We Don't Need Another CIVIL WAR!

Old School ^ | 6/8/21 | Patrick Rooney

[rebuildus]

I’ve been watching documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ classic series The Civil War , and I’m loving it! Since coming to the South, my interest in the horrific fight between Americans has increased dramatically.

I’ve also read Bill O’Reilly’s / Martin Dugard’s book Killing Lincoln, which I also enjoyed immensely.

Watching The Civil War, I heard Frederick Douglass quoted many times, which piqued my interest too, so now I’m also reading his autobiography! I definitely highly recommend this one. Too many have white-washed Slavery with an image of happy slaves joyfully singing spirituals. This is the other side, from the perspective of an ex-slave.

In times past, I may have watched The Civil War with a jaundiced eye, suspect that it originally aired on liberal PBS, or that Ken Burns is probably a liberal.

But I’m watching it with an open mind, and though I’m sure some people may tell me that it’s biased and is missing this or that key fact, I find it even-handed, and just as important–HUMANE.

In our mad desire to “win” in the political and cultural arena, I find a severe shortage of humanity among us (“right” and “left”). No, I will not equate the two, and pretend that humanity is equally lacking in the two sides. Many leftists are out of their minds with rage and destructive impulses. Yet, I see too little love on the right side of the spectrum as well.

That’s a problem.

As I watch The Civil War, I’m constantly struck by the good and bad on BOTH sides:

The North stood against the evil of Slavery (that’s a HUGE mark in their favor). Yet, life in northern cities could be de-humanizing, particularly in contrast with more natural and healthy rural living, which the South personified.

And the destruction of states’ rights, which Lincoln started, opened the door to today’s full-on ASSAULT against these rights. Yet nobody can rationally say that any state has the right to sanction the buying and selling of human beings against their will.

The South had a healthy distrust of the corrupting power of the federal government. Unfortunately for them, this distrust was so great that it impeded them from coming together sufficiently within their OWN government to maximize their chances for winning the war.

That so many Americans were essentially okay with a system that treated other Americans as PROPERTY is unsettling, to be frank. Of course, things have not changed all that much: the WHOLE country (North and South) permits the slaughter of unborn children in the womb. So are we any better than the slave-holders?

My point here, is that our hatred for our fellow man blinds us to the GOOD that resides within him. If the North and South COMBINED the good aspects of each, there never would have been a Civil War, and Reconstruction would have gone much better for all concerned, particularly the ex-slaves.

This principle is true of virtually EVERY division we have: black vs. white, right vs. left, rural vs. city, vegan vs. carnivore, “internal” vs. “external” martial arts, calisthenics vs. weight training, etc.

Tribes rule what was once the UNITED States of America, and this same phenomenon is playing out worldwide.

Rise of the “Tribal Chiefs”

Everywhere we see the rise of “tribal chiefs”–those who benefit via money and power from fomenting DIVISION amongst us. We see it all over the Internet–“influencers” who get clicks by insulting people who don’t agree with them.

You probably watch some of them. We all do.

Think about it–is this really productive? Does this place us in a more or less united position? Many of the people doing this call themselves “Christians.” Is this Christian?

Tribes are typically led by “chiefs” who are charismatic, have a way with words, are bold, and insatiable for attention. They cater to our worst instincts. It reminds me of one of my favorite old quotes…

"The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise"--Thomas Paine

Tribalism is killing our unity, and thus killing our nation and the civilized world. We must overcome it or perish!

I believe healing starts when we recognize the part we are playing in this deadly game. This site will continue to promote the best in natural health, success, and freedom, and it will continue to point out those who are enemies of these, but it will not indulge in gratuitous insults to build our readership.

And I have no illusions–we will not ALL unite. Only those of goodwill, despite our differences. But I believe that will be enough to save our countries, or at least to safeguard those of us who trust God’s grace and the power of a people united.

Patrick Rooney is the Founder of OldSchoolUs.com. He communicates clearly and fearlessly during perilous times about natural health, success, and freedom. To reach Patrick, email him at info@oldschoolus.com.

[woodpusher]

I don’t get it. First you expend an entire post on excoriating James Gilmore. That’s he is not an authoritative source, that he is a spy who uses “fake names”, blah blah blah......

And here in this recent post you completely rely on Gilmore and quote him ad infinitum. Like he is your new best friend. Of course you are using him, as it suits your own purpose, to bash Lincoln and his “plausible deniability”.

