Arlington National Cemetery, 109 year old Confederate Memorial to the Reconciliation and Reunification of our great nation after our bloodiest war. It was the brainchild of Union soldier and president, William McKinley, who said "every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor." The sculptor, internationally renowned Jewish artist Moses Jacob Ezekiel, was a VMI Confederate soldier. Art critic Michael Robert Patterson states that "no sculptor, as far as known, has ever, in any one memorial told as much history as has Ezekiel in his monument at Arlington; and every human figure in it, as well as every symbol, is in and of itself a work of art." In a barbaric crime against art and history, the naming commission and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin want the monument demolished.
The magnificent 108 year old Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery is slated for demolition thanks to Ty Seidule and the politicized Woke naming commission whose mission is to erase Southern history from the Confederate era.
The Confederate Memorial was enthusiastically promoted by Congress, three presidents and veterans North and South to signify the RECONCILIATION and REUNIFICATION of our great nation after the War Between the States.
Educate yourself on this abomination and take action! Time is short!
Here is a link to an informative nine minute video, "The Arlington Confederate Monument," produced by the Abbeville Institute.
Please link to this blog article and share it far and wide!
We can not allow our nation's most sacred burial ground to be dishonored and stained by a Woke political commission. Remember, the Confederate Memorial was the idea of Union veteran and President of the United States, William McKinley. It was enthusiastically approved by Congress. Another president, William Howard Taft, spoke at the laying of the cornerstone. A third president, Woodrow Wilson, spoke at the dedication ceremony June 4, 1914 as did Union and Confederate veterans.
In the War Between the States, 750,000 died and over a million were maimed.
The Confederate Memorial was designed and constructed by internationally renowned Jewish sculptor Moses Ezekiel, himself a Confederate veteran, a graduate of VMI. He is buried with three other Southerners at the base of his beautiful monument thus making it their headstone but also the grave markers for 462 other Confederate graves arranged in concentric circles around the monument and an intergral part of the memorial as was intended by Congress, three presidents, and veterans North and South.
Aerial view of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery with over 500 graves of Confederate military personnel and some family in concentric circles around the monument. Sculptor Moses Ezekiel is buried with two other Confederate soldiers and one Confederate sailor around the base. The monument is literally their headstone but the naming commission and Secretary Austin want the monument destroyed. Respect for Southern dead is not something they care about despite 44% of today's United States military being recruited in the South.
View from the ground at Arlington National Cemetery of the beautiful Confederate Memorial to the reconciliation of North and South. The Woke naming commission and Secretary Austin want it demolished in the cheapest way possible. Photo courtesy Derrick Johnson.
Every American, no matter one's politics, should be OUTRAGED
Here are two good articles from Chronicles Magazine:
Do not allow a Woke, political commission whose standard for historical interpretation is not truth but presentism, based on politics and the goofy woke standards of today.
Call and write your congressional representatives every week and tell them that the Confederate Memorial to the reconciliation and reunification of our great country after a war in which 750,000 Americans died and over a million were maimed, must stand in its magnificent beauty and symbolism for all time!
President William McKinley said after the Spanish-American war in 1898:
. . . every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers . . . The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in this year just passed by the sons and grandsons of those heroic dead.
The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
by Michael R. Bradley
Part Five
General Robert E. Lee General Orders, No. 9 Address to the Army of Northern Virginia, CSA April 10, 1865
General Robert E. Lee, actual picture during the war, fall, 1864, on Traveller, Petersburg, VA.
Hd. Qrs. Army of N. Va. General Orders No. 9
After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them; but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.
ROBERT EDWARD LEE TOOK COMMAND of the Confederate army defending Richmond in the spring of 1862 following the wounding of Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Fair Oaks. Almost immediately, Lee changed the name of his command to the Army of Northern Virginia, and, as such, it would win enduring fame as a staunch military organization. Within a few weeks the men of the ANVa, as it was styled in dispatches, formed a personal bond with their commanding officer, a bond more intense than that shared by the soldiers of any other command with their leader.
The confidence of the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia in their general was unbounded. If Lee“Marse Robert” was their affectionate nickname for himsaid “do this,” they did it without question, confident that their well-being and the success of their cause required it.
