.

Show me where in the new testament that the Lord specifically and on numerous occasions stated that Slavery was a Fine institution! Stating that one who is a slave should submit, serve their master, and not revolt doesn't state that it is a fine institution.

However D&C 101:79 says:

79 Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.

I do agree that one should not judge people of the 19th Century based upon accepted culture and standards of the 21st century. However, to try and pretend that the Civil war just about States rights, and not accept that the primary right that the southern states wanted to exercise was the right to legalize and permanently enshrine Slavery, is either complete ignorance or deceptive sleight of hand to whitewash history.

By the way, another fantasy of modern southern apologists is that Slavery would have been abolished without the war. However, this is mere speculation that ignores 2 big problems

1) Examples are made of the many Western countries in Europe like Great Britain, France etc. However, none of these countries were primarily agriculture economies that were completely supported by slavery. Also, had the South been allowed to just leave, the Confederacy would have been even more dependent upon slavery, than a united United States, where the portion of the economy driven by slavery was much smaller.

2) There doesn't seem to be any consideration for the misery of those who would remain in bondage for the years, decades, or longer that would pass before such enlightenment actually came to be and drove the South to outlaw slavery.


Regards,

George Clay

[David13]

harakim,

So not only has the lord specifically, and on numerous occasions including the New Testament said slavery was a fine institution or even a blessing, he has never to my knowledge officially declared of the kind on climate change.

Show me where in the new testament that the Lord specifically and on numerous occasions stated that Slavery was a Fine institution! Stating that one who is a slave should submit, serve their master, and not revolt doesn't state that it is a fine institution.

However D&C 101:79 says:

79 Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.

I do agree that one should not judge people of the 19th Century based upon accepted culture and standards of the 21st century. However, to try and pretend that the Civil war just about States rights, and not accept that the primary right that the southern states wanted to exercise was the right to legalize and permanently enshrine Slavery, is either complete ignorance or deceptive sleight of hand to whitewash history.

By the way, another fantasy of modern southern apologists is that Slavery would have been abolished without the war. However, this is mere speculation that ignores 2 big problems

1) Examples are made of the many Western countries in Europe like Great Britain, France etc. However, none of these countries were primarily agriculture economies that were completely supported by slavery. Also, had the South been allowed to just leave, the Confederacy would have been even more dependent upon slavery, than a united United States, where the portion of the economy driven by slavery was much smaller.

2) There doesn't seem to be any consideration for the misery of those who would remain in bondage for the years, decades, or longer that would pass before such enlightenment actually came to be and drove the South to outlaw slavery.


Regards,

George Clay

You still don't get it.
It's simple. States rights includes slavery.
But slavery alone doesn't account for all the other factors, for instance, states rights.
It's like you look thru' the wrong end of the microscope.
dc

[Silver]

George doesn't want to get it. If George got tired of hanging out with us here but we forced him to remain against his will he would call foul. The South wanted to leave the Union of what was a confederation of States prior to the War of Northern Aggression. The North decided they'd rather kill a bunch of us than allow us to leave. The South equals us who are trying to explain a principle to George while George represents, in so many ways, the North. That truth is a bitter pill for George to swallow, so he doesn't.

[Ezra]

George doesn't want to get it. If George got tired of hanging out with us here but we forced him to remain against his will he would call foul. The South wanted to leave the Union of what was a confederation of States prior to the War of Northern Aggression. The North decided they'd rather kill a bunch of us than allow us to leave. The South equals us who are trying to explain a principle to George while George represents, in so many ways, the North. That truth is a bitter pill for George to swallow, so he doesn't.

It's easy being removed from the actions of the north to glorify them. But like you just pointed out in real life it would be a different story. George does love the military and its actions though. It's part of his identity being a veteran.

Hey George

79 Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.

Why is it right that the north can make the south stay in a union they don't want to be in? Isant that bondage?

[David13]

George doesn't want to get it. If George got tired of hanging out with us here but we forced him to remain against his will he would call foul. The South wanted to leave the Union of what was a confederation of States prior to the War of Northern Aggression. The North decided they'd rather kill a bunch of us than allow us to leave. The South equals us who are trying to explain a principle to George while George represents, in so many ways, the North. That truth is a bitter pill for George to swallow, so he doesn't.

Well, it's worse than that. He sees southerners as racist whatevers, and northerners as these moral, oh, we "feel" slavery is so wrong we are willing to go to war to stop it. Aren't we all politically correct and godlike? But it wasn't like that at all. If anything northerners were more prejudiced and hated blacks more than southerners.
There probably weren't more than 2 northerners, soldier from top to bottom, or politician or other who gave a hoot at all about the slaves. Of course on a piece of paper they would have said they were against slavery and thought it was wrong. But that was about the extent of their concern.
In those days you didn't have hours and hours to sit around and play with the internet like George does. You were mostly working, or gathering firewood or coal, or toting water, etc. perhaps 100 or more other tasks that we have no concern for today.
dc

(I guess in those days "they" delivered coal, ... if you had the money to pay for it. Otherwise it was chop your firewood.)