You get it perfectly, and your clumsy effort to make believe you fail to do so is noted.

Indeed, you get it rather like the Editor of The Atlantic who wrote of Lincoln's successful effort to use the (former) reputation of the magazine to further his own political ends.

Editor’s Note

A Half a Dozen Battles

Journalism in America is in perilous shape, and independence is more important than ever.

By Jeffrey Goldberg
November 2017 Issue

In the summer of 1864, Abraham Lincoln blessed a quixotic attempt by a Methodist minister named Colonel James F. Jaquess and a journalist named James R. Gilmore to broach with the Confederacy the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the Civil War. Jaquess and Gilmore crossed Union lines under the white flag of truce and called on Jefferson Davis, the rebel president, and Judah Benjamin, his secretary of state, in Richmond. The meeting was entirely unsuccessful.

Upon his return to Washington, Gilmore presented Lincoln with a report of Davis’s recalcitrance. The news did not displease the president; he saw political advantage in publicizing the obstinacy of his enemies. Lincoln asked Gilmore, “What do you propose to do with this?”

Gilmore answered: “Put a beginning and an end to it, sir … and hand it to the Tribune,” Horace Greeley’s New York newspaper.

Lincoln responded: “Can’t you get it into The Atlantic Monthly? It would have less of a partisan look there.”

Gilmore answered: “No doubt I can, sir, but there would be some delay.”

Lincoln suggested that the delay would be worthwhile, because the article “could be worth as much to us as a half a dozen battles” in the war.

Gilmore sent a short dispatch to a Boston newspaper, and then a longer—and definitive—account to The Atlantic.

We who are lucky enough to work at The Atlantic, and to celebrate, this month, its 160th birthday, are naturally captivated by the magazine’s history. Jefferson Davis episode is one of the more fascinating stories from our past, for at least three reasons. Not least of them is the evident esteem in which America’s greatest president held this magazine. Presidents have written for The Atlantic with regularity. And we have tried, since the time Nathaniel Hawthorne served as our Civil War correspondent, to cover the presidency carefully, deeply, and critically.

Davis episode also interests me because the wily Lincoln sought to exploit The Atlantic’s reputation for fairness and detachment—our founding manifesto promised readers that the magazine would be “of no party or clique”—for political advantage. And he succeeded. The lesson here is obvious: We must always—but particularly in moments of high political passion—guard our independence.

The Atlantic was used by Lincoln for political propaganda purposes.

Your attempt to deny embarrassment is duly noted.

[woodpusher] Your source documented that Lincoln held a meeting to establish plausible deniability and that Lincoln issued their passes, acknowledged they would be acting as spies, decided the story should be published in The Atlantic, directed that he be given the copy before publication for editing, edited the story prior to publication in The Atlantic, and orchestrated the whole affair for political election purposes.”

[HandyDandy] “My own source?” What are you smoking? My source was the Atlantic article of 1862. No mention of spies, plausible deniability etc.etc. You are getting all mixed-up, dude.

Your source was James R. Gilmore using the pseudonym of Edmund Kirke to publish propaganda in The Atlantic.

Your source, James R. Gilmore, also published that Lincoln advised that they would be acting as spies, the Lincoln orchestrated the affair,

Do you want to know what I think?

I can hardly wait. I will alert the media.

I think you stole the whole idea of Gilmore exposing Lincoln’s “plausible deniability” from:

[Quote from Amazon re an e-book]

https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Recollections-Abraham-Expanded-Annotated-ebook/dp/B00I8DEQ2E

You think I stole the whole idea of Gilmore exposing Lincoln from a book by Gilmore which clearly indicates what Lincoln did. And Gilmore was your source, that being the real name behind the pseudonym Edmund Kirke.

And you think I used an Amazon preview. Nope. That's the way you perform research, with a Google search to a free preview from Amazon. I just get the whole book, 1898 edition. I made no use of Amazon whatever regarding James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke).

Your Amazon folly is attributed to BIG BYTE BOOKS in 2014. My citation was to Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and The Civil War, Boston, L.C. Page and Company, Inc., 1898. I quoted from pages 240, 242-244, and 287-290. And you think all that was in the Amazon preview that you looked at. I scanned pages from an 1898 edition by L.C. Page and Company, and have never before heard of your BIG BYTE BOOKS.

From the positive point of view, The Atlantic did apologize to the public for letting themselves be fooled into publishing propaganda for Lincoln's political purposes. They said they learned their lesson.