Lee was a realist and had told the Confederate government many months before that if the struggle became a siege of Petersburg and Richmond, the war would be lost. The South simply did not have the resources to win a protracted fight of that nature. Still, Lee and his men endured, looking for any opening to avoid the seemingly inevitable.
On April 9, 1865, the inevitable became reality. Following a brief exchange of notes, Lee met with Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all U.S. forces, at the house of Wilmer McLean at Appomattox Court House and signed the terms of surrender, which ended the existence of the Army of Northern Virginia. That same night Lee instructed his adjutant, Colonel Charles Marshall, to write an order to the army bidding them farewell. The address written by Marshall reflects the grace and style of writing produced by a classical education as well as the directness expected in a military communication.
On the morning of April 10, the weather was rainy and a constant stream of visitors to Lee's headquarters tent prevented Marshall from concentrating on his task. About ten o'clock, Lee ordered Marshall to get into Lee's personal ambulance so he could work without interruption. When the first draft, in pencil, was finished, it was taken to Lee who struck out an entire paragraph, made one or two other minor changes, and then instructed Marshall to have it copied in ink with copies going to all Corps commanders. These were all signed in person by Lee and then issued to the appropriate officers. During the day many people made their own copies and brought them to Lee and he signed many of them.
The “original” of General Orders, No. 9 was the pencil draft which Lee amended and it was most certainly destroyed when the copies in ink were made. There is no record of the contents of the paragraph Lee edited out of Marshall's first draft but one may assume Lee thought it might encourage continued bitter feeling. President John F. Kennedy admired Lee for that sentiment when he wrote:
[A]s a New Englander, I recognize that the South is still the land of Washington, who made our Nation - of Jefferson, who shaped its direction - and of Robert E. Lee who, after gallant failure, urged those who had followed him in bravery to reunite America in purpose and courage.2
“General Orders, No. 9” became a regular part of the meetings of the United Confederate Veterans, especially those “Bivouacs,” as the local groups were styled, made up of veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. A hundred years later, at the time of the Civil War Centennial, a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee made a recording of the farewell address. This recording was released at Appomattox on April 10, 1965.
In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, the character and reputation of Lee have come under attack. It has been alleged that Lee lost the war for the South because he was too aggressive, losing lives in attacks instead of husbanding his numbers. Such criticism ignores the military realities of the situation. It may sound wise to remain on the defensive until one's opponent makes a mistake and only then attack. But, what if one's opponent does not make a major mistake that would allow for a successful attack? The point to be defended will be lost. Joseph Johnston used the “passive-aggressive” model in the Atlanta Campaign and every reader of the history of the war knows how that ended. Lee had little choice but to aggressively make his openings.
Much has been made of late that Lee owned slaves. That is not true. Lee was made the executor of the will of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, grandson of Martha Washington and step-grandson and adopted son of George Washington. Custis was the owner of the Arlington Estate, which he passed to his daughter, Mary Anna, wife of Robert E. Lee. Today, that estate is our nation's most sacred burial ground: Arlington National Cemetery.
As executor,3 Lee was responsible for the settlement of Custis's will, and among Custis's possessions were slaves. The executor is not the owner of Custis's property. Lee, like all responsible executors, carried out the stipulations of the will he was executing. These stipulations included the provision that all the Arlington slaves be set free within five years. Lee did this, completing the process in 1862. Lee had labeled slavery a moral problem in 1856 but he saw no ready solution to the matter. At any rate, being administrator of the will of his father-in-law does not make Lee the “owner” of his father-in-law's slaves.
Lee has also been accused of fostering the rise of the “Myth of the Lost Cause” and is claimed to have begun this process in his farewell address. Although called a myth, there is a great deal of truth in the arguments presented under the name “Lost Cause.”
The “Lost Cause” argues that secession, not slavery, caused the war. This is true. If no Southern state had left the Union, who, in the North, would have called for a war to end slavery? The answer is obvious.