[David13]

George doesn't want to get it. If George got tired of hanging out with us here but we forced him to remain against his will he would call foul. The South wanted to leave the Union of what was a confederation of States prior to the War of Northern Aggression. The North decided they'd rather kill a bunch of us than allow us to leave. The South equals us who are trying to explain a principle to George while George represents, in so many ways, the North. That truth is a bitter pill for George to swallow, so he doesn't.

It's easy being removed from the actions of the north to glorify them. But like you just pointed out in real life it would be a different story. George does love the military and its actions though. It's part of his identity being a veteran.

Well, yes, Ezra, and there George is right, no? In those days the military was all moral and only concerned about going out and righting "social justice" wrongs, weren't they?
They never went out to exterminate the Indians, or anything like that, did they? Not in those days.
dc

[Ezra]

George doesn't want to get it. If George got tired of hanging out with us here but we forced him to remain against his will he would call foul. The South wanted to leave the Union of what was a confederation of States prior to the War of Northern Aggression. The North decided they'd rather kill a bunch of us than allow us to leave. The South equals us who are trying to explain a principle to George while George represents, in so many ways, the North. That truth is a bitter pill for George to swallow, so he doesn't.

Well, it's worse than that. He sees southerners as racist whatevers, and northerners as these moral, oh, we "feel" slavery is so wrong we are willing to go to war to stop it. Aren't we all politically correct and godlike? But it wasn't like that at all. If anything northerners were more prejudiced and hated blacks more than southerners.
There probably weren't more than 2 northerners, soldier from top to bottom, or politician or other who gave a hoot at all about the slaves. Of course on a piece of paper they would have said they were against slavery and thought it was wrong. But that was about the extent of their concern.
In those days you didn't have hours and hours to sit around and play with the internet like George does. You were mostly working, or gathering firewood or coal, or toting water, etc. perhaps 100 or more other tasks that we have no concern for today.
dc

(I guess in those days "they" delivered coal, ... if you had the money to pay for it. Otherwise it was chop your firewood.)

That's why Lincoln had to draft his army. They were not interested in the war.

[Silver]

The South was paying 80% of all the import tariffs. The North liked that situation and, led by Lincoln, decided to kill and maim over a million citizens.

There are several links that did not copy/paste in the article below. Use this to see them: http://www.unz.com/imercer/lincoln-or-l ... itler-say/

Lincoln or Lee? What Would Hitler Say?
ILANA MERCER • AUGUST 28, 2017 • 1,300 WORDS • 130 COMMENTS • REPLY
shutterstock_700459756
“Some crazy person just compared President Abraham Lincoln to Hitler. Yes, this just happened on CNN and Brooke Baldwin’s reaction was perfect.”

So scribbled one Ricky Davila on Social Media (Twitter).

Indeed, an elderly Southern gentleman had ventured that President Lincoln, not General Lee, murdered civilians, a point even a Court historian and a Lincoln idolater like Doris Kearns Goodwin would concede.

While the Argument From Hitler is seldom a good one; Ms. Baldwin’s response was way worse. Were she an honest purveyor of news and knowledge; anchor-activist Baldwin would have sought the facts. Instead, she pulled faces, so the viewer knew she not only looked like an angel, but was on the side of the angels.

Pretty, but not terribly bright, Ms. Baldwin would be shocked to hear that the civics test administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recognizes as correct the following answers to questions about the “Civil War”:

If asked to “Name one problem that led to the Civil War,” you may legitimately reply: “States’ right.”

If asked to “Name the war between the North and the South,” you may call it, “the War between the States.”

Brook would wince, but, again, your reply would be perfectly proper if you chose to name “economic reasons” as one of the problems that led to the Civil War.

Not even the government—the USCIS, in this case—will risk denying that the 1861 Morrill tariff was one cause of the War of Northern Aggression. Lincoln, a protectionist, was expected to enforce the tariff with calamitous consequences to the “the import-dependent South, which was paying [at the time] as much as 80 percent of the tariff.”

It’s fair to assume that the civics naturalization test (I took it) was not written by pro-South historians. Yet even they did not conceal some immutable truths about the War of Northern Aggression—truths banished from Brooke Baldwin’s network.

And from Fox News.

There, you must tolerate progressive Republicans, like John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist, warning about the dangers of identity politics in a majority-white country like the US. (Davidson should try out identity politics in a minority white country like my birthplace, South Africa, where the lives of white farmers are forfeit.) Another Federalist editor seen on Fox is Molly Hemingway. She has vaporized about the merits of “taking down Confederate statues.” If memory serves, that was a position the oracular Chucky Krauthammer was willing to dignify.

Back to the white, marginalized gentleman, mocked on CNN.

