Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence

Shotwell Publishing ^ | Clyde N. Wilson

[soakncider]

TRUE HISTORY OF THE WAR FOR SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE IN THIS AGE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS there has never been a greater need and greater opportunity to refresh our understanding of what happened in America in the years 1861-1865 and start defending our Southern forebears as strongly as they ought to be defended. There is plenty of true history available to us. It is our job to make it known. All the institutions of American society, including nearly all Southern institutions and leaders, are now doing their best to separate the Confederacy off from the rest of American history and push it into one dark little corner labelled "Slavery and Treason". Being taught at every level of the educational system is the official party line that everything good that we or anyone believe about our Confederate ancestors is a myth, and by myth they mean a pack of lies that Southerners thought up to excuse their evil deeds and defeat....

[soakncider]

Our guns make our ruling class uncomfortable.

[rockrr]

Neither the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution mention slavery by name, and only spoke of it obliquely. The best that the FF could manage was to set a date for banning the continued importation of slaves to the country. The southern states held that much clout that our nation wasn’t to be unless we accepted the Peculiar Institution.

When the rebels put together their confederate constitution they borrowed heavily from the real one - very heavily. But one of the most notable departures was the enshrinement of the institution of slavery. Constitutionally mandated for all time.

This doesn’t strike me as anyone with an inclination to change anything. Not when it was important enough for them to wage war with their brethren just to maintain it.

[soakncider]

The book written by Hinton Rowan Helper of North Carolina is only one example of a Southerner who wanted to see slavery end, but there were millions more. Evidence that slavery would have ended naturally.

[rockrr]

Were you aware that the confederacy had laws prohibiting even the mention of abolition

[soakncider]

no. do you have a link?

[soakncider]

Did you know lincoln suspended the Constitution? And that the emancipation procalamation didn’t free any slaves? Lincoln didn’t even have authority to free the slaves in the union, because the Constitution never granted him the authority.

Why didn’t Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware free their slaves before the end of the war?

[rockrr]

Did you know lincoln suspended the Constitution?

Not true.

And that the emancipation procalamation didn't free any slaves?

Not true.

Lincoln didn't even have authority to free the slaves in the union, because the Constitution never granted him the authority.

Not technically true.

Why didn't Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware free their slaves before the end of the war?

I suspect that they knew that it was going to take an amendment to the constitution in order to resolve the issue and that they would ride the fence until they saw how things panned out.

[BroJoeK]

soakncinder: "I have always thought that the Confederates never should have conducted any offensive raids.
They were just wrong morally and tactically.
They shouldn't have fired on Fort Sumter either."

I agree that the best way for the Confederacy to have won the Civil War was to have never started it in the first place.
Just as President Franklin Roosevelt needed Pearl Harbor to rouse & rally Americans for war, Lincoln needed Fort Sumter to inspire Northerners to fight.
Without those, the American body-politic would remain confused & misdirected.
In such confusions lay the Confederacy's only chance of victory.

But, to wish for such things is to wish for pigs to fly -- it just ain't goin' to happen.
First of all, in Jefferson Davis Confederates had a former US Secretary of War, who well knew the US Army's strengths & weaknesses, and who judged Northerners easily beatable.
And second, Confederates had a justifiable view of their own young men as superior military material, fully capable of defeating expected larger Union forces.

And they were not so wrong, except... except.
Well, except for US Grant and a few others who could turn Northerners into a real fighting force.
In the East, Lincoln fired how many generals before he finally found one -- Grant -- who would fight and win?

Point is: it was impossible, certainly in their own minds, for the Confederacy not to chose war, even when diplomacy might have served them better.

[soakncider]

THE SOUTH IS A GARDEN. It has been worn out by the War, Reconstruction, the Period of
Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of all - Modernity; yet, a worn-out garden, its
contours perceived by keen eyes, the fruitfulness of its past stored in memory, can be over time, a
time which will last no longer than those of us who initially set our minds to the task, restored,
to once again produce, for the time appointed unto it, the fruits which nurture the human spirit
and which foreshadow the Garden of which there will be no end.
- Dr. Robert M. Peters of Louisiana

[BroJoeK]

soakncinder: "THE SOUTH IS A GARDEN. It has been worn out by the War, Reconstruction, the Period of Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of all..."

My home is in central Pennsylvania (aka, "Alabama" or "Pennsyltucky"), but travel a lot, far & wide.
Tomorrow, for example, I'm heading to South Carolina.
My mother's family is from North Carolina.

In my travels, I see no signs of a "worn out garden", except if you count the beat-up roads and emptying cities of the Northern Rust-belt.
In the South, I see just the opposite -- lush green, prosperous towns & countryside, well kept roads & bridges, a land often similar to my own central PA, except that here you see more Confederate Battle Flags flying than there, nearly always side-by-side with the US flag.