[DiogenesLamp]

They had not entered upon the anti-slavery crusade with the feeling that animated the abolitionists; their “oral” sentiments were only borrowed for the occasion. The elections being over, they had no further use for them.

This conforms with what I have learned from reading other material on the subject. "Slavery" was an election tactic, and the powers that were didn't really care about slavery. It was a pretense just to gain power.

It was a con, and the 1860 Republicans were the party of the Con. All they cared about was government power, because so many connected people were gaining their wealth through control of government policies and spending.

Same then as today, with only the party names reversed.

Thank you for finding that. I had not previously seen this material, though I was familiar with Ward Hill Lamon, specifically regarding the arrest warrant for Judge Taney.

[BroJoeK]

woodpusher: "Your lengthy disquisition on this irrelevant basis is taken under advisement."

Because you're a Democrat, we have to translate your words into comprehensible English -- "lengthy" means you just can't bear to face the truth.
"Irrelevant" means you can't admit when your wrong.
In this particular example, you were desperately hoping to weaponize census numbers on free-black populations against Northerners, to prove "Northerners hate blacks".
In reality, population numbers show free-blacks increasing faster in the North (+30,000) than in the South (+23,000), so naturally, you being a born Democrat, you go berserk with accusations against the numbers and for claims of "irrelevancy".

woodpusher: "Your garbage, which originated in 2008 by Erin Bradford, states that it included northern slave states with the South."

You still sound very confused & disoriented, so I'll try to help out again.
In most discussions about that time, "the North" means free states and "the South" means slave-states.
People who wish to include some slave-states in "the North" normally do so by using the term "the Union" and for the South, "the Confederacy".

woodpusher: "At the time of the 1860 census, there were no Confederate states.
The Census did not take four states and arbitrarily assign them to something called 'The South.' "

Right, slave-holding states were considered "the South" and free-states "the North".

woodpusher: "California has not moved north, and President Joe Biden is not from the South."

California was a free-state, aka "the North" and Delaware was a slave-state, aka "the South".
California was a Northern Union state, Delaware was a Southern Union state.
Now I "get" that you have some terrible mental block against the truth, but you'll need to work on that.

woodpusher: "The Census statistics reflect the free Black populations of FIFTEEN slave states."

It also lists free Black populations of all free-states.
So how did you become so very confused about this?

woodpusher: "It is historical fact that there were more free Blacks in the fifteen (15) slave states than in the free states."

Slightly more in 1860, just as there were in, for example, 1790.
But in 1860 the populations of free-Blacks in free-states were growing faster, overall, than in slave-states.
Why does that drive you so crazy?

woodpusher: "I shall proceed with the question you had to run from in fear of the truth.
With gradual emancipation supposedly freeing Black slaves, one would expect to see a rise in the Free Black population in the free states."

The truth you fear & run from is that in 1860 free-Black populations in free-states were, overall, growing faster than in slave-states.

woodpusher: "At any rate, in the Free states, the total increase of the free Black population was minimal, and in a sizeable number of Free states, the free Black population declined over a ten year period. "

In 1860 free-Black populations in free-states were increasing, overall, slightly faster than in slave-states.
In some free-states and some slave-states free-Black populations decreased slightly, but in no state was the decline more than a few hundred over ten years.

[HandyDandy]

WD: “You get it perfectly, and your clumsy effort to make believe you fail to do so is noted.

What I get is that you have flip-flopped. What other conclusion can there be?

WD: “Indeed, you get it rather like the Editor of The Atlantic who wrote of Lincoln's successful effort to use the (former) reputation of the magazine to further his own political ends.”

Brilliant segue! Simply brilliant! Do you mean the editor who was boasting of the Magazines history on its 160 yr birthday? I think the salient point is when he said, “Not least of them is the evident esteem in which America’s greatest president held this magazine.“

WD:“You think I stole the whole idea of Gilmore exposing Lincoln from a book by Gilmore which clearly indicates what Lincoln did.”

Dude, you are squirming. You know that I think you stole the notion of “plausible deniability” from the preview of the book at Amazon. Don’t try to change that. You can deny it all you want but you used the terms four(4] times in your previous post. I know that you know that when you search “Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War by James R. Gilmore”, on line, that near the top of the list is the Amazon publication with the preview stating, “plausible deniability”. Coincidence? I think not.

As for the rest?