In all, Lincoln’s violent, unconstitutional revolution took the lives of 620,000 individuals, including 50,000 Southern civilians, white and black. It maimed thousands, and brought about “the near destruction of 40 percent of the nation’s economy.”

While “in the North a few unfortunate exceptions marred the general wartime boom,” chronicled historian William Miller, “[t]he south as a whole was impoverished. At the end of the war, the boys in blue went home at government expense with about $235 apiece in their pockets.” “some of Lee’s soldiers had to ask for handouts on the road home, with nothing to exchange for bread save the unwelcome news of Appomattox.”

Many years hence, Americans look upon the terrible forces unleashed by Lincoln as cathartic, glorious events. However, “The costs of an action cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to morality,” noted Mises Institute scholar David Gordon, in Secession, State & Liberty.

At his most savage, General William Tecumseh Sherman waged “total war” on civilians and did not conceal his intent to so do. On commencing his march through Georgia, in September 1864, Sherman had vowed “to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin [were] synonymous terms.” To follow was an admission (of sorts) to war crimes: “The amount of plundering, burning, and stealing done by our own army makes me ashamed of it.”

“For Sherman’s troops sacked and razed entire cities and communities“:

“Sherman’s troops exhumed graves to loot the corpses. Sherman’s troops tore up little girls’ dolls and nailed family pets to doors. Sherman’s troops left countless civilians – including the slaves they were supposedly liberating – without food or shelter. Sherman ransomed civilians to armies in the area, threatening to execute them or burn their homes if they did not comply. Sherman had a few contemplative moments and was always careful to maintain plausible deniability, but he knew what was happening and let it happen.“

Here’s the brass tacks (via William Miller, Yankee sympathizer) about Lincoln’s brutality and the extent to which the North upended life in the South:

“Confederate losses were overwhelmingly greater, representing a fifth of the productive part of the Confederacy’s white male population. Thousands more died of exposure, epidemics, and sheer starvation after the war, while many survivors, aside from the sick and the maimed, bore the scars of wartime and most war malnutrition and exhaustion all the rest of their lives.”

The South sustained direct damage as the war was fought, for the most, on its soil.

“Land, buildings, and equipment, especially of slaveless farmers … lay in ruins. Factories … were simply forsaken.” “Poor white and planter were left little better than ex-slave. … [A]n every-day sight [was] that of women and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging for bread from door to door. In the destruction of southern life few suffered more than the ex-slaves.” By estimations cited in Miller’s A New History of the United States, “a third of the Negroes died” in their freemen, informal, “contraband camps,” from “the elements, epidemics, and crime.”

“The weakening of purpose, morale, and aspiration among the survivors was depressing enough to make many envy the dead,” laments White, noting that “rebel losses in youth and talent were much greater than the devastating total of human losses itself.”

“The men in blue,” said one Southerner late in 1865, “destroyed everything which the most infernal Yankee ingenuity could devise means to destroy: hands, hearts, fire, gunpowder, and behind everything the spirit of hell, were the agencies which they used.”

Still, despite having just fought a civil war, there was a greater feeling of fellowshipamong our countrymen then than there is today.


Struck by how achingly sad the South was, a northern observer, on a visit to New Orleans in 1873, cried out with great anguish: “These faces, these faces, one sees them everywhere; on the streets, at the theater, in the salon, in the cars; and pauses for a moment struck with the expression of entire despair.”

Today’s America lectures and hectors the world about invading Arab leaders for “killing their own people.” What did the sixteenth American president do if not kill his own people?

Yes, “Emerson’s ‘best civilization’ was about to be ‘extended over the whole country’ with a vengeance.”

Of this, Adolf Hitler wholly approved.

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin will be shocked—OMG! kind of shocked—to know that in his Mein Kampf, Hitler “expressed both his support for Lincoln’s war and his unwavering opposition to the cause of states’ rights and political decentralization.”

Hitler vowed that in Germany as well, he and his National Socialists “would eliminate states’ rights altogether,” political decentralization being the greatest obstacle for all dictators. (Primary sources: http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/me ... /v2c10.htm & https://archive.org/stream/meinkampf035 ... p_djvu.txt )

In a word, Ms. Baldwin, Hitler liked Abe Lincoln’s impetus and for good reason.

Pull faces all you like. Your guest was right. “Confederate generals, despite hearing news of death and destruction from home, strictly enforced orders protecting the person and property of Northern civilians.”

[Silver]

https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-ma ... is-critics

Monday, 11 September 2017
Robert E. Lee: Answering His Critics
Written by Steve Byas

Robert E. Lee: Answering His Critics
From the print edition of The New American

Confederate General Patrick Cleburne died many years before the rise of the Taliban and their efforts to destroy the monuments and symbols of their enemies. But Cleburne did accurately predict the Taliban-like efforts to alter the history of the Civil War.

“Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by our enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.”