This so-called myth argues that the war was fought over States' Rights, i.e., state sovereignty and supremacy over the Federal Government, which had been created as the agent of the states for certain highly limited purposes of government. This was the belief of the Founding Fathers and it is clearly proclaimed in the secession documents of the Southern States. Most foreigners such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Charles Dickens, and the British historian, Sir John Dalberg Acton,4 later Lord Acton, agreed. Acton wrote this to Lee a year-and-a-half after Appomattox:
Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. . . . Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.5
Not surprisingly, States' Rights had recently been upheld by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Case (1857) with respect to slavery.
The point at which Lee is accused specifically of fostering the Lost Cause position is “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.” A look at the 1860 census of the United States shows that Lee was right. The population of the nation in that year was 31,443,321. Of this number 22,000,000 (round figures) lived in the states which remained in the Union, 9,000,000 in the states which seceded. Of the 9,000,000 people in the South almost 4,000,000 were slaves. While the African American population gave strength to the Southern economy and war effort through its labor, it was not a major source of manpower for the armies although some free people of color became Confederate soldiers. The 5,000,000 white population was divided in its loyalties and a significant number of white Southerners joined the U.S. forces.
So, in critical manpower, it was over 22,000,000 white Northerners versus less than 5,000,000 white Southerners. Obviously, the South did face overwhelming numbers. This does not detract from the military accomplishments of the U.S. Army but it does show the “Lost Cause Myth” is no myth.
Lee also had a very clear grasp of the infrastructure which supported both armies. The 1860 census shows that 80% of the country's manufacturing and most of the existing railroad mileage were in states that remained in the Union. The United States also had a stable monetary system based on bullion and a well-functioning government that had been in place for over 60 years. It had an army, navy, merchant marine fleet and relationships with most of the governments of the world.
The South had none of that. The South did not expect war when they seceded. They expected to go on peacefully in their new republic that derived its "just powers from the consent of the governed" as the Declaration of Independence established in 1776. When it became obvious that they were not going to be able to leave in peace, they had to start everything from scratch.
In addition to the North's greater than four-to-one advantage in white population, it also had a pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world with which to feed Union armies continually. While 25% of the Union army were foreign-born immigrants, James McPherson points out that 30% of military age men in the Union states were foreign-born, thus the 25% in the Union army underrepresented the general foreign-born population in the North.6
This may be true but later in the war, when enlistments were low and a real problem for both sides, lavish financial inducements and bounties brought tens of thousands of foreigners into the Union army. All total, "a half-billion dollars" was spent by the North on bounties, and "the conscription-substitute-bounty system produced three-quarters of a million new men." Many foreigners had come for the express purpose of "joining the army to cash in on bounties or substitute fees."7
The South had no such pipeline of manpower at this critical hour with its money virtually worthless and its harbors bottled up by the Union blockade.
The ability to sustain an extended military effort as well as the population to do so, was heavily weighted toward the North. “Overwhelming numbers and resources” is a solid fact, not a myth.
Lee does not deal with the causes of the conflict directly in his farewell address, but, for him, the overriding issue was that of serving his home, his state. That was made clear in 1861 when, after being offered command of the U.S. Army by President Lincoln, he instead resigned and offered his services to Virginia.
The idea that soldiers on both sides saw themselves fighting to defend their homes is born out by James M. McPherson in For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War. McPherson concludes that slavery was not the issue that caused most men to fight. Protection of home was.8
Lee's farewell address acknowledges the great love Lee's men had for their leader, and it shows the love and respect Lee had for his men. They were ready to continue the war despite the odds.
The address is poignant. It reflects the character of the man who issued it, a man who was strong but humble and who thought “duty” the most sublime word in the English language.
Like President Kennedy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had great respect for Gen. Lee and appreciated his efforts to bind up the nation's wounds after its bloodiest war. On August 9, 1960, Eisenhower answered an angry letter from a New York dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, who had written eight days earlier and questioned why he kept a picture of Gen. Lee in his White House office.
Dr. Scott wrote:
I do not understand how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me.
The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being held as one of our heroes.9
President Eisenhower wrote:
Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.
The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
by Michael R. Bradley
Part Six
A Critical Look at General Ulysses S. Grant Address to the Soldiers of the Armies of the United States, USA June 2, 1865
NOTES:
1 Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), Vol. 4, 154-55.
2 John F. Kennedy, Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Raleigh, NC, September 17, 1960, Coliseum Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/speech-senator-john-f-kennedy-raleigh-nc-coliseum, accessed 5/3/2020.
