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That is why, within just a few months of the Proclamation, a number of commanders in the field...felt sanctioned to unleash the equivalent of what in the 20th century came to be called "total war"-a war upon civilians and their property in the South, with attendant looting, murder, arson, and rape, and neither women, children, the old and infirm, or oftentimes even blacks, were spared. As General-in-Chief Halleck noted in a letter to Ulysses Grant on March 31, 1863: The character of the war has very much changed..There is now no possible hope of reconciliation with the rebels..There can be...

De Oppresso Liber? We Shall See This is addressed first and foremost to the entire U.S. military, but especially to the military Special Operations Command and community. Secondly, it is addressed to federal LEOs, and especially to their SRTs, such as the FBI HRT (many of whom are former military special operations). This comes from combat arms and special operations veterans, along with veteran Sheriffs and police officers, within the Oath Keepers organization: Critical Warning: The Ammon Bundy led occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon must be handled as a normal, non-crisis, law enforcement matter, and preferably...

The world cringed when the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist Statues in Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed the historic artifacts because Buddhist statues represented something the Taliban considered immoral. They didn’t want people to be reminded that people in the region had at one time been involved in something that was no longer considered morally acceptable. Buddhist statues were not “politically correct” under the Taliban’s view of the Muslim religion. Allowing the statues to stay advertised that Afghans had once behaved in what the Taliban regarded as an immoral fashion. Recent reports claim that ISIS may be doing the same thing to...

A map of deaths from heart disease reveals the American South ablaze in red; of the 10 states with the highest rate of death from heart disease among white people in 2010, all but two are below the Mason-Dixon line. To Richard Steckel, an Ohio State University economist, that striking pattern raises a seemingly outlandish, but utterly serious question: Could the heavy toll of heart disease in the American South today have been triggered, in part, by the region's rapid rise out poverty since the 1950s? In a new paper, Steckel argues that decades of poverty caused by the Civil...

Happy New Year. I promise there will be some actual 160-year-old information to present later on, but for now let us continue catching up on . . . Continued from 1855 reply #371 1 2 3 "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass," by Frederick Douglass, (1892 edition)

Mayor Landrieu created a firestorm, stoked racial divisions, and attacked the city’s history, all to promote his political career. Yesterday, in the “City that Care Forgot,” New Orleans politicians displayed very little care for their city’s history, but showed they cared a great deal for political correctness. In a 6-1 vote, City Council members passed an ordinance supported by Mayor Mitch Landrieu to declare four historic Confederate monuments “nuisances” and remove them from the city landscape. It was a big political victory for Landrieu who created this controversy after the murder of nine African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, by...

The New Orleans City Council has voted in favor of removing prominent Confederate monuments along some of its busiest streets - a sweeping move by a city seeking to break with its Confederate past. The council's 6-1 vote on Thursday afternoon allows the city to remove four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years. The decision came after months of impassioned debate. Now, the city faces possible lawsuits seeking to keep the monuments where they are. ...

This question is directed to Obama and his admin, all dhimmicrats, GOPe RINOs like Rubio, McCain, McGrahamnesty, Kascich, Bush, and the usual cheap labor lobby traitors: You say you want to keep us safe and that we have to sacrifice our rights for security, and that you can't tell which Muslims are radical vs which will remain peaceful (until they too are radicalized), but why then do we allow the bloodthirsty enemy to infiltrate into our country? Would not the prudent thing be to place a moratorium on importing people from Muslim countries and immediately cease allowing refugees in? It's...

Sullivan Ballou Letter July 14, 1861 Maj. Sullivan Ballou The following is a letter written by Maj. Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah (née Shumway) at home in Rhode Island. Ballou died a week later, at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was 32. BallouPortraitCamp Clark, Washington My very dear Sarah: The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more. Our movement may be...

Before when free-soil men invoked the right of revolution in defense of their political rights, proslavery men condemned them for defying the legitimate government. But proslavery men feared the loss of their right to own slaves as much as free soilers feared the loss of the right to exclude slavery. At Hickory Point, [Kansas] a squabble over land claims ignited these political quarrels. A settler named Franklin M. Coleman had been squatting on land abandoned by some Hoosiers, who subsequently sold the claim to Jacob Branson, another Hoosier. In late 1854, when Branson informed Coleman of his legal claim and...

Putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria to counter the Islamic State and take on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime would be a mistake, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday."I don't believe the answer is sending boots on the ground to Syria," the Republican candidate for president told reporters in Washington. "President Obama - and I think far too many Republicans - are eager to get us in the middle of an internecine civil war in Syria. We don't have a dog in that fight."Assad is a "monster" who has murdered women and children and gassed his own citizens,...

Syria's army and rebels were locked in talks Wednesday night to reach a 15-day ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta region east of the capital, a monitor and a security source told AFP. These are the first known talks aiming for a truce in the region and are likely being brokered by Russian or Iranian mediators, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. If agreement is reached, "a ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta would begin at 6:00 am (0400 GMT) Thursday and will last 15 days," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. A senior Syrian security source told AFP "talks are ongoing...

Tennessee State Representative Glen Casada tells Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that he wants Republican Governor Bill Haslam to call out the National Guard to prevent additional Syrian refugees from entering the state. Further, Casada tells Breitbart News the 30 Syrian refugees settled in the state last year need to be re-vetted and sent back to ICE if they don't pass muster. "THE ISIS headquarters said we are embedding terrorists in refugees and they’re coming to the U.S. The FBI director today said that we may have missed those that are associated with ISIS or are ISIS trained that...

Pro-government forces in Syria clashed with Islamic State fighters around a military air base in the north of the country on Tuesday as they tried to break the jihadists' siege on the facility, a group monitoring the war said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said forces fighting on the side of the Syrian government, including Lebanese and Iranian militiamen, were trying to secure Kweires air base, which has been under attack for nearly two years.

Germany now is somewhere at the edge of anarchy and sliding towards civil war, or to become a "banana republic without any government," says Hansjoerg Mueller of the Alternative for Germany party.

The Civil War is, as Shelby Foote noted, at the crossroads of our being. Looked at one way, it marked the end of a long struggle against slavery and the beginning of a long one for civil rights and racial equality. Looked at another, it marked the end of limited government and the beginning of the encroaching, ever-present Leviathan that exists today. These memories can be both in sync and in conflict. After all, it was the deployment of strong government in the form of a dominant army and the passage of federal amendments that played a large role in...

On November 2, The Daily Beast pointed to recent statements from President Obama and Hillary Clinton regarding the implementation of Australian-style gun confiscation and suggested “civil war could erupt on American soil” if any administration actually tried to confiscate privately owned firearms. The Daily Beast theoretically agreed that “confiscation on a massive scale” may be “the only way to solve American gun violence,” but they pointed out that it was not realistic and suggested Hillary risks causing irreparable divisions by talking about confiscation then mocking gun owners as conspiracy theorists waiting for “black helicopters” to come take their guns away....

"My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria." If you like your boots-free Syria, you can keep your boots-free Syria. The White House reversed course today and announced that the Obama administration would be deploying special forces troops and military advisers to Syria. The new White House policy directly contradicts multiple promises personally made by President Barack Obama in 2013 that he would not put combat boots on the ground in Syria.

The change in rhetoric (and apparent shift in strategy) comes just days after the US seemingly prepared the public for what might be coming by releasing helmet cam footage of what Washington says was a raid on an ISIS prison by Delta Force (accompanied by the Peshmerga). 70 prisoners were allegedly freed although not before the US suffered its first combat death in Iraq since 2011. The timing of the video is suspect, to say the least. It came just days after Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford visited Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi in an effort to dissuade Baghdad...

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has confirmed that the Turkish military has attacked Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) said Turkey shot at its forces in the town of Tal Abyad on Sunday. The YPG has been a key ally of the US in fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria. Turkey fears advances by the YPG near its Syrian border could fuel separatist sentiments amongst Kurds in Turkey. The attacks come amid increasing tensions in Turkey ahead of elections. "We said the [YPG-aligned Democratic Union Party] PYD will not go west of...