But Cleburne did not realize that the assault would target the common foundations of America, North and South, using the greatest heroes of the late Confederate States of America as a starting point to attack the Founding Fathers — such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

No person identified with the Confederacy has been more admired than General Robert Edward Lee. And yet, there are those Americans who, much in the spirit of the Taliban, have decided that the historical reputation of the late commander of the famed Army of Northern Virginia must be shredded. For example, I recall my recent trip to New Orleans to watch my Oklahoma Sooners play Auburn in the Sugar Bowl. During our vacation, my wife and I took a tour of the Big Easy on a double-decker bus. The tour guide haughtily noted that the Lee monument would soon be taken down, before proceeding to deliver a one-minute rant on the supposed evils of the general, charging that he was just some “slave-owning dude.”

When Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, both men were former slave-owners. Both had freed their slaves, expressing disdain for the institution. Yet, one man, Grant, graces the $50 Federal Reserve note, while the other, Lee, is seen as a fit object of scorn by those who wish to cast him as an evil man. Some go so far as to say that even Lee’s reputation as a great military leader is overrated.

This is despite Lee’s string of victories over numerically superior Union forces. His triumph at Chancellorsville, against a federal force twice his own, has been studied at West Point and other military schools across the nation. In the first Persian Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf used a version of Lee’s battle plan at Chancellorsville to destroy the Iraqi army. Lee was still winning victories over larger armies until the final months of the war.

Some have conceded that Lee was a brilliant military mind, while arguing that his performance at Gettysburg with the so-called Pickett’s Charge was a horrendous mistake. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20, but historian Phillip Thomas Tucker offers a convincing defense of Lee’s performance at Gettysburg in his recent book Pickett’s Charge.

“Endlessly derided by historians,” Tucker wrote, “Lee’s decision to unleash his attack at Gettysburg was his only realistic one because this was the Confederacy’s last chance to win the war in one decisive stroke. Contrary to today’s traditional view that Lee’s decision to attack the Union center-right … was the height of folly, the truth of Pickett’s Charge was altogether different. Quite simply, the attack was Lee’s best opportunity to reap a decisive success after July 2’s tactical opportunities had passed. Based on careful calculation (instead of the stereotypical view of a gambler’s recklessness), Lee correctly targeted the weakest point in Meade’s line, a weak spot distinguished by a copse of trees located at a high point along the open Cemetery Ridge.”

In short, “Lee correctly calculated in striking at exactly the right place and the right time, while utilizing a bold battle plan that was as brilliant as it was innovative.”

Tucker argues that if other military officers in Lee’s army (such as James Longstreet and Jeb Stuart) had performed as they should have, Lee’s army might very well have marched right into Washington, D.C., and dictated peace terms to President Abraham Lincoln.

But of course, the attacks upon Lee’s military leadership more likely are based upon the common misconceptions about the origins and purposes of the war itself. The case against honoring Lee seems to be that the Civil War was fought to abolish slavery, and since Lee was the most important military leader of the side that supposedly was fighting to “keep slavery,” no monuments should remain honoring his memory — even in his beloved Virginia.

Slavery was certainly a source of friction between the Northern and Southern sections of the country, contributing to the decision of seven Southern states — Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas — to secede from the Union. But one must look at other factors, as well, such as the tariff, which tended to help the economy of the industrialized North at the expense of the more agrarian South. In fact, it had almost caused the secession of South Carolina a generation earlier.

And secession was not just a “Southern idea.” Northern states, more than once, had threatened secession earlier in U.S. history, largely due to their resentment at the outsized influence of Virginia in the Union.

After seven states left the Union in late 1860 and early 1861, eight states where slavery remained a legal institution were still in the Union. If the war had really been fought to abolish slavery, one wonders why Lincoln did not call for an invasion of those eight states, as well.

But Lincoln did not call for the abolition of slavery when he asked for 75,000 volunteers to suppress what he termed a “rebellion” in seven states. Even after the war was more than a year old, Lincoln expressly told newspaperman Horace Greeley that he was not waging war to abolish slavery, but rather to save the Union. In the August 22, 1862 letter, Lincoln wrote, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” Enlistments filled the ranks of the Union, made up of men who answered the call to “save the Union.” With the modern insistence that the war was waged to end slavery, this motivation is either largely forgotten, or dismissed as mere sentimentality.

This motivation — to save the Union — was grounded in the very reason the Union was created in 1776. The 13 British colonies united out of military necessity, knowing that the only way they could win their independence was through union. When Daniel Webster proclaimed on the floor of the Senate a generation before the Civil War the famous words, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable,” he did not need to explain himself. It was widely believed that the only way to maintain the experiment in liberty was through a union of like-minded states. Otherwise, foreign powers such as the British or the French could be tempted to pick them off one by one.

Lee opposed secession for his state of Virginia, while also opposing an invasion of the seven states that had chosen to leave the Union. He resigned from the army rather than participate in the forced subjugation of the seven seceded states.