3 According to FindLaw, the world's leader in online legal information for consumers and small businesses, here's what the executor of a will does: "By definition, an executor is entrusted with the large responsibility of making sure a person's last wishes are granted with regard to the disposition of their property and possessions. / When it boils down to essentials, an executor of a will is responsible for making sure that any debts and creditors that the deceased had are paid off, and that any remaining money or property is distributed according to their wishes." See https://estate.findlaw.com/estate-administration/what-does-an-executor-do.html, accessed May 10, 2020.
4 John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton (born 1834, died 1902), is perhaps best known for the aphorism "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." See his biography at https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Emerich-Edward-Dalberg-Acton-1st-Baron-Acton, accessed May 3, 2020.
5 John Dalberg Acton to Gen. Robert E. Lee, November 4, 1866, The Acton-Lee Correspondence, https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/09/no_author/famed-libertarian-writes-robert-e-lee, accessed May 3, 2020.
6 James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 606.
9 Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee, August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.
10 Dwight D. Eisenhower letter, August 9, 1960, to Leon W. Scott, in "Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee," August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.
The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
by Michael R. Bradley
Part Four
Prologue, Setting the Stage
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Part Four of Four, Conclusion
(Continued from Part Three)
AS A MATTER OF RECORD, the British bought and sold black people legally until 1807, and New Englanders and New Yorkers bought and sold black people legally until 1808.
New Englanders and New Yorkers then carried on an illegal slave trade until well after the War Between the States.
Here's how the 2005 book, Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery, written by three New England journalists then with the Hartford Courant, described New York's illegal slave trade:
New York City's bustling seaport became the hub of an enormously lucrative illegal slave trade. Manhattan shipyards built ships to carry captive Africans, the vessels often outfitted with crates of shackles and with the huge water tanks needed for their human cargo. A conservative estimate is that during the illegal trade's peak years, 1859 and 1860, at least two slave ships---each built to hold between 600 and 1,000 slaves---left lower Manhattan every month.1
W. E. B. Du Bois in his famous book, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870, writes that Boston, New York and Portland, Maine were the largest slave trading ports on the planet in 1862, a year into the War Between the States:
'The number of persons engaged in the slave-trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and Boston are only second to her in that distinction. Slave dealers added largely to the wealth of our commercial metropolis; they contributed liberally to the treasuries of political organizations, and their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.'2
The North's addiction to slave trading should come as no surprise. Much of the infrastructure of New England and New York was built with the enormous profits from their slave trading.
Five out of six New England states were vigorous slave trading states. Little Rhode Island was a dynamo and America's transatlantic leader in the eighteenth century
launching nearly 1,000 voyages to Africa and carrying at least 100,000 captives back across the Atlantic. The captains and crews of these ships were often the veteran seamen of America: New Englanders.3
Rhode Island's Reverend Samuel Hopkins admits the slave trade was Newport, Rhode Island's "first wheel of commerce" but it was not just Newport's first wheel of commerce, it was all of New England and New York's first wheel of commerce:
'The inhabitants of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the greater share of this traffic, of all these United States. This trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended.'4
Another famous Rhode Island slave trader, John Brown, whose family founded Brown University, said in a Providence newspaper in 1789:
'there was no more crime in bringing off a cargo of slaves than in bringing off a cargo of jackasses.'5
Like the drug trade today, the slave trade was lucrative. When you can buy a slave in Africa perhaps a warrior that had himself been on a mission to capture slaves but instead got captured for $50 and sell him for $1,000, that is a huge profit even today, much less back then.6
Harvard professor, Bernard Bailyn, "dean of colonial historians," wrote:
[T]he main factor in New England's phenomenal economic success, 'the key dynamic force,' was slavery.7
Black tribal chieftains in Africa were the starting point of global slavery and the African diaspora. For centuries, slaves were Africa's chief export. They were the unfortunate captives of tribal warfare, gathered up and waiting in around 40 slave forts built by the British and other Europeans up and down the African coast because they needed labor in their colonies.
Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in a New York Times article, "Ending the Slavery Blame-Game," quotes Boston University historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood who estimated "that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders."
