Posted on 12/19/2019 8:38:38 AM PST by robowombat
Death is Mercy to Secessionists
By Bernard Thuersam on Mar 21, 2016
William T. Sherman viewed Southerners as he later viewed American Indians, to be exterminated or banished to reservations as punishment for having resisted government power. They were subjects and merely temporary occupants of land belonging to his government whom they served. The revealing excerpts below are taken from Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama, published in 1872:
Headquarters, Department of Tennessee, Vicksburg, January 1, 1863.
[To] Major R. M. Sawyer, AAG Army of Tennessee, Huntsville:
Dear Sawyer In my former letter I have answered all your questions save one, and that relates to the treatment of inhabitants known, or suspected to be, hostile or secesh. The war which prevails in our land is essentially a war of races. The Southern people entered into a clear compact of government, but still maintained a species of separate interests, history and prejudices. These latter became stronger and stronger, till they have led to war, which has developed the fruits of the bitterest kind.
We of the North are, beyond all question, right in our lawful cause, but we are not bound to ignore the fact that the people of the South have prejudices that form part of their nature, and which they cannot throw off without an effort of reason or the slower process of natural change.
Now, the question arises, should we treat as absolute enemies all in the South who differ with us in opinions or prejudices . . . [and] kill or banish them? Or should we give them time to think and gradually change their conduct so as to conform to the new order of things which is slowly and gradually creeping into their country?
When men take arms to resist our rightful authority, we are compelled to use force because all reason and argument ceases when arms are resorted to.
If the people, or any of them, keep up a correspondence with parties in hostility, they are spies, and can be punished with death or minor punishment. These are well established principles of war, and the people of the South having appealed to war, are barred from appealing to our Constitution, which they have practically and publicly defied. They have appealed to war and must abide its rules and laws.
The United States, as a belligerent party claiming right in the soil as the ultimate sovereign, have a right to change the population, and it may be and it, both politic and best, that we should do so in certain districts. When the inhabitants persist too long in hostility, it may be both politic and right that we should banish them and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population.
No man would deny that the United States would be benefited by dispossessing a single prejudiced, hard-headed and disloyal planter and substitute in his place a dozen or more patient, industrious, good families, even if they be of foreign birth.
It is all idle nonsense for these Southern planters to say that they made the South, that they own it, and that they can do as they please even to break up our government, and to shut up the natural avenues of trade, intercourse and commerce.
We know, and they know if they are intelligent beings, that, as compared with the whole world they are but as five millions are to one thousand millions that they did not create the land that their only title to its use and enjoyment is the deed of the United States, and if they appeal to war they hold their all by a very insecure tenure.
For my part, I believe that this war is the result of false political doctrine, for which we are all as a people responsible, viz: That any and every people has a right to self-government . . . In this belief, while I assert for our Government the highest military prerogatives, I am willing to bear in patience that political nonsense of . . . State Rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of press, and other such trash as have deluded the Southern people into war, anarchy, bloodshed, and the foulest crimes that have disgraced any time or any people.
I would advise the commanding officers at Huntsville and such other towns as are occupied by our troops, to assemble the inhabitants and explain to them these plain, self-evident propositions, and tell them that it is for them now to say whether they and their children shall inherit their share.
The Government of the United States has in North-Alabama any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . and war is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact. If they want eternal warfare, well and good; we will accept the issue and dispossess them, and put our friends in possession. Many, many people, with less pertinacity than the South, have been wiped out of national existence.
To those who submit to the rightful law and authority, all gentleness and forbearance; but to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better. Satan and the rebellious saints of heaven were allowed a continuance of existence in hell merely to swell their just punishment.
W.T. Sherman, Major General Commanding
(Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama, William Garrett, Plantation Printing Companys Press, 1872, pp. 486-488)
Some people get their nose out of joint when I point out how similar the Lincoln government and his cronies were to modern day liberals.
I used to compare Lincoln and Obama by saying "that other race obsessed liberal lawyer from Illinois who became President."
:)
Yes, they were all big government Tax and Spend Liberals who liked to feed all their crony capitalists from the government trough, which was paid for with other people's money.
The Russians and the Poles were well familiar with it. They got invaded too, and by people with similar notions about Big Government as Lincoln had.
Well now, you see that word "Rebel" is actually misused in a discussion about this war.
The Declaration of Independence asserted that any body of people had a right given by "nature and nature's God" to become independent of another people with whom they needed to "dissolve the political bonds."
This idea was the foundation of our nation. That being the case, how can it be "Rebellion" to exercise this right?
Sure, it was rebellion against the Monarchy, but the Monarchy was not founded on a right to independence. We were.
To my thinking, denying people their right to independence is actual rebellion against our founding principles. Fighting to keep them in a condition of oppression against their will seems to be a rebellion against the idea upon which the nation was founded.
So as I said, the "Rebels" ought to be regarded as the people in Washington DC that launched an invasion to stop people from getting the independence to which they had a right as spelled out in our own foundation document, the Declaration of Independence.
The side that wins the war gets to decide what a “rebel” is.
Writing the history, punishments, definitions the the recuperation of any and all costs are entirely the prerogative of the victor.
Vae victis
Seriously? The Grant administration was considered the most corrupt in US history. Most people do not believe this to be the fault of Grant, and nor do I. I believe this is the legacy of all the corruption that Lincoln brought into the government during his tenure.