Yet, when Lincoln made his call for volunteers, Virginia and other states were expected to produce the men that would invade the Deep South. This quickly precipitated the secession of four more slave states — Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas — states that had previously rejected secession. They did not secede to protect slavery, but rather because of Lincoln’s call for an invasion of fellow states. Three other states, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri — all slave states, did not secede, but did eventually provide soldiers for both sides. Again, had the war been fought to “end slavery,” one would think that they would have left the Union, as well.

After Virginia’s secession, Lee felt he had no choice but to offer his services to the Confederate States of America, which Virginia had joined. To Lee, this was his duty, and he once said duty was the most sublime word in the English language.

As the war dragged on, with Confederate troops under Lee and other brilliant military minds winning more battles than they lost, it began to look as though the Confederate States of America would truly become an independent nation. By the fall of 1862, France and Great Britain were poised to recognize this as a fact. Lincoln was desperate to “save the Union,” and took a desperate measure. He could have told the British that they should not recognize the independence of the Southern states because they had no right to secede from the Union, but that might have resulted in derision from the British, who could have just said, “Serves you right,” considering what had happened in 1776.

Both the French and the British had abolished slavery a few decades earlier, and undoubtedly Lincoln could have kept both countries from recognizing Southern independence if he would have made the war about slavery, rather than the legality of secession. But had he done so, he might have faced massive desertions from the Union army. More importantly, logic may have then necessitated the invasion of the four Union states where slavery was still legal.

Lincoln’s solution was to “thread the needle.” He issued an executive order, ending slavery in states “still in rebellion” on January 1, 1863, as a “war measure,” but leaving slavery untouched in those states still in the Union. Combined with the Union’s military success at Antietam in September 1862 in blocking General Lee’s invasion of Maryland, the British and the French decided to hold off in recognizing the Confederacy.

The reality is that Lincoln had no constitutional authority to end slavery anywhere, but his Emancipation Proclamation proposed to leave slavery untouched in areas that recognized his presidency, and end it where he had no troops to enforce it. Despite the inherent contradiction of the Emancipation Proclamation, it has led many today to believe that the war was fought to end slavery, and slavery was ended by it.

This assertion that the war was fought to end slavery has also slandered the hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers who fought in the war, with many people today damning their own ancestors as having fought to “keep their slaves.” The reality is that only a tiny minority of Confederate soldiers even owned any slaves, and almost none were fighting to save the ugly institution.

This article appears in the September 18, 2017, issue of The New American. To download the issue and continue reading this story, or to subscribe, click here.

[Silver]

So now Catalonia is pressing for independence from the rest of Spain. The Party of Lincoln is in the White House. Will the globalists in charge attempt to aid the "freedom fighters" in Catalonia, or will the US military throw its might behind the central government and crush "the rebels?"

Is the US seeking to ship weapons to "moderate rebels" in North Korea as in Syria?

http://original.antiwar.com/thomas-harr ... rian-mind/

Catalonia: Spanish Centralism or Self-Defeating Hubris of the Authoritarian Mind?
by Thomas Harrington Posted on September 23, 2017
On Wednesday, the Spanish government conducted a number of armed raids upon government ministries in Barcelona, and effectively suspended the charter of the autonomous government to which they belong in order to interdict the circulation of that most dangerous of social threats: ballot boxes and the little paper slips that citizens place in them on polling day.

Catalonia is, like all societies I know of, a diverse and ideologically divided one. There are many people there that identify overwhelmingly with a Catalan past, the Catalan language and, perhaps most importantly, uniquely Catalan patterns of social organization and civic comportment, ones that place an inordinate – at least in relation to traditional Spanish ones – emphasis on negotiation (as opposed to fiats), commerce as (opposed to strategic intimidation and war-making) rational inquiry and the primacy of personal conscience (opposed to obedience to broadly propagated social and religious orthodoxies).

There are other members of Catalan society, and this fact should not be hidden, who identify primarily as Spaniards, and see in the Spanish past the irreplaceable basis of their own personal and social identity, and who often invoke Spain’s (which is to say Spain’ Catholic and imperialist Castilian heartland) as the root of all that has made Spain great and a player on the world stage for more than 500 years.

Between them are a number of people who feel both deeply Catalan and deeply Spanish and see no reason why they should have to choose between the two.

There is, of course, a well-known mechanism for resolving divided opinions about the future direction of a societies, and for that matter, the future directions of boards of directors and neighborhood associations, just to mention a few.

It’s called taking a vote. And it is this simple democratic mechanism – nothing more and nothing less – that a clear majority of Catalans want to avail themselves of on Sunday October 1st.

There is only one problem. The Spanish central government, led by Mariano Rajoy and his cabinet of ministers drawn largely from what is often called the "sociology of Francoism" is dead set against their doing so.

That people in Scotland addressed the matter of their possible independence this way with the full acceptance of the UK government in 2014 does not move Rajoy and his dour band of señoritos.