Gates gets into specifics:
[T]he sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asanta Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese. When Njinga converted to Christianity, she sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming that they had violated her new Christian precepts.8
Gates writes about the shocking but admirable display by some African leaders today who have begged African Americans to forgive them for selling their ancestors into slavery:
In 1999, for instance, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin astonished an all-black congregation in Baltimore by falling to his knees and begging African-Americas' forgiveness for the "shameful" and "abominable" role Africans played in the trade. Other African leaders, including Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, followed Mr. Kerekou's bold example.9
Captives in Africa were held sometimes for months, chained and shackled in pens inside slave forts on Africa's coast, waiting for European, New York and New England slave traders.
They would then be placed into the bowels of scorching hot slave ships that were filled to capacity with Africans on their backs, chained side by side to the decks below, where there was no ventilation, no fresh air.
Poor slaves had to endure the stench of vomit, urine, feces and death cooked together in ovenlike heat for months through the Middle Passage. No description of Hell could be worse than a New England or New York slave ship, or a British or Portuguese or Spanish slave ship before them.
The North, especially New England and New York, with Europeans, own the cruelty and brutality of the slave trade, which was more brutal than slavery itself because slave traders did not have to live with their slaves. All they had to do was deliver them and collect their money.
In the American slave trade, New England and New York own the stench and horror of slavery's Middle Passage.
Academia may be shocked to find out but nobody was disappointed that slavery was over, though it was not yet over for three of the six Union slave states that had slavery months after the war, until the Thirteenth Amendment ended it in December, 1865.
As Lincoln himself said, he didn't know how to end slavery and if he had been born into it as Southerners were, he would do no different than they.
Southerners would have unquestionably ended slavery in a better way than what happened with almost a million blacks dying from disease and exposure after the War Between the States10 followed by a century of second class citizenship. It was in the South's best interest to end slavery with peace, opportunity and good will for all.
Slavery existed in the South but blacks and whites did not hate each other. They got along better than anywhere in America, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted, because the South was a bi-racial nation. There were more free blacks in the South, around 250,000, out of their population of nine million, than there were black people in the entire North out of their population of twenty-two million.
What did Northerners know about blacks except that they had made huge fortunes selling them, and they hated them and didn't want them in the North as job competition or in the West as neighbors.
Literary colossus Charles Dickens, in addition to his many novels and short stories, published a periodical, All the Year Round. He was on top of current events and our American war. Dickens wrote:
Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and that until it was convenient to make a pretence that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale.11
Jim Crow was born in the North as C. Vann Woodward states in The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and he lived in the North a long time before moving South.
All nations ended slavery with gradual, compensated emancipation and we could have too but there was no plan by virtue signaling abolitionists, and, of course, there was no offer from the North to contribute from the treasury to buy the freedom of black slaves in the South who would then come North and be job competition.
Several Northern and Western states had laws forbidding blacks from even visiting, much less living there, including Lincoln's Illinois.
Next Week:
A Summary of
The Last Words
The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
by Michael R. Bradley
Part Five
General Robert E. Lee
General Orders, No. 9 Address to the Army of Northern Virginia, CSA
2 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896), 179. Du Bois is quoting the Continental Monthly, January, 1862, p. 87, the article "The Slave-Trade in New York."
8 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Ending the Slavery Blame-Game," the New York Times, April 22, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html, accessed 5-21-22.
10 Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom, African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012).
11 Charles Dickens, letter to W. W. De Cerjat 16 March 1862, in Graham Storey, ed., The Letters of Charles Dickens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), Vol. Ten, 1862-1864, 53-54.
The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
by Michael R. Bradley
Part Three
Prologue, Setting the Stage
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Part Three of Four
(Continued from Part Two)
GREAT BRITAIN was the dominant economic and military power on earth in the 1860s. The cotton gin, short for "cotton engine," had revolutionized cotton production, which had led to an ironclad relationship between the South and Great Britain:
By the eve of the Civil War, Great Britain was largely clothing the Western world, using Southern-grown, slave-picked cotton.1
All Southerners had to do was establish formal trade and military treaties with Great Britain, with whom they already had an "ironclad" relationship because of cotton, and the North would not be able to beat the South in a war.
