Monthly Archives: January 2022

It Wasn’t About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. – A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Fourteen: Chapter XIV, Tyranny and Emancipation, Part Two

Posted on by | 2 Comments
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Fourteen
Chapter XIV
Tyranny and Emancipation
Part Two
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
MAIN-pict-Chap-XIV-Part-Two-1-27-22 73K

At the end of this article, beneath the notes I have cited, is "Actual Citation from Book," Mitcham's endnotes for Chapter XIV.

NEW YORK CITY had voted against Lincoln "two to one" in 1860, which is an even higher percentage than the 60% who had voted against him across the North.1

New York City before the war was sympathetic to the South because of their trade and economic ties. New York Mayor Fernando Wood had "threatened to secede from both Albany and Washington in 1861" at the thought of losing its trade with the South.

New York and other Northern cities were pressure cookers with much grinding poverty and massive European immigration that made it worse. The scenes in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York are historically accurate. New immigrants such as destitute Irish and Germans arriving penniless and hungry had to compete for the few jobs. There was no social welfare in those days. You figured out how to make money or you died.

Emigration to the West was a huge reason racist Northerners did not want blacks in the West. The West was to be reserved for white people from all over the world as Lincoln had said in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

It is more understandable when you realize the West was the pressure release valve for the surplus population of the wild, turbulent North that had many cities busting at the seams with desperate people. Without that release valve, the North could have had a revolution. It had happened in other places with confiscation of the land and property of those who had it, by those who didn't. As Horace Greeley said, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country!"

Mitcham points out that "new arrivals were poor and not favorably disposed towards African American men, with whom they were competing for low-wage jobs." Sweatshop employers pitted them against each other and thus "kept wages low for immigrants and blacks alike." They made the Irish and blacks "destitute."2

There wasn't much "white privilege" for the Irish, which dishonest politicized academia and the news media tell us defines American history.

A precursor to the New York City Draft Riots occurred in March, 1863 when "white New York City longshoremen or dock workers were on strike for higher pay." Corporate bosses "brought in black strikebreakers to take their jobs." Strikers attacked 200 of them and there were injuries on both sides but no deaths.3

As I have said many times, Mitcham's narrative is always concise and direct. He writes:

Meanwhile, throughout the North, the allure and romance of the war evaporated under the withering fire of Confederate rifles and muskets. Voluntary Union enlistments slowed to a trickle. Due to his many military defeats and heavy casualties, Lincoln instituted a draft to fill his depleted ranks. Rich people, those who could pay $300 ($6,069.07 in 2017 money), were exempt from conscription. Excused from the draft were African Americans, who were not considered citizens yet. The striking longshoremen were already angry over wages. Now they faced being drafted into the Union Army to, as James Howell Street wrote, 'face death to give freedom to Negro slaves whose cousins had taken their jobs.'4

On July 11, 1863, the first drawing of Lincoln's draft took place in New York City, and on July 13 "a crowd of 500 people turned itself into a mob" led by firefighters and longshoremen and began "the most lethal riot in American history" that lasted four days:

Several regiments of Union troops had to be recalled from Pennsylvania; soldiers and police fired into the mob with cannons, muskets, and rifles; the police busted skulls with heavy locust wood clubs, tossed rock throwers off the roofs of buildings, and shot them with revolvers. One authority estimated that more than 2,000 people died and some 8,000 had been injured. Many African Americans were lynched, drowned, tortured, or set on fire.5

Riots protesting Lincoln's draft took place that summer not only in New York but to a lesser degree in "Detroit; Buffalo and Troy, NY; Cincinnati; Boston; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Rutland, Vermont; and Wooster, Ohio."6

The riots in New York were the "worst in U.S. history. Taken as a whole, the New York Draft Riots witnessed one of the largest mass lynching of innocent blacks in American history."7

Mitcham points out a mass hanging going on at the same time: "The Lincoln administration set the record for the largest mass hanging in American history conducted against a minority group in 1862. Following the suppression of an Indian uprising, a military tribunal found 303 Dakota (eastern Sioux) guilty of rape and murder."

The benevolent Lincoln thought 303 "was too many to kill all at once, so he granted clemency to all but thirty-eight; they were hanged at Mankoto, Minnesota, on December 28, 1862."8

Lincoln was worried he was going to lose the election of 1864, which might have opened up the possibility of a negotiated end of the war, but Atlanta fell and Lincoln won.

Too bad because the only thing Southerners wanted to do was govern themselves. Their economic prospects and free trade philosophy, however, were too bright and powerful for Lincoln, so the South had to be destroyed.

The barbarism caused by Lincoln's lust for other people's money and for political control was disgusting, for that was all they were fighting for. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, they were not fighting to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation, which didn't free any slaves, came about half way through the war after hundreds of thousands of men were dead. It was a war measure as Lincoln himself said, to keep Europeans from recognizing the South, and to encourage slaves to rise up and slaughter Southern women and children so Confederate men would have to leave the battlefield to go home and defend their families.

If the Emancipation Proclamation had been a serious measure to free the slaves, Lincoln would have first freed the slaves in the six Union slave states that were carefully exempted by the EP as was much of captured Confederate territory. Three of the Union's slave states had slavery even months beyond the war. It took the second Thirteenth Amendment to free them in December, 1865.

Abraham Lincoln, to win his bloody war, embraced the rape of Southern women and murder of children and other civilians under the concept of "total war." Mitcham writes:

It began in April 1862, when Colonel Ival Vasilovitch Turchinoff, a former Russian officer, entered Athens, Alabama, with the Nineteenth and Twenty-fourth Illinois Infantry Regiments. Now going by the alias John B. Turchin, Turchinoff encouraged his men to commit many atrocities aginst the defenseless civilians of the town. Drunk federals robbed stores, broke into private homes, burned, pillaged and raped. Several women---both black and white---were assaulted sexually at bayonet point, and one pregnant woman miscarried after she was gang raped. This went on for some time. When Turchinoff's commanding officer, General Buell, learned what had happened, he had the Russian court-martialed. Found guilty, Turchinoff was dishonorably discharged on August 6, 1862. Lincoln not only set aside the verdict; he promoted the disgraced officer to brigadier general.9

Lincoln's behavior is about as disgraceful and characterless as you can get.

Typical outrages such as those on Sherman's march across Georgia occurred all over. A Northerner, living in the South, Mrs. Elizabeth Meade Ingraham, experienced it first hand. She was the sister of Union Major General George G. Meade.

Mitcham writes:

U.S. major general James B. McPherson headquartered at "Ashwood" plantation, the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Meade Ingraham. McPherson refused to protect the place, and his men looted it for days. The general personally took part in the pillaging. He and his staff stole two five-gallon demijohns of whiskey. The men broke into Mrs. Ingraham's home, opened the dining room closet with a hatchet, and took the family's silver and table linen. They stole or broke every pan, pitcher, cup, plate, etc., and stole buggies, wagons, and every horse and mule---except one who was about to foal and refused to move. They shot all the sheep, killed or stole all the cattle, and shot all but four of the hogs. They even made off with dresses, sheets, and blankets. They destroyed all the portraits of deceased family members and even stole her Bibles, although 'What such rascals want with Bibles I can't tell,' Mrs. Ingraham noted caustically in her diary.10

Lincoln's conquest "was marked by wanton pillaging, malicious cruelty, and rape."