I think Lincoln set the stage for wholesale government corruption, and the "deep state" has been selling influence and government policy ever since.
Traitors who would turn on their own people simply want to be on the side they perceive will win because of the greater numbers they had.
And I think you are likely mistaken about no people from Northern states fighting for the Confederates. If you count the border states as "Northern", then there were massive amounts of them fighting for the Confederacy.
Even not counting the border states, i'm pretty sure there were some people from Northern states fighting on the side of the Confederates. No, I don't have any examples, but the probabilities would dictate that it was so.
After the war there was so much more to steal and so many new opportunities. Pre war there was plenty of stealing. The Buchanan Administration featured a parade of Harding era types
The Civil War was fought because secession threatened the rice bowls of the powerful and wealthy men of the North East.
I like this quote from Lincoln.
"Just because you call a tail a leg, doesn't make it so."
I also think Lincoln brought to Washington DC a lot more corrupt men than had ever been there before.
When Thaddeus Stevens complained to President Lincoln about high prices in some war contracts reflecting adversely on Secretary of War Simon Cameron, Lincoln said: "Why, Mr. Stevens, you don't think the Secretary would steal, do you?" The Old Commoner answered, "Well, Mr. President, I don't think he would steal a red-hot stove."Lincoln liked the joke so much he told it to Cameron, who didn't like it and demanded that Stevens retract it. Stevens went immediately to Lincoln and told him: "I said I did not think Mr. Cameron would steal a red-hot stove. I am now forced to withdraw that statement."
That is a story that should be true whether it is or not.
His mistreatment by Congress after suffering two grievous leg wounds, and even more the influence of his new, Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen played on Arnold’s weakness.
If not for that, like you say Arnold may well have been another Wayne or even an early President. Arnold’s bride Peggy Shippen was a go-between between Arnold and British spy Major Andre, encouraging Arnold to betray the Patriot cause.
There is another monument to Arnold, at Saratoga battlefield, although it doesn’t bear his name. Just a marble stone bearing an image of his boot, in memory of the wound that effectively ended his career as a Patriot soldier.
Sherman was great friends with many outherners before the war (he ran a military academy down there)
Remember that very many Southerners were NOT Secessionists (many Southerners fought on the side of the Union in the Civil War)
Rich Slave owners were going to lose their slaves (their wealth and position) eventually the way politics was going in America.
They ran Southern Politics.
They decided to Secede to maintain themselves no matter what the ordinary (non-slave-owning) man in the South thought.
Sherman knew what he was talking about.
A generation after the Civil War ended in defeat for the Slave-owners, the same people were running the States and imposing serfdom again upon the ex-slaves.
Let me introduce you to the "Corwin Amendment."
Thank you for confirming that you are an inferior, uneducated bigot. Did an evil southerner take away your favorite toy, snowflake?
Your amusing, infantile remark about indoor plumbing is absolutely hilarious and ironic. So, San Francisco, LA and New York are Southern? This is news to me.
I will attempt to explain this slowly so maybe even you can understand. The aforementioned cities are known for people dumping their feces and urine in the streets. Seems as if the Non-Southern cities are the ones without plumbing, correct? Here in the South, defacating in the streets is unheard of.
Who knows? Maybe one day, your little third world hellhole will receive indoor plumbing.
Now, dont you feel stupid? Of course you do. You have proven yourself to be a complete laughingstock, a clown and a bigot. You are to be laughed at and dismissed. Just a sad, empty little troll.
But even during those periods of Republican national power Democrats were the party of Jim Crow, the KKK, Tammany Hall, lynchings, etc. in the areas they dominated. How decent and law abiding were and are the Democrat (and mob) dominated unions? Look at how they still govern cities and States into virtual cesspits. And speaking of Lincoln, when did Republicans actively plan the assassination of a Democrat President-Elect on his way to his inauguration? This latest attempt to overthrow an election they lost having underestimated the number of falsified ballots required is par for the course.
My someone certainly has their panties in a wad this morning.
Now, dont you feel stupid? Of course you do.
LOL! After reading your POS post? Not at all.
Too many of us have been spoon fed the false legend that Lincoln was a god-fearing conservative. Well maybe he was god-fearing?
Conservative however - hardly....
I grew up thinking that Jim Crow, and the KKK were just evil and wrong, and nobody should defend them. It never occurred to me that there might be another way of looking at the situation.
What Republicans did to the South was to dump several million new voters onto their roles, and who would consistently and in lockstep vote for the Republicans then robbing and oppressing the South.
This was a naked power grab created for the sole purpose of maintaining power in Congress, and is little different from modern Democrats importing unassimilated foreigners and protecting illegal aliens who can reliably be counted upon to vote Democrat.
The Northern whites hated blacks more than did the Southerners, yet because they had fewer blacks in their communities (often having driven them out), they were not affected by laws that gave them the right to vote beyond allowing their representatives to have greater power in Congress with which to tax and spend and redistribute money to the North.
This was all couched in claims of "moral righteousness" but the underlying truth is they didn't do it because they cared about morality or because they cared about black people, they did it because they wanted that power black people would give them through the voting franchise.
Yes, I have become cynical. I see the media lying to us everyday, and always in a manner calculated to help the Democrats gain and keep power. I now realize this same sort of lying and misdirection has been going on for a very long time.
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