Lincoln knew all this and was not going to allow the free-trade Confederate States of America to rise to power on his southern border.
He knew that the future of the American nation for at least the next century, maybe forever, was at stake right then.
That's why, with four times the white population of the South, enormous weapon manufacturing capability, a pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world with which to feed Union armies (25% of the Union army was foreign born), an army, navy and other advantages at that point in history, he sent five hostile military missions into Southern waters in March and April, 1861 to start a war.2
Several Northern newspapers such as the Providence (R.I.) Daily Post saw exactly what Lincoln was doing. In an editorial entitled "WHY?" published the day after the commencement of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, April 13, 1861, it wrote:
We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country. . . . Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor.
The New York Herald eight days earlier wrote:
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.3
One gets little debate in Woke academia or the idiot news media on the cause of the war because vigorous debate is impossible. Those institutions are virtually 100% liberal and tow the Woke liberal line so the enraged mob doesn't show up at their office or, God forbid, accuse them of being a racist.
Forty years ago, historian Joe Gray Taylor wanted to examine the causes of the war but quickly concluded that esteemed historian David H. Donald was "correct when he said in 1960 that the causation of the Civil War was dead as a serious subject of historical analysis" and that "A 'Southern' point of view on the secession crisis no longer exists among professional historians."4
Without a "'Southern' point of view on the secession crisis" you can never get to the truth of American history. You can not have a debate with only one side presented. The Bible in Proverbs 18:17 says "The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him."
In the 1960s, academia and the news media went from truth as their standard, to the political advantage of the left as their standard, because, as stated, they are virtually 100% liberal.
Like the political operatives they are, so much of their history is filthy politics, not truth. They want to control the past so they can control the future, like Orwell said:
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.5
To have a debate and get at the truth both sides need to be represented 50/50 so they can challenge each other to the full extend of their intelligence, knowledge and passion and see who has the stronger argument.
Politicized academia and the idiot news media are 100/0 so truth is impossible yet if you don't agree with their Woke history, you are a racist hatemonger who deserves to die and certainly not have a career.
Esteemed historian Eugene Genovese (Roll Jordan Roll, The World the Slaves Made, et al.) said 30 years ago that to speak positively about the Old South
is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white Southerners, and arguably black Southerners as well, of their heritage . . . 6 (Bold emphasis added)
The destruction of century old historic monuments to Southern war dead is also a cultural and political atrocity, and it is immoral.
Those monuments are gifts from the people of the past to the people of the future. Their destruction denies the people of the future the opportunity to gaze on them and read the inscriptions and ponder for themselves what happened in the past.
Much has been written in the past 40 years on the politicization of our history and its unavoidable result, the falsification of our history. Allan Bloom, in his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind, confirms that "humanities and social science departments within universities [where History resides] had abandoned objectivity and truth and become hopelessly politicized."7
David Harlan, in his book The Degradation of American History, explains how it began. He says that, starting in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement, leftist historians began criticizing American history as elitist. He writes that academia wanted to expose the complicity of white men "in the violence and brutality that now seemed to be the most important truth about American history." They "feel no need to say what is good in American history."8
Keith Windschuttle, in The Killing of History, writes that most young people today are "taught to scorn the traditional values of Western culture - equality, freedom, democracy, human rights - as hollow rhetoric used to mask the self-interest of the wealthy and powerful. This teaching, Bloom argued, had bred a cynical, amoral, self-centered younger generation who lacked any sense of inherited wisdom from the past."
Windschuttle points out that for 2,400 years history has ranked "with philosophy and mathematics as among the most profound and enduring contributions that ancient Greece made, not only to European civilization, but to the human species as a whole." History's "essence" has been to "tell the truth, to describe as best as possible what really happened" but today, in much of academia and the news media, "these assumptions are widely rejected."9
Many in the humanities and social sciences "assert that it is impossible to tell the truth about the past" because "we can only see the past through the perspective of our own culture and, hence, what we see in history are our own interests and concerns reflected back at us."
Because of this, supposedly, the entire point of history is no longer valid therefore "there is no fundamental distinction any more between history and myth" or between "fiction and non-fiction."10
In other words, nothing exists except what Woke political liberals in academia and the idiot news media tell us exists.