Jacob Thompson's beautiful "Home Place" was pillaged for days then burned. Mrs. Catherine Ann Thompson was given only 15 minutes and she "removed her few remaining valuables" but "As she was leaving, a squad of blue-coated liberators robbed her at gunpoint. She was left with nothing. Other defenseless citizens, black and white, were whipped or sexually molested."

One Yankee recorded a scene that was widespread across the South:

'. . . In fact, where once stood a handsome little country town, now only remained the blackened skeletons of houses, and the smoldering ruins that marked the track of war.'11

U.S. army lieutenant Thomas J. Myers "wrote to his wife in Boston from South Carolina in early 1865" stating "We have had a glorious time in this State." He went on:

'Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order of the day. The civility have been stripped of most of their valuables. Gold watches, silver, pitchers, cups, spoons, forks, and so forth are as common in camp as blackberries . . .

Officers are not allowed to join in these expeditions unless disguised as privates. One of our corps commanders borrowed a rough suit of clothes from one of my men and was successful in his place. He got a large quantity of silver among other things . . . and a very fine watch from a Mr. DeSaussure of this place.

. . . I have a quart---I am not joking---I have at least a quart of jewelry for you and the girls and some No. 1 diamond pins and rings among them. General Sherman has gold and silver enough to start a bank.

The damned niggers, as a general thing, preferred to stay at home particularly after they found that we wanted only the able bodied men and to tell you the truth the youngest and best looking women. . . .'12

Mitcham compares Lincoln's invasion with a violent abusive husband who beats his long-suffering wife every time she tries to leave. He

grabs her by the throat and beats her until she submits. Here the analogy breaks down, however. An abused wife might be able turn to charities, police authorities, her church, or family for help. The South was on its own. Rather than help, the government was more interest in stealing what remained after the destruction.13

Next Week:
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Fifteen, Conclusion
Chapter XV
The Costs and Results of the War
(Click Here to go to previous week: Part Thirteen: Chapter XIV, Tyranny and Emancipation, Part One)
NOTES:
(Scroll down for:
It Wasn't About Slavery, Actual Citation from Book)

1 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 164.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 165.

5 Ibid.

6 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 166.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 167.

10 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 167-168.

11 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 169.

12 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 169-170.

13 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 170-171.

It Wasn't About Slavery,
Actual Citation from Book

Chap-XIV-Pt-One-NOTES-1-80K
Chap-XIV-Pt-One-NOTES-2-106
Chap-XIV-Pt-One-NOTES-3-42K

It Wasn’t About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. – A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Thirteen: Chapter XIV, Tyranny and Emancipation, Part One

Posted on by | 2 Comments
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Thirteen
Chapter XIV
Tyranny and Emancipation
Part One
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Chap-XIV-Pt-One-MAIN-83K

At the end of this article, beneath the notes I have cited, is "Actual Citation from Book," Mitcham's endnotes for Chapter XIV.

ONCE AGAIN, Mitcham's epigraphs are spot on. He quotes the governor of New Jersey, a Union state that still had some slaves in it even after the War Between the States despite its plan of gradual emancipation. New Jersey's slaves remained slaves until the second Thirteenth Amendment finally freed them in December, 1865, eight-and-a-half months after Appomattox.

The first Thirteenth Amendment was the Corwin Amendment in early 1861, which Lincoln strongly supported and which was adopted by five Union states before the war made it moot. The Corwin Amendment left black people in slavery forever even beyond the reach of Congress where slavery already existed.

Here are Chapter XIV's epigraphs:

Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery.

-----Joel Parker, Governor of New Jersey (1863-66; 1871-74)

The sight of the Confederate battle flag always reminded me of the immense bravery of the soldiers who served under it.

-----Union General Joshua Chamberlain

America's first sectional party immediately passed legislation "enriching Republican fat cats on Wall Street and various corporate headquarters throughout the North."1

Republicans passed the "highest tax on imports in American history (the Morrill Tariff)" and created a national banking system so that "favored institutions were basically entitled to create money and control the currency and credit of the United States."2

They gave away some land in the West to homesteaders "but most to railroads and mining interests" and they "set up a contract labor law, which came close to enslaving gangs of foreign workers" while it "depressed the wages of U.S. workers."3

There was also the Morrill Act "for 'land grant' colleges, opening the door for federal involvement in education for the first time."4

Of course, none of this largesse went to blacks.

Mitcham quotes Rev. A. D. Betts of North Carolina whose sad and sobering quotation shows what was coming:

One day in April, 1861, I head that President Lincoln had called on the State troops to force the seceding States back into the Union. This was one of the saddest days of my life. I had prayed and hoped that war might be averted. I had loved the Union and clung to it. That day I saw war was inevitable. The inevitable must be met. That day I walked up and down my porch in Smithville [now Southport, N.C.] and wept and suffered and prayed for the South.5

Rev. Betts "joined his local military company, which became part of the Thirtieth North Carolina Infantry" which "started out with 900 men." Four years later it had only 153 "when it surrendered at Appomattox."6

Irish-born Patrick Cleburne, who rose to the rank of Major-General in the Confederate Army before he was killed in the Battle of Franklin (Tennessee) November 30, 1864 at age 36, wrote:

I am with the South in death, in victory or defeat. I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the constitution and the fundamental principles of the government. They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They are about to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and murder our men and dishonor our women. We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be left alone.7

Lincoln was not going to leave the South alone with a 10% tariff as compared to his astronomical Morrill Tariff which was 47 to 60% higher. He could see his shipping industry head South overnight, and his manufacturing industry, which existed mostly to sell to its captive Southern market, go bankrupt.

The South, with 100% control of King Cotton and with long-sought-after European free trade and military alliances, would be unbeatable by the North and old Honest Abe knew it. It was fight right then when he had four times the white population of the South and other enormous advantages including maybe 200 times more armaments, or, eventually, be economically buried by the South.

Cleburne also wrote:

It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.8

Cleburne in the first quote above wrote:

They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.9

That, of course, comes from the American Declaration of Independence, from the phrase that was the most widely quoted in the secession debate in the South in the year prior to states seceding:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Southerners were fighting for independence and self-government, the exact same as the colonists who fought the British in 1776.

Yankees were fighting to establish the supremacy of the federal government over the states. They were the federals in the war. They planned to control the federal government with their larger population and rule the country.

Yankees were unquestionably not fighting to free the slaves.

Their money was more important to them than freeing slaves who would then move north with enormous social problems and be job competition. That's why so many Northern and Western states had laws forbidding blacks from living there and many forbid them from even visiting for long.

Southerners agreed with Cleburne.

Robert Stiles "was a Yale graduate and a law student at Columbia University in 1861" with a bright career ahead of him. He gladly gave it up to become a private in the Richmond Howitzers in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia rising to the rank of artillery major. He wrote this after the war:

What now of the essential spirit of these young volunteers? Why did they volunteer? For what did they give their lives? . . . Surely, it was not for slavery they fought. The great majority of them had never owned a slave, and had little or no interest in that institution. My own father, for example, had freed his slaves long years before . . . The great conflict will never be properly comprehended by the man who looks upon it as a war for the preservation of slavery.10

The vast majority of Americans do not properly comprehend the great conflict thanks to the race obsession of academia and the news media with their woke, 100% politicized version of history that is not seeking truth but only political advantage for the left and Democrat Party.