Nor does the fact that Canada allowed the people of Quebec to do this very same thing in 1995, or that numerous of the states of the former Communist and nonaligned blocs of Europe, states that now belong to the EU and are recognized by Spain, came into being in through very similar processes.

For most of the years since the ratification of the Spanish post-Franco Constitution in 1978 the matter of independence was a nonstarter for a broad swath of the Catalan political establishment.

What changed things?

What changed things was the election of José María Aznar, the son of an important propagandist for the Francoist regime, as prime minister in 1996 with a clear – albeit at first skillfully camouflaged – program to roll back the regime of timid decentralization that grew out of the aforementioned post-Franco Constitution.

His first steps, taken in the last years of the last century, came in the realm of education and culture where he used government power and a web of think tanks and media outlets sympathetic to it, to rehabilitate the idea, near and dear to his base with its roots in the authoritarian right, of Castile and the Spanish language as the only true motors of Peninsular history.

Integral to these efforts was the drive to ridicule any notion that the other "culture nations" of the state (Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country) might have any reason to think of themselves as integrally constituted social and political entities.

Upon his re-election in 2000, he and his government took the effort to freeze and eventually roll back autonomous rights up another notch by launching a campaign for what they called Constitutional Patriotism. The promoters of this idea held that the Constitution of 1978, a compromise document forged under the duress of Francoism’s still very heavy shadow (and its always present threat of a coup d’etat, something that in fact was attempted in February of 1981) which most of his party and its direct political forebears had in fact opposed, was now to be frozen in in time as the perfect embodiment of Spanish democracy, and just as importantly, as the sole template for managing the coexistence between the country’s differing national and linguistic communities.

That they had cribbed the idea of Constitutional Patriotism from the esteemed German thinker Jürgen Habermas, a man who stands for almost everything they do not in terms of the importance of sincere democratic participation and deliberation, demonstrates the breathtaking cynicism of those pushing this idea.

In 2004, the Socialist and sitting president of Catalonia, Pasqual Maragall – aware that the voters of his Catalan autonomous community had been a key element (along, that is, with the Aznar Government’s blatant lying about the origins of the Madrid train-bombing attacks ) to José Luis Zapatero’s surprising accession to the premiership of Spain in March of 2004 – decided it was a good time to renegotiate the agreement on Catalan autonomy that had been forged in the so-called Spanish transition to Democracy.

The changes sought were relatively minor, revolving around a desire increase local control of public revenues and the right to refer to Catalonia as a cultural nation within in the context of an overarching Spanish democratic state.

Following the dictates of the Constitution of 1978, Maragall forged a new Statute of Autonomy in the Catalan Parliament during 2004-05. Then, and again in keeping with the procedures of the 1978 Constitution for such things, it was sent to Madrid for approval by the Spanish Parliament where, after a good deal of scaling back, it was passed by a majority in May of 2006.

It was then brought back to Catalonia and approved by popular referendum, with a 74% level of approval.

Aware that the new statute would deal an important blow to their plan to reinstitute unquestioned Castilian supremacism within Spain, Aznar’s Party turned to the country’s Constitutional Tribunal, confident that the deeply conservative jurists they had planted there during Aznar’s eight years in power would gut the new law in a way the elected representatives of the Spanish people had refused to do.

During the prolonged judicial deliberations on the new Statute of Autonomy (2006-10), the PP’s spokespeople did not even try to hide their glee at having been able to pack the court with people who they knew would "do the right thing" for them on the new statute.

When, in the summer of 2010, the Constitutional Tribunal did indeed nullify important parts of them 2006 law, including the right of Catalans to legally refer to their collective as a nation, Catalans took to the streets massively in protest.

They believed that the Spanish state could no longer be considered a good faith negotiator. They had played by the rules of the state and its constitution and won new rights, albeit much less than they originally wanted.

However, using its effective control of a deeply and transparently corrupt judiciary, the PP had managed to overturn this impeccably executed constitutional reform.

Since this time, the entire tenor of Catalan politics has changed. Independentism, which until 2010 was still a decidedly minority option in Catalonia, has grown immensely.

In the September 2015 elections a coalition of independentist parties called Together for Yes (Junts pel sí) won a slim majority of seat in the Catalan Parliament. Realizing the thinness of the mandate, they decided that the issue of independence would be best resolved by a popular referendum.

In November of 2014, a similar attempt to hold a referendum had been made. The Spanish government said it would not consider it legitimate and that the government leaders who promoted it would be threatened by legal action.

Despite making sure that the government was not the direct sponsor of the vote (which relied on the efforts of private funds and civic volunteers for its operations) the then Catalan president Artur Mas and two other members of the Catalan government were indicted by the Spanish courts.

The vote went on as a non-binding referendum that was won handily by the independentist option. In March of 2017, Mas and his two cohorts, Joana Ortega and Irene Rigau, were nonetheless sentenced by Madrid to two-year bans on their right to serve as elected officials.