Academia's hate is having their desired effect. Dr. Edward M. Gilbreth noted in his Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.) column on July 15, 2021 that in the demographic of 18-24 year olds, a recent Issues and Insights poll finds that only "36 percent of them say they are very or extremely proud to be Americans."
In contrast, that same poll finds that "68 percent of adults say they are 'very' or 'extremely' proud to be an American, with another 15 'moderately' proud." The 18-24 demographic was the only one less than 50%.
Dr. Gilbreth concludes that "attempts to describe the country as corrupt, racist, unfair and in need of 'transformation' have not had much impact on the general population" but it has on young people.
Distinguished professor emeritus of History of the University of South Carolina in Columbia, Clyde N. Wilson, states:
[D]espite the thirst for history and the centrality of historical thinking in our consciousness, academic historians have never been more irrelevant, incestuous, and unreadable.11
We are living in Orwell's Oceania, where, as James S. Robbins writes in Erasing America, Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past:
Progressives seek to demean and demolish, elevating the victims of the past as an indictment of the present. They wield history as a weapon on behalf of the aggrieved, never gratified by the progress made. Indeed, as one supposed injustice after another is rectified, their attacks become fiercer, their complaints more numerous, . . .12
Somebody needs to tell race-obsessed academia that this is 2022 and not 1922 or 1822. We have had a Civil Rights Movement in America. There is unlimited opportunity for everybody. If you fail in America, it's your own fault.
There is not a single law in the entire country discriminating against non-whites because of skin color, which is why millions break our laws every month to come here.
In fact, there is often discrimination against whites and Asians in such things as college admissions (of course, where else but academia would you find such obvious discrimination).
We don't want academia's identity politics and racist hate like Critical Race Theory, or the news media's fake history like the 1619 Project.
The primary theme of the 1619 Project is that the American Revolutionary War was fought because the British were about to abolish slavery. That is a complete fraud, an invention without a shred of evidence. Not a single letter, speech, document, nothing.
Peter W. Wood states in 1620, A Critical Response to the 1619 Project:
The 1619 Project aligns with the views of those on the progressive left who hate America and would like to transform it radically into a different kind of nation.13
Wood points out that Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, has stated many times her goal is reparations. He concludes there is "only bitterness and anger" in the 1619 Project, that it "is a bucket lowered into the poisoned well of identity politics."14
Next Week:
A Summary of
The Last Words
The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
by Michael R. Bradley
Part Four
Prologue, Setting the Stage
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Part Four of Four, Conclusion
NOTES:
1 Farrow, Lang, Frank, Complicity, 10. Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin in 1794.
2 Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 142. Mitcham states that by the first of April, 1861, the following five military expeditions were "in, 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;
5) Porter's Expedition, also steaming for Pensacola."
3 Editorial, New York Herald, April 5, 1861, in Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 147.
4 Joe Gray Taylor, "The White South from Secession to Redemption," in John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, Interpreting Southern History, Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 162-164.
5 George Orwell, 1984 (New York: New American Library, 1950), 32. This was one of the slogans of Big Brother's English Socialist Party of Oceania, INGSOC.
6 Eugene D. Genovese, The Southern Tradition, The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), xi-xii.
7 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, in Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History, How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 10.
8 David Harlan, The Degradation of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), xv. This paragraph, written by me, comes verbatim from the Introduction to my book, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians, Volume One: His Best Work (Charleston: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2017).
9 Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History, How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 1-2.
11 Clyde Wilson, February 12, 2019 Review of Historical Consciousness or the Remembered Past by John Lukacs (Schocken Books, 1985) in The Abbeville Review, https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/historical-consciousness, accessed February 12, 2019. Dr. Wilson taught in the History Department at the University of South Carolina for over 30 years. He is primary editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun and author or editor of over 30 books and over 600 articles, essays and reviews.
12 James S. Robbins, Erasing America, Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2018), 3.
13 Peter W. Wood, 1620, A Critical Response to the 1619 Project (New York: Encounter Books, 2020), 3.
14 Wood, 1620, A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, 172.
“Marse Robert” was their affectionate nickname for him
perhaps a warrior that had himself been on a mission to capture slaves but instead got captured 