[soakncider]

Yes, what you say is true. You bring us full circle to the point of the book referenced in my original post. Which is that the South is an inviting place for everyone. The current demonization of the the Confederate battle flag and Confederate heroes is unjustified and unnecessary. I hope you agree. For alternative essays about the South, the Confederacy, the American Civil War, slavery, and the Constitution, please visit abbevilleinstitute.org.

“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world”. - Abraham Lincoln on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

[soakncider]

The so called Lost Cause has been ill-defined. The Cause was not slavery; the Cause was self-determination. Slavery was the Issue that was the perceived overreach by the federal government, but the Cause was self-determination. The Issue (for arguments’ sake) could have been something else (unfair taxes/tariffs, sanctions, etc.), and it would have been the same Cause.

Self-determination for the sates at that time was defeated. THAT is the tragedy. Because once self-determination for the states was defeated, it was also defeated for the individual. And the power of the federal government over the states is now absolute. And by extension, the power of the federal, state, and local governments over the individual is also absolute.

How can the right of self-determination ever be re-asserted now? It is publicly decried every time, even by people with supposedly conservative credentials. The reason being that the Lost Cause has been defined as slavery, rather than what many people intuitively know it was, states’ rights, and by extension, individual rights.

So, just because someone argues for states’ rights in 2016, does that mean he wants to return to institutionalized black slavery, or make him racist? Not hardly, but that is exactly the pejorative used to shut him up.

A lot of legitimate political discourse is impeded using this tactic, and it is most disheartening.

[soakncider]

Shelby Foote on the Confederate Flag:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9J8P6WfS7w

Thank you for that link. I just had a chance to watch it.

If you aren't already aware of it, this website has a lot of good info: abbevilleinstitute.org

[ifinnegan]

“The Cause was self-determination”

Thanks for your nice post.

I don’t think this argument holds because the Southern states were quite fine with using federal power to force other states to follow their wishes, e.g. Dred Scott.

They certainly did not support self determination for non-slave states to make their own policy and laws and used the federal government to enforce their own determinations on states that differed from them.

[onedoug]

Thank you. Added to my Favorites.

[soakncider]

Dred Scott was a resident of Missouri when he sued for his freedom. The Scott vs. Sanford case was decided in 1857. So this case has nothing to do with the Confederacy. Missouri remained a Union slave state throughout the war.

Can you cite instances where the CSA “used the federal government to enforce their own determinations on states that differed from them”?

[ifinnegan]

Yes. Dred Scott Fugitive slave laws.

They used the force of federal government to make other states accept their view on humans as property.

Dred Scott applied to all states.

[BroJoeK]

soakncinder: "The current demonization of the the Confederate battle flag and Confederate heroes is unjustified and unnecessary. I hope you agree."

Agreed.

soakncinder quoting Lincoln: "Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better."

You must remember that Civil War did not come because the Slave-Power declared its secession.
Nor did war come because seceding states formed a new Confederacy.
Nor did war start because of any Northern interest in freeing Southern slaves.
Nor did war start over tariffs, duties or other taxes.

No, Civil War did not even start after months of Confederate military aggression against & seizures of dozens of Federal properties (i.e., forts, ships, arsenals & mints), threats against northern officials, and firings on Union ships.

Civil War did start at Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861), with a Confederate military assault and seizure which cost the lives of two Union troops.
Three weeks later the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States, called up hundreds of thousands of Confederate troops and sent military aid to pro-Confederates fighting in Union Missouri.

In short, Civil War came because the Confederacy started it, not because of some Constitutional debate over "states rights" or secession.

If you keep that in mine, then the rest of your political propaganda should quickly fall by the wayside, imho, FRiend.

[BroJoeK]

soakncinder: "The so called Lost Cause has been ill-defined.
The Cause was not slavery; the Cause was self-determination."

Utter rubbish and nonsense, first perpetrated by Confederate leaders themselves, but only after their war was totally lost.
Then they immediately set to work creating a whole new mythology, rewriting actual history, to make themselves appear the innocent victims when, in actual historical fact, they were the villainous perpetrators.

In actual fact, Southern Slave-Power Fire-Eaters declared secession, and formed a new Confederacy, beginning in December 1860 -- as they clearly declared -- to protect their "peculiar institution" of slavery.
Then they started war against the United States to both defend their own sovereignty, and to assault the sovereignty of Union states & territory like Missouri or Oklahoma.

After suffering total defeat, and unconditional surrender, they invented a lot of nonsense to justify what, in fact, cannot be justified today in any terms the old Slave Power actually used.

[soakncider]

The North was not united behind Lincoln in his war.
The South didn’t have to invent anything. There are newspaper accounts from the period, political speeches etc. that declare what people thought, many of whom thought Lincoln was abusing his power. He even imprisoned newspaper editors, mayors, and civilians for simply speaking out in opposition to him.

And the Old Slave Power was the United States of America, and before that it was England, so it just depends on how far back you want to go to prosecute our forebears.

The USA didn’t seem to mind oppressing the Native Americans.