Believing that the pro-referendum majority in the Catalan parliament achieved in September of 2015 might help the political establishment in Madrid reconsider their opposition to the a vote on independence the leaders of Together for Yes (Junts pel sí) have repeatedly stated their desire to have a negotiated referendum. Indeed even today, they continue to say quite clearly that this is their first preference.

The Rajoy government, backed on this particular issue by the so-called "left" Socialist party – PSOE – has said just as repeatedly, and often with great disdain, that there is absolutely nothing to talk about.

And it thus that we have arrived at the reality that we are living today, with the confiscation of ballots and ballots boxes, and the arrest of officials whose only crimes is wanting to allow their constituents to vote on their own future as a people.

All this, with helicopters flying overhead and troop ships arriving to Barcelona’s harbor to house the "loyalist" police brought from other parts of the state to put down a completely peaceful citizen uprising.

Over the last four decades, right wing parties all across the so-called west have, through their mastery electronic media messaging, become quite skilled at hiding their deeply felt and deeply lived authoritarian ideals from the general public.

But as the Greek dramatists showed us more than 2000 years ago, success in high places over time will inevitably lead to hubris.

Here in the US, Trump has heedlessly stripped the last fragments of our brutal establishment’s carefully-constructed mask of civic gentility.

Mariano Rajoy and his pathetic government, along with the now fully corrupted "Socialist" backers (think of a party full Clintons, Pelosis, and Schumers) are now doing the same in Catalonia.

The pace of such anagnoretic events (anagnoresis: the point in the plot especially in a Greek tragedy tragedy at which the protagonist recognizes his, her or some other character’s true identity or discovers the true nature of his or her own situation) is sure to spread and accelerate in the coming months.

As it does, we should thank our friends in Catalonia for their refusal to back down in the face of intimidation, and for believing in the force of peaceful endurance, and its ability force the authoritarians show us who they really are, and have, in fact, always have been.

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-2 ... patriotism

The Danger Of Patriotism

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Sep 23, 2017 10:45 PM
17
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Authored by Bob Livingston via Personal Liberty blog,

My friends, it is frightening how simple we are and how easily we are manipulated simply because we are intellectually lazy.

The U.S. establishment has confused cause and effect by and through a flag-waving mania in America. "Patriotism" throughout history has covered a multitude of mischief. We are seeing it now!

Phony patriotism is strong leverage against a population ignorant of the ways of treason by its own government. I also have no doubt that U.S. history is full of wars "for democracy" killing millions under the propaganda of patriotism with the majority support of the people and the full support of all but a small cadre of "elected representatives" — who are paid by the federal government, incidentally. In addition the millions of foreign dead, these wars have left hundreds of thousands of American military members dead or maimed physically and/or emotionally.

The whole world knows about the U.S. military industrial complex war machine and its pursuit of profits. But Americans tend to turn a blind eye.

When George Washington said "government is force," he meant that government is force against its own people.

Since by definition government is force, then it follows that government will use any ruse imaginable to increase its power. Increased use of government force or power could backfire unless skillfully handled and justified in the public mind. Therefore governments rarely take action unless accompanied by skillful propaganda.

The brouhaha over certain NFL players' refusal to stand for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner has erupted anew. The reaction of most Americans — who claim to believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights — is that this expression cannot be tolerated... it is un-American... it is "unpatriotic."

But is it? Or is it not the most American of all things to resist and rebel against what we perceive as tyranny and its symbols?

If we deny one — whether through intimidation and threats, monetary sanctions or government force — his rights, are we not creating a situation where rights are just privileges that can be denied on a whim? If we support police power to invade our homes and wallets and steal our property just because government has made it "legal," are we not again conceding that rights are merely privileges?

You cannot say, "I believe in the 1st Amendment, but...; I believe in the 2nd Amendment, but...; I believe in the 4th Amendment, but..." There is no but.

And if that government making "legal" the assaults on our liberty is represented by a symbol, shouldn't we conclude that that symbol is a symbol of tyranny? I wrote about the phony patriotism of flag worship when the Colin Kaepernick stir occurred last year.

In light of the new kerfuffle over NFL players refusing to stand, and comments to some of our columns on preserving liberty of late, I felt it was time to run it again. Here it is:

The American golden calf

As a young boy, I enjoyed my family's bantam chickens that laid very small eggs and hatched very small chicks. Theirs was a small and miniature world.

One day one of my bantams started sitting on eggs to hatch its chicks. Something happened to her eggs but she continued to sit, so I decided to put a duck egg under her. Duck eggs are at least three times bigger than bantam eggs and take a few days longer to hatch, but she dutifully sat on the egg several days longer. She hatched the duckling and, as you can imagine, it thought that his world was normal and that the bantam hen was his mother.

The duckling eventually grew into a full sized mallard duck, probably five or six times the size of its bantam mother. The full-grown duck would follow its hen mother around as would normal chicks. It was a funny sight to watch.