Academia is 100% liberal. I know the actual percentage is closer to 90% but the small number of non-liberals on campuses are not going to say a word and endanger their tenure or have the mob show up at their office. They are petrified of the charge of racism and they regularly dishonor themselves to avoid it.

Also, a good number of our friends in academia have no knowledge of the Southern view of the conflict. They have never heard it or studied it, yet Southerners were right in everything they did including secession. The North threatened to secede many times in the antebellum period.

Esteemed historian, Eugene Genovese, said that what has happened to Southern history since the 1960s is a "cultural and political atrocity." He blamed the atrocity on elites in academic and the media.

Mitcham quotes Dr. Hunter McGuire, "Stonewall Jackson's physician and a future president of the American Medical Association" who wrote:

The Stonewall Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia was a fighting organization. I knew every man in it, for I belonged to it for a long time; and I know that I am in proper bounds when I assert, that there was not one soldier in thirty who owned or ever expected to own a slave. The South fighting for the money value of the negro! What a cheap and wicked falsehood!11

Mitcham brings up Dr. James M. McPherson of Princeton, "no friend of the Confederacy." McPherson, he writes, "researched thousands of original documents, 25,000 personal letters, and 249 diaries." McPherson concludes Southerners were not fighting for slavery, they "were fighting for liberty." 12

Of Confederate enlistees, only "6 percent to 7 percent" owned slaves.13

Mitcham writes, "As if to prove their point, Abraham Lincoln moved with incredible speed to suppress freedom and constitutional rights in the North." Lincoln's jackboot landed first on the face of Marylanders because of their proximity to Washington, D.C. and because of strong Southern sentiment there:

In April 1861, crowds poured into the streets of Baltimore, the third largest city in the United States. On April 20, the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment showed up and fired on the rioters, a few of whom also shot at the bluecoats. Four soldiers and at least nine civilians were killed.14

The Maryland legislature rejected a secession convention but its pro-Union governor, Thomas H. Hicks, "called for the immediate and peaceful recognition of the Confederacy and an end of the U.S. military occupation of Maryland, which they denounced as a 'flagrant violation of the Constitution.'" Maryland wanted to stay neutral.15

Mitcham writes:

Lincoln responded by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which was a constitutional safeguard to prevent unlawful imprisonment or imprisonment without due process. Lincoln, Seward, and their henchmen arrested many prominent Marylanders, including thirty-one legislators, the mayor of Baltimore, the chief of police, all of the Baltimore police commissioners, Henry May, a sitting U.S. congressman, the entire Baltimore city council, and dozens of prominent civic leaders, editors, and publishers. Arrests took place in the dead of night so that there would be fewer witnesses. The victims were usually hauled off to Fort Warren, Massachusetts, or some other hellhole where they were incarcerated in crowded casements. If a prisoner asked for a lawyer or tried to send for his family, he was told that this wold hurt his case. Often, the victim was jailed based not on what he had done but what he might do. Some of them remained in prison until the end of the war.16

John Merryman was arrested but appealed to Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney, who was a Marylander. Taney wrote a "blistering opinion against Lincoln's actions, ruling his executive order was unconstitutional, null, and void. He ordered a copy of his decision be sent to the Northern president under the seal of the United States Supreme Court."17

Lincoln wanted to arrest Taney but "couldn't find any Federal marshals who would execute" his unconstitutional order.

Elections were soon held in Maryland but "Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls, arrested those who were not pro-Union, and granted to U.S. soldiers three-day leaves so they could return home and vote Republican. Voter intimidation kept many pro-Southern Maryland voters far away from the polls. The result was a pro-Union legislature."18

Lincoln's actions should not surprise us in the least. He had just sent five naval missions into the South for the express purpose of starting a war so he could put the new Republican Party on solid ground once and for all. Nothing like a war to solidify political power.

Lincoln had no mandate for any of this. In the election of 1860, over 60% of the country voted against Lincoln.

But the lust for money and control were all Lincoln and the North could think about, along with the fact that they had overwhelming advantages in population, armaments and manufacturing, an existing army and navy, a pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world to enlarge Northern armies. Of course they were going to fight rather than allow a free trade South to rise up on their southern border.

Take note that there is no mention by Lincoln or anybody else in the North about freeing the slaves. Just the opposite. They were quite willing to leave blacks in slavery forever as long as the South returned to the Union and paid all of Lincoln's taxes and tariffs.

Lincoln's commander in Ohio had Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham arrested, tried by a military court, found guilty and thrown in jail for the rest of the war until Lincoln interceded and had Vallandigham banished from the country. Vallandigham's crime was calling Lincoln "King Lincoln" and denouncing "Wall Street and its war profiteers, as well as the mercantile, manufacturing, and commercial interests" of the North. He had called for an armistice with the Confederates.19

Lincoln also ordered "the arrest of U.S. senator and former vice president John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky" whose crime was visiting Kentuckians in the hospital who were wounded at First Manassas. Breckinridge was warned and escaped "before Lincoln's thugs could lay their hands on him."20

Mitcham writes:

In all, at least 32,000 political prisoners were thrown in jail, and one authority placed the number as high as 40,000. More than 300 newspapers and journals were also shut down. Frequently, the Lincolnites used federal troops to do the dirty work. Printing presses were often smashed and publisher's offices ransacked.21

In addition to Lincoln's totalitarian tyranny against Northerners, his secretary of state, William Seward, "bragged about his power to Britain's ambassador to the U.S., Lord Lyons."

'I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the bell again and order the arrest of a citizen of New York. Can Queen Victoria do as much?'22

"'No!'" the outraged Lyons snapped: "'Were she to attempt such an act her head would roll from her shoulders.'"23

Perhaps Lyons should have gone back to Great Britain and insisted they recognize the Confederacy as Lord Acton wished had happened. Acton stated that wish clearly in his 1866 letter to Robert E. Lee.

Lincoln, whom, again, 60% of the country voted against in 1860, "saw immigrants as key to his political future."

Already "one-fourth of the Northern population was immigrants." That's why 25% of the Union army were not born in America. Those enlistment bonuses were mighty enticing to many who arrived with only the shirts on their backs.

Lincoln even bought, secretly, "a German language newspaper to disseminate Republican propaganda to immigrants who were poorly informed about American political issues."24

Lincoln also opened "Union recruiting offices throughout Europe to hire foreign mercenaries" and around "489,200 mercenaries were recruited from fifteen foreign countries, mostly from Ireland (150,000) and Germany (210,000)." Mitcham doubts Lincoln could have won the war without mercenaries.25

Lincoln was not as welcoming toward native born blacks as he was foreigners who would join his army. Many Northern and Western states still had laws forbidding blacks from living there.