WD: “And you think I used an Amazon preview. Nope. That's the way you perform research, with a Google search to a free preview from Amazon. I just get the whole book, 1898 edition. I made no use of Amazon whatever regarding James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke).

WD:Your Amazon folly is attributed to BIG BYTE BOOKS in 2014. My citation was to Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and The Civil War, Boston, L.C. Page and Company, Inc., 1898. I quoted from pages 240, 242-244, and 287-290. And you think all that was in the Amazon preview that you looked at. I scanned pages from an 1898 edition by L.C. Page and Company, and have never before heard of your BIG BYTE BOOKS.

WD: “From the positive point of view, The Atlantic did apologize to the public for letting themselves be fooled into publishing propaganda for Lincoln's political purposes. They said they learned their lesson.”

Well, that all sounds like a whole bunch of plausible deniability on your part. Like I said earlier, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh*t”. Sounds like you are in stage two. You have lost all credibility with me. From your giving different sources for the same quote, to paraphrasing quotes without attribution, to evading questions, to breaking DiogenesLamp’s heart. .....the more you talk, the less credible you appear.

[woodpusher]

I was familiar with Ward Hill Lamon, specifically regarding the arrest warrant for Judge Taney.

Lamon's book addresses the arrest warrant for CJ Taney at page 341,

After due consideration, the administration determined upon the arrest of the chief justice. A warrant or order was issued for his arrest. Then arose the question of service. Who would make the arrest and where should be his imprisonment?

It was finally determined to place the order of arrest in the hands of the United States Marshal of the District of Columbia.1338 This was done by the president with instruction by him to use the marshal’s own discretion about making the arrest unless he should receive further orders from Mr. Lincoln. This writ was never executed, and the marshal never regretted the discretionary power delegated to him in the exercise of his official duty. The power of the president for making arbitrary arrests became at this time a question of greater importance.

The cited marshal was, of course, Ward Hill Lamon.

"Slavery" was an election tactic, and the powers that were didn't really care about slavery. It was a pretense just to gain power.

When the GOP was founded in 1854, the Whig Party was in its death throes, and it died in 1856. It was largely the former Whig membership, and the Whig Party rebranded. The nascent GOP needed a wedge issue upon which to campaign. They found one and ran with it.

[woodpusher]

Do you mean the editor who was boasting of the Magazines history on its 160 yr birthday? I think the salient point is when he said, “Not least of them is the evident esteem in which America’s greatest president held this magazine.“

No, and I am not responsible for your mental disease.

The salient point was when The Atlantic acknowledged they were conned into publishing political propaganda by Lincoln to further his election prospects.

Editor's Note, The Atlantic, November 2017

Davis episode also interests me because the wily Lincoln sought to exploit The Atlantic’s reputation for fairness and detachment—our founding manifesto promised readers that the magazine would be “of no party or clique”—for political advantage. And he succeeded. The lesson here is obvious: We must always—but particularly in moments of high political passion—guard our independence.

[woodpusher]

Because you're a Democrat, we have to translate your words into comprehensible English

Because you are a progressive Socialist, you specialize in linguistic perversion.

In this particular example, you were desperately hoping to weaponize census numbers on free-black populations against Northerners, to prove "Northerners hate blacks".

You are reminded that at your #439, as documented in my #444:

• You claimed your source was the University of Virginia for an article which no longer appears at the University of Virginia website. Your link went to something called NCPEDIA which provided a dead link to what had been an article hosted at the UVA website.

• Your withdrawn 2008 source article included "for the purpose of this analysis," California as a northern state, and Delaware as a southern state. For its 1860 statistics, this same study included Nebraska and Nevada as northern states. In 1860, neither of those was even a state.

You used that crap, withdrawn at the source, to counter the official census data.

The official 1860 census shows that there were more free Blacks in the fifteen (15) slave states, than in the nineteen (19) free states.

As documented in my #444, the official Census report of 1860 showed that there were 251,000 free colored persons in the fifteen slaveholding states, and only 237,283 free colored persons in the nineteen free states and the seven territories and the District of Columbia.

SOURCE: Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census, under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior, by Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Superintendant of Census, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1864.