But I remember thinking, even as a small boy, that the duck's entire reality was that the bantam hen was his mother and that was the way the world worked. He had no need to consider anything else.

This is the world of the American people today. Their perceptions of reality control them and they who control their perceptions control the American people.

Our perception of America has always been that she is the mother country and ordained by God, good and just and a beacon of freedom. This is hammered into our psyches from our early days.

From pre-school up, we are taught to worship the state. I don't know if it is still done, but in the public (non)education system, for many years, schoolchildren across the South — and elsewhere, I suppose — recited the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. Political rallies and government meetings are still often begun with a recitation of the pledge.

People say it with patriotic fervor, with their hands placed dutifully on their hearts.

Sporting events, political rallies and other public venues are often kicked off with the playing and/or singing of the Star Spangled Banner. Before the song begins, people are instructed to rise, men to remove their hats,and people place their hands over their hearts. They don't realize its value as a propaganda tool.

We have come to equate the flag, the pledge and the national anthem with patriotism, and patriotism with government, country and support for government, support for foreign wars and veterans. Anything less is "un-American."

Beyond its patriot fervor is the almost religious fervor and religious symbolism of the American people's actions when the pledge and the national anthem begin: the ritual standing, removal of hats, placing of hands and rote recitation. In the book of Daniel, Israelites Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) refused to worship the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar contrary to the king's decree. The king ordered them to be thrown into the furnace after it was turned up to seven times its normal temperature.

NFL player Colin Kaepernick created a stir last week when he refused to stand for the national anthem. He was not subsequently ordered into the furnace by the king, but he was burned symbolically by many football fans who torched their jerseys. Americans fumed that he should "leave" America if he can't support the flag and that he had disrespected the flag, the nation and veterans.

What are we saying when we say that someone "disrespected the flag," "disrespected the country," "disrespected the veterans" if he chooses to not stand for the national anthem? What is the flag but a piece of cloth? By the reaction to Kaepernick, it seems it has become more of a golden calf to represent mother country or the god of government.

Our mother has become a witch. Yes, same symbols, same flag, same pledge of allegiance, but a decadent spirit controlling the perceptions of the American people, keeping them on the animal farm (controlling their perceptions) long enough to impoverish and enslave them.

Time and gradualism can change a system all the way from human liberty to slavery (the animal farm) over a few generations without anyone being aware except a very few, those who ask questions.

"America, love it or leave it," is a tired canard. One cannot leave it except at great cost. Recall that in 1860-1861 11 states attempted to "leave it" in order to preserve their liberty and rights as sovereign states. They were branded as "insurrectionists" and attacked by the War Party and the result was their economic and social destruction, subjugation and the deaths of some 850,000 people (the equivalent of about 8.5 million people today). When one talks of secession today he's branded as a racist, crazy or a radical and told secession is "illegal."

One can love his country but hate his government and its actions. I love America but not the people who control America and its government. I love America, but its rulers are alien to individual freedom, its government now anathema to liberty.

If the flag is symbolic of government and that government lies at every turn, enslaves its people, steals from their labor, passes laws that are an execration to their Christian faith, takes from them their liberty, mandates the murder of 1 million babies a year, imports tens of thousands of immigrants to replace American workers and drive down wages, and that makes war on other countries that have not threatened us, why should any acknowledge its presence with more than a sneer?

Wars are not for patriotism and "democracy," as we are propagandized. And our freedom has not been threatened by outside forces in 200 years. Wars are to kill; i.e., mass ritual murder. Additionally, big business and globalist banksters in league with Satan reap massive profits for the killing and sacrifice of young men (lambs) on all sides of combat.

If the flag is symbolic of the Constitution, that Constitution died long ago — destroyed by a crony railroad lawyer and mercantilist who made war on a sovereign people to benefit monied interests.

If the flag is symbolic of freedom, that freedom no longer exists — stolen long ago by crony corporations and globalist banksters and unaccountable oligarchical black-robed satanists and idol worshippers who usurped their authority created laws out of thin air under the guise of "interpreting the Constitution" a dictate not granted them under the original document.

The phony form of patriotism instilled within the population is strong leverage against independent thinking, keeping people ignorant of the treason by our own government.

America today is a more advanced state of fascism than World War II Germany and Italy. Fascism never identifies itself as totalitarianism. It always calls itself democracy.

Democracy is the politically correct word and cover term for modern American fascism.

American fascism has all the attributes and trappings of benevolent totalitarianism. No, benevolent totalitarianism is not an oxymoron.

The word benevolent in this instance means that the general perception of the population of the American system is that it is benevolent. This is only to say that modern America is full-blown fascism with a pretty face. It is every bit as deadly to human liberty as any tyranny in history and I would add far more sinister because of its propaganda sophistication.

Any regime that can spin tons of fiat paper money with printing presses or electronically is a slave system regardless of what it calls itself or regardless of the general population's perception of it.

Our mother has been transformed into a witch no matter how much we love her.

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