A year into the war, Lincoln pushed "a constitutional amendment to buy and deport slaves." He wanted a place they could survive away from the U.S. mainland such as "Haiti, Liberia, New Granada, Ecuador, St. Croix, Surinam, British Guiana, Honduras, and the Amazon."26 Lincoln favored colonization for blacks his entire life. See Colonization After Emancipation, Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press), 2011, and other books.

The Trent affair, when the USS San Jacinto seized the RMS Trent and took Confederate commissioners James Mason and John Slidell off and imprisoned them, resulted in Lincoln apologizing to the British and freeing Mason and Slidell. The Brits had threatened war and were dead serious.

This caused Lincoln to realize "the threat of a Franco-Anglo-Confederate alliance was a real one."27 To head it off, the "Myth of the Noble Cause to free the slaves" was born with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Not only would it give the North's barbaric unconstitutional invasion supposed morality, it might encourage the slaves to rise up and start slaughtering whites thus forcing the Confederate army to go home to put down insurrections.

The diabolical Lincoln, like the slick lawyer he was, worded the Emancipation Proclamation so that it supposedly freed slaves where Lincoln had no control and left them in slavery where he could have freed them.

The Emancipation Proclamation exempted the six Union slave states (yes, SIX slave states fought for the Union the entire war, and three of them still had slavery after the war, until the second Thirteenth Amendment kicked in, in December, 1865, and freed them).

Those six Union slave states were Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, New Jersey, and West Virginia, which ironically came into the Union as a slave state just weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

The Emancipation Proclamation also did not free slaves in captured Confederate territory such as the plantations in Louisiana because they "were in the hands of New Englanders, who were in bed with Lincoln politically."28

Nor did the EP free the slaves owned by Ulysses S. Grant (Mrs. Grant owned several slaves and used to take one, Black Julia, with her during many of her husband's battles). William T. Sherman kept his slaves too.

This made Lincoln a laughing stock around the world with influential writers such as Charles Dickens.

Even William H. Seward said:

'We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them, and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.'29

Abolitionist Lysander Spooner said basically the same thing.

A popular limerick said it best:

'Lincoln, Lincoln, wily wretch, freed the slaves he couldn't catch.'30

Mitcham writes that in the State of the Union Address of December 1862, "Lincoln offered the Southern states an opportunity to retain their slaves until January 1, 1900, along with financial compensation to any slave owners and a promise to remove all blacks to Africa or Latin America."31

Of course, Southerners were fighting for independence and self-government, not slavery. For the South, 1861 was 1776 all over. They were  not interested in returning to Lincoln's tyrannical union and being ruled by Northerners.

Next Week:
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Thirteen
Chapter XIV
Tyranny and Emancipation
Part Two
(Click Here to go to previous week: Part Twelve: Chapter XIII, Over the Edge, Part Two)
NOTES:
(Scroll down for:
It Wasn't About Slavery, Actual Citation from Book)

1 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 155.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 156.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 157.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 157-158.

15 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 158.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 158-159.

19 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 159.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 160.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 162.

28 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 163.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

It Wasn't About Slavery,
Actual Citation from Book
Chap-XIV-Pt-One-NOTES-1-80K
Chap-XIV-Pt-One-NOTES-2-106
Chap-XIV-Pt-One-NOTES-3-42K

It Wasn’t About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. – A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Twelve: Chapter XIII, Over the Edge, Part Two

Posted on by | 2 Comments
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Twelve
Chapter XIII
Over the Edge
Part Two
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Chap-XIII-Pt-Two-MAIN

At the end of this article, beneath the notes I have cited, is "Actual Citation from Book," Mitcham's endnotes for Chapter XIII.

WANTED TO MENTION as a side note that Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. has an article in the latest Confederate Veteran magazine (January/February 2022) entitled "War, By The Numbers," which is outstanding.

The footnotes in "War, By The Numbers" are at the bottom of each page, which I love. You are able to read them as you read the text thus enhancing the text even more.

Here is an example from "War, By The Numbers," which everybody should keep at hand when taking on the historically challenged:

The North had every advantage. The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. Of this, 9,000,000 people resided in the Southern states. This included 3,500,000 slaves, giving the South 5,500,000 white people from which to field their armies. According to John H. and David J. Eicher, the "Military Population" of the North (white males aged 18 through 45) was 3,954,776, as opposed to 1,064,193 for the South. Another roughly 191,000 black men served in the Union Army, as opposed to 80,000 to 96,000 in the Confederate Army. At their maximum extent, the Northern armies fielded more than 1,000,000 men. During the 1861 to 1865 period, 2,898,304 men served in the Union Army. That was 1,812,121 more troops than served in all of America's other wars combined up until that point. We do not know exactly how many men served in the Confederate Army because many Southern records were lost or destroyed at the end of the conflict. Estimates vary between 600,000 to more than a million, with 800,000 to 850,000 being commonly cited figures. General Cooper and Thornton H. Bowman, however, put the number at 600,000. It is unlikely that President Davis and his generals ever fielded more than 300,000 men at any one time. [This paragraph in Confederate Veteran includes footnotes 4 to 8]

The reason I have done this series on Mitcham's It Wasn't About Slavery is because he covers everything of historical value in a clear, concise manner. Nothing is left out.

People such as SCV seeking truth, have it with Mitcham in a thorough, well-argued narrative, which is highly quotable and powerful for any Southerner arguing against the fraud that comes out of academia and the news media in this day and age, an age defined by ignorant "wokeism" and those who push it (mostly the same ones pushing racist Critical Race Theory and the fraudulent 1619 Project).

BACK TO It Wasn't About Slavery, Chapter XIII, "Over the Edge," Part Two.

The Virginia secession convention was alarmed that "Lincoln's inaugural address had in it hints of coercion and usurpation of power, that Lincoln had rejected the Crittenden Compromise, and that he refused to meet with the Confederate peace delegation sent by President Davis" so they sent a peace commission of their own to meet with Lincoln and find out his views.

Virginia's peace commission was made up of "William B. Preston, Alexander H. H. Stuart, and George W. Randolph," all Union men:

'If our voices and votes are to be exerted farther to hold Virginia in the Union, we must know what the nature of that Union is to be . . . ' Mr. Preston declared. 'If the power of the United States is to be perverted to invade the right of States and of the people, we would support the Federal Government no farther.'1

On "April 2, the very day Lincoln approved a secret act of war, 'Honest Abe' asked Seward to send Allan B. Magruder, the judge advocate of the U.S. Naval Court" to "confer" with "Stuart, Judge George W. Summers (a highly respected member of the Virginia Convention and a solid Union man), and convention president John Janney."2

Magruder was apparently on a mission to lie and mislead because he "told the Virginians that he was authorized by Seward to inform them that Fort Sumter would be evacuated on Friday of the following week."3

Magruder said Seward wanted Summers, Janney, or Stuart "to come to the White House for a secret meeting" at Lincoln's behest or with his consent, but they sent John B. Baldwin instead.

Baldwin was "smuggled" into Washington in the early morning and "driven to the home of Magruder's brother, Captain John B. Magruder, the future Confederate general, where he ate breakfast."

Allan Magruder "then conducted him by carriage (with windows carefully covered) to Seward, who took him to the White House."4

Around 9 a.m. on Thursday, April 4, Colonel Baldwin was told by a White House porter that he probably would not be able to see Lincoln because Lincoln was already meeting with "several important visitors."