At vii:

Looking cursorily over the returns, it appears that the fifteen slaveholding States contain 12,240,000 inhabitants, of whom 8,039,000 are whites, 251,000 free colored persons, and 3,950,000 are slaves. The actual gain of the whole population in those States, from 1850 to 1860, was 2,627,000, equal to 27.33 per cent. The slaves advanced in numbers 749,931, or 23.44 per cent. This does not include the slaves of the District of Columbia, who decreased 502 in the course of the ten years. By a law of April 16, 1862, slavery has been abolished in the District of Columbia, the owners of slaves having been compensated out of the public treasury. The nineteen free States and seven Territories, together with the federal District, contained, according to the Eighth Census, 19,203,008 persons, of whom 18,920,771 were white, 237,283 free colored, and 41,725 civilized Indians.

It is historical fact that there were more free Blacks in the fifteen (15) slave states than in the free states.

The question is simple. As they were FREE, why did the majority of free Blacks live in the slave states?

Why did the majority of free Blacks choose not to move to paradise where they would be welcomed as brothers and citizens?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)

The Black Codes, sometimes called Black Laws, were laws governing the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights."

- - - - - - - - - -

Before the war, Northern states that had prohibited slavery also enacted laws similar to the slave codes and the later Black Codes: Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and New York enacted laws to discourage free blacks from residing in those states. They were denied equal political rights, including the right to vote, the right to attend public schools, and the right to equal treatment under the law.

Consider Article 13 of the 1851 state constitution of the great state of Indiana:

ARTICLE XIII

NEGROES AND MULATTOES.

Section 1. No negro or mulatto shall come into, or settle in the State, after the adoption of this constitution.

Sec. 2. All contracts made with any negro or mulatto coming into the State, con­trary to the provisions of the foregoing section, shall be void; and any person who shall employ such negro or mulatto, or otherwise encourage him to remain in the State, shall be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.

Sec. 3. All fines which may be collected for violation of the provisions of this arti­cle, or of any law which may hereafter be passed for the purpose of carrying the same into execution, shall be set apart and appropriated for the colonization of such negroes and mulattoes, and their descendants, as may be in the State at the adoption of this constitution, and may be willing to emigrate.

Sec. 4. The general assembly shall pass laws to carry out the provisions of this article.

Consider Article 14 of the state constitution of the great state of Illinois:

ARTICLE XIV.

PERSONS of color

The general assembly shall, at its first session under the amended constitution, pass such laws as will effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this State; and to effectually prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into this State, for the purpose of setting them free.

The woke state of Illinois used the politically correct term to tell persons of color that they were not welcome in the state.

https://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329602.html

But the elimination of legal slavery did not mean the removal of the Black Codes. Indeed, it was not until the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the adoption of the Illinois Constitution of 1870 that the last legal barriers (but not the societal) ended. Like their midwestern neighbors, most early Illinois settlers believed in white supremacy and African-American inferiority. Consequently, Illinois' constitutions and laws reflected those views.

Legislators in the first General Assembly passed measures designed to discourage African-Americans from coming to Illinois. Blacks were denied suffrage, and other laws deprived them of most rights accorded free white men. African-Americans were prohibited from immigrating without a certificate of freedom. Moreover, they had to register that certificate, along with the certificates of any children, immediately upon entering the state. Among other things, the state legislature intended to discourage Illinois from becoming a haven for runaway slaves. Any runaway found in the state could be sentenced by a justice of the peace to thirty-five lashes. African-Americans assembling in groups of three or more could be jailed and flogged. Additionally, they could not testify in court nor serve in the militia. Finally, state law forbade slaveholders, under penalty of a severe fine, from bringing slaves into Illinois in order to free them.

https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/online_exhibits/100_documents/1853-black-law.html

The Document: The 1853 Black Law passed in Illinois was considered the harshest of all discriminatory Black Laws passed by Northern states before the Civil War. The bill banned African-American emigration into Illinois. If a free African-American entered Illinois, he or she had to leave within 10 days or face a misdemeanor charge with heavy fines. Subsequent violations led to increased fines. If the fine could not be paid, the law authorized the county sheriff to sell the free African-American's labor to the lowest bidder, essentially turning the violator into a slave. If a fine was imposed, whoever reported the African-American was entitled to receive half of it. The law included harsh penalties for anyone who brought slaves into the state, whether they wanted to free them or not. The law also included penalties to Justices of the Peace who refused prosecute the law.

[wardaddy]

What a bunch of neocon horseshit

Who the F are u

Why the barrage..

[wardaddy]

To the writer....sorry

[rebuildus]

Your questions are bizarre. What’s wrong with you?

[rebuildus]

Oh, I just saw your followup comment. No problem