The porter returned and "told the guards to admit Baldwin at once."5

Lincoln was in a meeting with "three or four elderly men" but ended the meeting "abruptly." Lincoln then

escorted Baldwin upstairs to a private bedroom and closed and locked the door. The president sat on the bed and asked the colonel about the true sentiments of the majority of the Virginia Convention delegates. He spat on the carpet from time to time throughout the interview.6

Baldwin told Lincoln Virginia would not secede "if the new administration respected the Constitution and did not abrogate the rights of any state. This would have included taking military action against the cotton states."

The disgusted Lincoln answered:

'your Virginia people are good Unionists, but it is always with an if! I don't like that sort of Unionism.'7

Baldwin then explained to Lincoln that "all free men could only be conditional Union men. When Unionism treated groups or sections of people unequally, the benefit of the Constitution was lost."8

Virginia had voted against Lincoln but Baldwin assured Lincoln Virginia would be loyal and help Lincoln keep the border states in the Union if he obeyed the Constitution.

Mitcham adds:

Secession, however, was a constitutional right, and Virginia did not believe the federal government had any right to coerce a state by force of arms.9

Lincoln continued thinking the South was blowing hot air, "'a game of brag,'" but Baldwin assured him that was not the case.

Lincoln must have been delusional to witness conventions of the people in seven Southern states as they thoroughly debated the one issue of seceding from the Union, then voted to do it. How could Lincoln still think they wanted to remain in his union?

Lincoln saw them set up a brand new nation on this earth, a continuance of the original American republic of the Founding Fathers with arguably a better constitution than the U.S. Constitution.

For example, the Confederate Constitution, in addition to outlawing protective tariffs and establishing a low 10% tariff for the operation of a small federal government in a states' rights nation, also made it unconstitutional to tax one state then spend the money in another.

The Confederate Constitution was committed to free trade and it required bills to be properly labeled. The president would serve one six-year term so he was not constantly running for reelection.

Slavery was not required in the Confederate Constitution. Slavery was up to individual states.

The Confederate Constitution also allowed free states to join the Confederacy, which petrified Lincoln because several, especially along the Mississippi, were highly attracted to the South's low tariff and free trade economic philosophy. Why should those states pay high tariffs to enrich the North at the expense of the rest of the country?

Of course, Lincoln was the first sectional president in American history. He was president of the North and was looking out for the North only.

It is important to point out that while Baldwin was talking to Lincoln, there were more slave states in the Union than the Confederacy. There were nine in the Union, soon to be 10 with the admission of West Virginia as a slave state into the Union, while there were only seven in the Confederacy.

The nine Union slave states in early 1861 were Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee.

The seven Cotton States that seceded and formed the Confederate States of America were South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.

As Baldwin talked, Lincoln's eyes finally opened. Lincoln

slid off the edge of the bed and began nervously pacing back and forth. 'I ought to have known this sooner!' he snapped, clearly perplexed. 'You are too late, sir, too late! Whey did you not come here four days ago, and tell me all this?' There was a look of fury on the chief executive's face. He was now pacing furiously and grasping his hair as if he were about to pull it out by the roots. He was obviously highly agitated.10

Baldwin said he came as fast as he could but Lincoln said "'Yes, but you are too late, I tell you, too late!'"11

Baldwin

took this to mean that coercion had been decided on within the last four days. Unlike Baldwin, Lincoln knew that there were four war expeditions already sailing south.12

Lincoln's advisors had convinced Lincoln that Southerners were so afraid of "servile insurrection" that they would back down and that would "solidify the Republican triumph at the polls" so what Lincoln should do is "force a confrontation."

Baldwin wanted a "'peaceful union proclamation'" that "would paralyze the secession movement"13 but Republican greed for money could not be satisfied by words or even blood. Colonel Robert Dabney, D.D.

recalled that 'the policy urged by Colonel Baldwin would have disappointed the hopes of legislative plunder, by means of inflated tariffs, which were the real aims for which free-soil was the mask.'"14

Lincoln wanted Baldwin to adjourn the Virginia Convention "sine die" since it had already voted down secession three times but Baldwin "rejected the idea out of hand."

He "sensed that Lincoln wanted war and tried to persuade him to let the south go peacefully."

He "pointed out the historical and economic ties it had to the North and predicted that they would eventually lead the Southern states back into the Union."15

Lincoln responded:

'And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry with their 10% tariff? What, then, would become of my tariff?'16

Lincoln was shocked because he knew that "war, made inevitable by his actions, was about to start" unless he backed down.

Until now, he "did not think Virginia would leave and join the fight." Reverend Dabney later wrote that Lincoln "'had not manliness enough to recede.'"17

Colonel Baldwin lost respect for Lincoln because he realized Lincoln's "purpose in calling the meeting was not peace but to get the convention to adjourn. This would make it easier for the North to win the war by keeping Virginia from seceding with the other border states."18

The New York Herald saw through Lincoln too. On April 5 it editorialized:

We have no doubt Mr. Lincoln wants [President Davis] to take the initiative in capturing . . . forts in its waters, for it would give him the opportunity of throwing [to the South] the responsibility of commencing hostilities.19

Gideon Welles sent his orders to Captain Adams in Pensacola "via a special messenger, Lieutenant J. L. Worden, USN, who traveled by rail from Washington to Richmond to Augusta to Atlanta." Worden memorized Lincoln's war orders then burned them. He arrived midnight April 10 in Pensacola.20

The next day "he met with Braxton Bragg, the Rebel commander in the Pensacola area and assured him he had a verbal message of a "pacific" nature for Captain Adams" so Bragg let him deliver it, which Worden could not do right away, due to bad weather.

Meanwhile, Union commander Israel Vogdes committed an act of war by breaking the armistice between Union and Confederate forces in Pensacola. He reinforced Fort Pickens "with a mixed marine/army battle group."21

Worden avoided Bragg and left Pensacola for Montgomery arriving the morning of April 13 where he was arrested. Confederates had fired on Fort Sumter so Bragg knew Worden's message for Adams was not "'pacific.'" Southerners held Worden as a POW and not spy, luckily for him.

Worden later commanded the USS Monitor in her famous battle with the CSS Virginia (aka Merrimac).

Events in Charleston now "raced to their conclusion":

Jefferson Davis, Governor Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina, and Confederate brigadier general P. G. T. Beauregard, the commander of Southern forces in Charleston, had about enough of Abraham Lincoln's subterfuges. They were no fools, and they realized Lincoln and Seward were playing for time so that they could get their military forces in position to reinforce Forts Sumter and Pickens. . . .22

Southern leaders realized Lincoln was determined to start the war: "Lincoln presently had five war expeditions in Southern waters or preparing to enter them."23 He and Secretary of State Seward continued to lie to Southerners that the Fort Sumter garrison would be removed.

On Monday, April 8, Confederates "intercepted a letter from Major Anderson" Lincoln's commander inside Fort Sumter, to Lincoln through Secretary of War Cameron. Anderson, who was in the best position to know Lincoln's intent, ended his letter with:

'We shall strive to do our duty, though . . . my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced.'24

Anderson "sees" that the war is to be "thus commenced" by Abraham Lincoln.

Southerners tried to avoid war until the last minute but the insidious Lincoln had arranged things so tightly they could not fail. Even if they had he would have arranged something else because he was determined to start his war. Every minute that went by, the South got stronger and the North got weaker. If Great Britain was to recognize the new Southern nation and offer military aid, the North would not be able to beat the South. Lincoln knew there was no reason whatsoever to wait even one second longer.

At 4:30 a.m. April 12, 1861, with all offers to evacuate rejected by Major Anderson at Lincoln's direction, and with multiple belligerent naval forces on the way to Southern destinations, Fort Sumter was bombarded by Confederates in Charleston Harbor for 34 hours:

Fort Sumter hauled down its flag on April 13. The fort was severely battered but, remarkably, there were no casualties. The formal surrender took place on April 14.25

Anderson later wrote that they "'marched out of the fort Sunday afternoon the 14th instant, with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns.'"26

On Monday, April 15, Abraham Lincoln officially started the War Between the States with "a proclamation declaring that an insurrection had begun . . . ." He "called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the 'rebellion.' This would be the largest military force ever assembled on the North American continent to that date."27

Congress was not in session so the immoral Lincoln, rather than calling them back immediately, set a special session for July 4, almost three months away. He wanted to make sure the war was well underway and unable to be stopped before facing Congress.

The Virginia Peace Commission had gone to the White House April 12 and after a brief meeting with Lincoln were told to come back the next day, which they did. They urged forbearance and the evacuation of Fort Pickens and Fort Sumter but:

Lincoln objected because all the goods from Europe would be imported through the ports of Charleston, etc., and his sources of revenue would dry up. 'If I do that, [Lincoln stated to Commissioner Stuart] what will become of my revenue? I might as well shut up house-keeping at once!'28

Virginia was ordered to "supply five regiments for the Union Army."

Virginia Governor John Letcher wrote to U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron the next day, April 16:

'You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the [Lincoln] Administration has exhibited toward the South.'29

The next day, April 17, 1861, Virginia seceded voting 85 to 55 for secession. She was followed by Arkansas, May 6; North Carolina, May 20; and Tennessee, June 8.30 The issue for these states was unquestionably federal coercion. They were horrified that Lincoln and the federal government would invade peaceful states and murder their citizens, which was clearly unconstitutional.

Mitcham writes that "The Northern public, unaware of what had happened behind the scenes, united behind the flag, just as Lincoln thought they would. Old Glory was fired on! It was time to forget political differences and rally behind the colors!"31

Mitcham writes that "President Davis made a serious miscalculation when he ordered his batteries to fire on Fort Sumter. He awakened a sleeping giant, and there would be hell to pay."32

I must take slight issue with Dr. Mitcham's use of "serious miscalculation." What else was Jefferson Davis going to do? Lincoln was going to force the Cotton States back into the Union or face economic devastation of their own doing with horrible legislation such as the Morrill Tariff. The Morrill Tariff threatened to destroy the Northern shipping industry overnight because ship captains were comparing the South's 10% tariff with the North's astronomical Morrill Tariff that was 47 to 60% higher, and they were heading South.

Lincoln thought it would be easy to whip the South because he had four times the white population of the South and maybe 200 times the armaments along with other enormous advantages.

Lincoln also knew that the South with British military aid would be unbeatable by the North.

A free trade South on the North's southern border with 100% control of King Cotton would be formidable, even devastating  economic competition.

Preventing that was exactly what Lincoln was committed to. Again, Lincoln was the first sectional president in American history. He was president of the North so he was looking out for the North.

He could see that if the North could beat the South in a war, the North would rule the entire country. Alexis de Tocqueville had predicted that any state gaining control of the federal government, such as the North had now done, would make the rest of the country tributary to its wealth and power.

Northern cities such as New York, Boston et al. would be rich as well as the cultural and economic leaders of our great country for all time or at least the foreseeable future, and that has been the exact case. That's what Lincoln and the North were fighting for, certainly not to end slavery.

Mitcham ends this chapter with a powerful illustration.

He asks rhetorically "was the Confederacy responsible for the start of the Civil War? After all, it did fire the first shot."

He then writes:

At 6:37 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, the USS Ward, a 1,267-ton destroyer, spotted a Japanese submarine trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor. She attacked it with her main battle guns and depth charges and sank it. These were the first shots fired in the Battle of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese did not attack the U.S. naval base until 7:48 a.m.

Did the United States start World War II? After all, she did fire the first shot.

The answer to such rhetorical questions is, of course, "No." In each case, the aggressor did not literally fire the first shot, although they did plan for war and decided to launch aggressive actions, such as violating the territorial waters of their foe; . . .33

Abraham Lincoln got his war and was pleased but "concerned that his friend, G. V. Fox, was depressed that his Fort Sumter mission had failed."

Lincoln wrote Fox on May 1 stating "'I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to you . . . . '"

Lincoln continued:

'You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.'

Charles W. Ramsdell in his famous treatise, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," gives additional powerful evidence. The usually tight-mouthed Lincoln confessed his entire plot to his friend Orville H. Browning in July, 1861, not knowing Browning would go back to his room later and put it all down in his diary. In his entry for July 3, 1861,34 Browning wrote:

He told me that the very first thing placed in his hands after his inauguration was a letter from Majr Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter. That he called the cabinet together and consulted Genl Scott --- that Scott concurred with Anderson, and the cabinet, with the exception of P M Genl Blair were for evacuating the Fort, and all the troubles and anxieties of his life had not equaled those which intervened between this time and the fall of Sumter. He himself conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce giving notice of the fact to Gov Pickens of S.C. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter --- it fell, and thus did more service than it otherwise could.

Mitcham concludes this outstanding chapter with a dramatic statement by Francis Key Howard, a grandson of Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." People all over the North who opposed Lincoln's war were being arrested and Howard was one of them.

Mitcham points  out that Howard was "ironically . . . incarcerated in Fort McHenry, Maryland" about which Francis Scott Key wrote his famous song. Howard wrote:

'When I looked out . . . I could not help being struck by an odd, and not pleasant coincidence. On that day, forty-seven years before, my grandfather, Mr. F. S. Key, then a prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort M'Henry. When, on the following morning, the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, 'The Star-spangled Banner' . . . The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving in the same place, over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.'35

 

Next Week:
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Thirteen
Chapter XIV
Tyranny and Emancipation
Part One
(Click Here to go to previous week: Part Eleven: Chapter XIII, Over the Edge, Part One)
NOTES:
(Scroll down for:
It Wasn't About Slavery, Actual Citation from Book)

1 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 143.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 144.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 145.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 146.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 146-147.

18 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 147.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 148.

23 Ibid.

24 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 149.

25 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 149-150.

26 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 150.

27 Ibid.

28 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 150-151.

29 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 151.

30 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 152.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 153.

34 Charles W. Ramsdell, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 3, Issue 3 (August, 1937), 259-288. Ramsdell cites Browning's quote as coming from Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall (eds.), The Diary of Orville H. Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield, Ill., 1927) 1, 475-76.

35 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 154.

 

It Wasn't About Slavery,
Actual Citation from Book

Chap-XIII-NOTES-1-93K
Chap-XIII-NOTES-2-120K
Chap-XIII-NOTES-3-101K
Chap-XIII-NOTES-4-119K

It Wasn’t About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. – A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Eleven: Chapter XIII, Over the Edge, Part One

Posted on by | 1 Comment
A Comprehensive Review of
It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Part Eleven
Chapter XIII
Over the Edge
Part One
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Chap-XIII-MAIN-pict-86K

At the end of this article, beneath the notes I have cited, is "Actual Citation from Book," Mitcham's endnotes for Chapter XIII.

MITCHAM GIVES US an exciting account in Chapter XIII of how Abraham Lincoln started the War Between the States, which ended up killing 750,000 men and maiming over a million.

Lincoln established the supremacy of the federal government over the states (remember, Yankees were the "federals" in the war) because he wanted the North with its larger population to control the federal government and thus the country.

On Tuesday, November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected and immediately Charlestonians raised the Palmetto flag "instead of the Stars and Stripes." A judge summed up the feeling in Charleston:

'the Temple of Justice raised under the Constitution of the United States is now closed. If it shall never again be opened I thank God that its doors have been closed before its altar has been desecrated with he sacrifices of tyranny.'1

South Carolina's legislature "met in an unusual Saturday session on November 10" and "passed an act calling for a secession convention to begin in Columbia on December 17." Both of the state's U.S. senators resigned that same day, and the day after, "the South Carolina legislature voted to raise 10,000 volunteers for the defense of the state."2

Secession had been debated the entire previous year across the South but on December 20, 1860 it became reality. The Convention of the People of South Carolina revoked the state's 1788 ratification of the U.S. Constitution and voted 169-0 to secede, which began an ecstatic celebration in Charleston that went on for days.

Earlier, on December 10, "six South Carolina congressmen and President Buchanan met to discuss the military situation in Charleston" and came to a gentleman's agreement that neither would attack the other vis-a-vis the forts. The status quo was to stay the same.

Buchanan's word was no good just as Lincoln and Seward's were no good the following spring. The day after meeting with the South Carolina representatives Buchanan sent Major Don Carlos Buell (later a Union general) who was the War Department representative to meet with Major Anderson then in Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island. Buell told Anderson that  "he had permission to abandon Fort Moultrie and transfer the garrison to Fort Sumter."3

Anderson knew Fort Moultrie was indefensible since it faced the harbor and was surrounded by local residences so "he quietly evacuated it on December 26, spiked his obsolete thirty-two-pounder guns, and took his men under cover of darkness to Fort Sumter, which was located on an uninhabited rock island in the middle of Charleston Harbor." Fort Sumter dominated the entrance to Charleston Harbor.4

A delegation from South Carolina went to Washington, D.C. at the same time to "obtain a peaceful settlement of all outstanding issues. Among other things, South Carolina was prepared to pay for its share of the public debt."5

Anderson's provocative act caused South Carolina forces to take over "the other harbor forts, including Moultrie and Castle Pinckney, on December 27."6

Military companies sprang up across the South and began "conducting drills in city parks and on the town squares." Northerners had not believed Southerners would secede but Northern greed and hatred had finally come home to roost. Southerners were "deadly serious."

By year end, and early 1861, Republican political strength plummeted "in the municipal elections. Even in Boston, Wendell Phillips needed police protection to return home."7 This is the same virtue-signaling abolitionist hate-monger with no solution for ending slavery, who had proclaimed that the Republican Party was the party of the North pledged against the South and was the first sectional party in American history.

South Carolina wanted Anderson to return to Fort Moultrie and Secretary of War John B. Floyd agreed. He warned that failure to do so "'invited a collision.'"8

There were several heated cabinet meetings at the end of the year, then Floyd resigned December 29th. On December 30th "South Carolina volunteers seized the Charleston Arsenal."9 President-elect Lincoln "claimed he 'yearned' for peace but took absolutely no steps to secure it."10

On January 9, 1861 Citadel cadets manning an artillery battery on Morris Island "fired on and drove off" the Star of the West, which had been sent to "reinforce and re-provision Fort Sumter":

The soldiers were hidden below deck [of the Star of the West], but the South Carolinians had been tipped off as to what was really happening by Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson of Mississippi. . . . Anderson continued to draw his supplies from the mainland of South Carolina, but he knew the secessionists could cut them off at any time.11

Meanwhile, one of the greatest expressions of democratic republican government in history occurred as six other states in a landmass nearly the size of Europe called conventions, elected delegates as Unionists or Secessionists, then debated the single issue of secession just as the colonists had debated the single issue of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

They then voted one by one to secede from the federal Union that had become full of hate and tyranny, much more so than the British in 1776. The terrorism of violent criminals like John Brown, which was celebrated in the North, meant Southerners with their wives, children, their families, were targeted for murder, rape, arson, and every other unimaginable horror. Some thought that was the federal government's intent. They had no reason to think overwise.

So:

On January 9, Mississippi voted to secede by a vote of eighty-four to fifteen. The next day, Florida, voted sixty-two to seven to leave the Union. Alabama departed on January 11 by a vote of sixty-one to thirty-nine. Georgia seceded on January 19 after a vote of two hundred eight to eighty-nine. Louisiana left the Union on January 26 after a vote of one hundred thirteen to seven. Texas voted one hundred sixty-six to seven to secede on February 1. Governor Sam Houston tried to obstruct it and prevent Texas from joining the Confederacy. On March 16, he went to work and was shocked to find Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark sitting at his desk. The secession convention had deposed him. Lincoln offered him 50,000 troops to keep Texas in the United States, but like Robert E. Lee, Houston did not care to remain in a union held together by bayonets. He declined the offer and retired.12

Those seven states met in convention February 4, 1861 in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to the original American republic of the Founding Fathers with sovereign states in a loose federal union unlike the Northern tyranny that had developed. The most widely used phrase in the secession debate in the South during 1860 came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

On Friday, February 8, 1861 "they adopted a constitution and created the Confederate States of America." It outlawed protective tariffs that had allowed the North to enrich itself at the expense of the South via Robert Toombs's "suction pump" which constantly sucked wealth out of the South and deposited it in the North.

It prohibited internal improvement in one state paid for with tax money from another so never again would Southerners pay 85% of the taxes but have 75% of the tax money spent in the North.

The Confederate Constitution "outlawed the slave trade and allowed for the admission of non-slaveholding states" which petrified Abraham Lincoln since several free states especially along the Mississippi were attracted to the free-trade South with its low 10% tariff for the operation of a small federal government in a states rights nation. This is in comparison to the North's soon-to-be-passed astronomical Morrill Tariff that was 47 to 60% higher because in a knee-jerk fashion, they had passed it thinking the South would have to pay it as it had in the past. However, the Morrill Tariff fell on Northerners because the South was now an independent nation.

Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi moderate with a distinguished record of service to the country was elected provisional president, and former Unionist, Alexander H. Stephens, "Little Alec," as Robert Toombs called his good friend, was elected provisional vice president. Stephens was a good friend of Lincoln's.

Independence "would give the South more leverage in dealing with domestic terrorism, as advocated by Lysander Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin B. Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, George Luther Stearns, and others."13

The Northern press at first accepted Southern secession and editors like Horace Greeley said "let the erring sisters go." He at first believed in the right of secession and wrote a long emotional editorial in support of it as South Carolina was seceding.

But he soon realized it would affect his money in a dramatic way so he changed his tune and wanted war as did most of the North:

They were told (accurately) that the free trade ports of New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, and others would undercut the high duty ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, etc. They predicted that the North would lose at least half of its commerce. The Southern economy was prosperous, and the industrial, commercial, and financial classes of the North did not want it to slip beyond their grasp. Simultaneously, Lincoln was insisting that he must have his tariffs. The withdrawal of the South meant that the federal government lost more than 85 percent of its tax base. Also, an independent South with an economy based on free trade would be devastating competition for the North. . . . Some Northern newspapers began advocating the use of military force to prevent this competitive situation.14

Lincoln spoke out of both sides of his mouth like a typical corrupt politician. He "spoke of how a house divided against itself could not stand and how the nation could not remain half slave and half free" while supporting the Corwin Amendment which left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress, where slavery already existed. He spoke of peace while he laid his plans "to trigger war" and he still "insisted on high tariffs."15 After all, Lincoln was president of the North as Wendell Phillips had proclaimed, not president of the whole country.

There were "two potential flashpoints in the spring of 1861: Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens, the last located on Santa Rosa Island in Pensacola harbor, Florida."

Fort Pickens had federal troops inside and "a naval force" outside but they were "outnumbered by Florida volunteers" who held Pensacola.

Florida could have taken the fort but an armistice "was agreed on January 29 and remained in effect until Lincoln broke the agreement in April":

U.S. Captain Israel Vogdes of the First Artillery Regiment was the commander of a Union force aboard the USS Brooklyn. He and his men were supposed to reinforce the fort but stopped at the Pensacola sandbar. When he learned of the armistice, Vogdes returned to his vessel.16

The armistice was honored until:

March 12 when, at Lincoln's command, General Scott sent Captain Vogdes an order: 'At the first favorable moment, you will land your company, reinforce Fort Pickens, and hold the same until further orders.' This order was in direct violation of the armistice of January 29 and was an act of war---issued only eight days after Honest Abe became president.17 (Bold emphasis added.)

Vogdes "did not receivce the order until March 31." He then requested help from Capt. Henry A. Adams of the USS Sabine but Adams knew Lincoln's order would start a war.

Adams wrote to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles:

'I can not take on myself under such insufficient authority as General Scott's order to the fearful responsibility of an act which seems to render civil war inevitable . . . '18 (Bold emphasis added.)

"In his report to the secretary of the Navy," Adams wrote:

'It would be considered not only a declaration but an act of war, and would be resisted to the utmost.'19 (Bold emphasis added.)

Adams went on:

'At present both sides are faithfully observing the agreement [armistice] entered into by the U.S. Government and Mr. [Stephen] Mallory and Colonel [William Henry] Chase. This agreement binds us not to reinforce Fort Pickens unless it shall be attacked or threatened. It binds them not to attack it unless we attempt to reinforce it.'20

Huger W. Johnstone later wrote: "'Captain Adams averted open war on April 1, 1861, by refusing to obey this [Lincoln's] order.'"

Mitcham writes that Captain Adams must have "thought Welles did not understand the situation at Pensacola and did not want to start a war. It did not occur to him [Adams] that starting a war was exactly what Welles wanted to do."21

On April 6 Welles reprimanded Adams and "made it clear that he and the administration wanted war":

'Your dispatch of April 1 is received,' he wrote. 'The Department regrets that you did not comply with the request of Capt. Vogdes. You will immediately on the first favorable opportunity after receipt of this order, afford every facility to Capt. Vogdes to enable him to land the troops under his command, it being the wish and intention of the Navy Department to co-operate with the War Department, in that object.'22

The situation at Fort Sumter was perhaps even more ominous.

In Washington, D.C. "on February 6, Lincoln's agent, Gustavus V. Fox, met with Lieutenant Norman J. Hall, who was sent from Fort Sumter by Major Anderson. They discussed relieving the fort."23

Several more conferences occurred then:

Fox wrote General Scott on March 8, informing him that Hall was bringing the relief plans to Major Anderson if the Rebels would let him back into the fort. The Lincoln administration (including, among others, Lincoln, Fox, Hall, and Montgomery Blair, the newly designated postmaster general) was clearly scheming to relieve Fort Sumter before February 6, and these plans were well advanced by Inauguration Day.24

Confederate commissioners in Washington were lied to and told repeatedly that Fort Sumter would be evacuated though Lincoln's plan all along was to reinforce it, which he knew would start the war. On March 29, Lincoln sent a dispatch to Welles stating:

'I desire that an expedition, to move by sea be got ready to sail as early as the 6th of April . . . ' His memo called for three ships of war (the Pocahontas, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane) to enter Confederate territorial waters, carrying 200 reinforcements with one year's stores.25

Lincoln was determined to start the war somewhere so if Fort Sumter failed, of course he had Fort Pickens.

General Scott on April 2, "sent a remarkable order, dated April 1, to Brevet Colonel Harvey Brown at Fort McHenry, Maryland" commanding Brown to "take command of an expedition to reinforce and hold Fort Pickens." It was signed by Winfield Scott and Abraham Lincoln.26

Mitcham writes:

President do not ordinarily approve orders like this from generals, but Scott knew it would violate the truce with the Confederates, who would undoubtedly fire on the ships and inaugurate civil war. It is obvious that he needed or wanted Lincoln's co-signature before he committed an act of war. He wanted future generations to know that the decision to go to war was Lincoln's, not his. Lincoln not only signed the order, but he also issued a second order (also dated April 1) to 'All officers of the Army and Navy' to aide Brown and co-operate with him as needed. The president signed this order himself.27 (Bold emphasis added.)

Five military missions were now "steaming toward, or about to sail for Southern territorial waters:"

1) the Welles-Fox Expedition, heading for Charleston;

2) the Rowan Expedition, also heading for Charleston;

3) Captain Adams' ships, lurking off Santa Rosa Island;

4) Colonel Brown's Expedition, heading for Pensacola; and

5) Porter's Expedition, also steaming for Pensacola.28

 

Next Week:

A Comprehensive Review of

It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.

Part Twelve

Chapter XIII
Over the Edge
Part Two

(Click Here to go to previous week: Part Ten: Chapter XII, Lincoln and His Agenda)

 

NOTES:
(Scroll down for:
It Wasn't About Slavery, Actual Citation from Book)

1 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 131.

2 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 131-132.

3 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 132.

4 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 132-133.

5 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 133.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 134.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 134-135.

13 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 135.

14 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 136-137.

15 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 137.

16 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 137-138.

17 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 138.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 138-139.

22 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 139.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 141.

26 Ibid.

27 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 142.

28 Ibid.

It Wasn't About Slavery,
Actual Citation from Book
Chap-XIII-NOTES-1-93K
Chap-XIII-NOTES-2-120K
Chap-XIII-NOTES-3-101K
Chap-XIII-NOTES-4-119K