The Other Reparations Movement

LewRockwell.com ^ | August 19, 2002 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

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The Other Reparations Movement

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Jack Kershaw of Memphis, Tennessee, wants to file a class-action lawsuit against the US government for reparations. Not on behalf of the descendants of slaves but on behalf of Southerners of all races whose ancestors were the victims of the US government’s rampage of pillaging, plundering, burning, and raping of Southern civilians during the War for Southern Independence.

Sherman the Mass Murderer

In 1860 international law – and the US government’s own military code – prohibited the intentional targeting of civilians in war, although it was recognized that civilian casualties are always inevitable. "Foraging" to feed an army was acceptable, but compensation was also called for. The kind of wanton looting and destruction of private property that was practiced by the Union army for the entire duration of the war was forbidden, and perpetrators were to be imprisoned or hanged. This was all described in great detail in the book, International Law, authored by San Francisco attorney Henry Halleck, who was appointed by Lincoln as general in chief of the Union armies in July 1862.

International law, the US army’s own military code, and common rules of morality and decency that existed at the time were abandoned by the Union army from the very beginning. A special kind of soldier was used to pillage and plunder private property in the South during the war. In The Hard Hand of War Mark Grimsley writes that the federal Army of the Potomac "possessed its full quotient of thieves, freelance foragers, and officers willing to look the other way," and that "as early as October 1861" General Louis Blenker’s division "was already burning houses and public buildings along its line of march" in Virginia. Prior to the Battle of First Manassas in the early summer of 1861 the Army of the Potomac was marked by "robbing hen roosts, killing hogs, slaughtering beef cattle, cows, the burning of a house or two and the plundering of others."

In Marching through Georgia Sherman biographer Lee Kennett noted that Sherman’s New York regiments "were filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World."

Unable to subdue their enemy combatants, many Union officers waged war on civilians instead, with Lincoln’s full knowledge and approval. Grimsley describes how Union Colonel John Beatty warned the residents of Paint Rock, Alabama, that "Every time the telegraph wire was cut we would burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we would hang a man; and we would continue to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport." Beatty ended up burning the entire town of Paint Rock to the ground.

The Union army did not merely gather food for itself; it pillaged, plundered, burned, and raped its way through the South for four years. Grimsley recounts a first hand account of the sacking of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December of 1862:

Great three-story houses furnished magnificently were broken into and their contents scattered over the floors and trampled on by the muddy feet of the soldiers. Splendid alabaster vases and pieces of statuary were thrown at 6 and 700 dollar mirrors. Closets of the very finest china were broken into and their contents smashed . . . rosewood pianos piled in the street and burned . . . Identical events occurred in dozens of other Southern cities and towns for four years.

Sherman was the plunder-in-chief, and he had three solid years of practice for his March to the Sea. In the autumn of 1862 Confederate snipers were firing at Union gunboats on the Mississippi River. Unable to apprehend the combatants, Sherman took revenge on the civilian population by burning the entire town of Randolph, Tennessee, to the ground. In a July 31, 1862 letter to his wife Sherman explained that his purpose in the war was "extermination, not of the soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people."

In the spring of 1863, after the Confederate Army had evacuated, Sherman ordered his army to destroy the town of Jackson, Mississippi. They did, and in a letter to General Ulysses S. Grant Sherman boasted that "The inhabitants [of Jackson] are subjugated. They cry aloud for mercy. The land is devastated for 30 miles around."

Meridian, Mississippi was also destroyed after the Confederate Army had evacuated, after which Sherman wrote to Grant: "For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists."

In Citizen Sherman Michael Fellman describes how Sherman’s chief engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, advised that the bombing of Atlanta was of no military significance (the Confederates had already abandoned the city) and implored Sherman to stop the bombardment after viewing the carcasses of dead women and children in the streets. Sherman coldly told him the dead bodies were "a beautiful sight" and commenced the destruction of 90 percent of all the buildings in Atlanta. After that, the remaining 2,000 residents were evicted from their homes just as winter was approaching.

In October of 1864 Sherman even ordered the murder of randomly chosen citizens in retaliation for Confederate Army attacks. He wrote to General Louis D. Watkins: "Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses . . ., kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon . . ." (See John Bennett Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137).

The indiscriminate bombing of Southern cities, which was outlawed by international law at the time, killed hundreds, if not thousands of slaves. The slaves were targeted by Union Army plunderers as much as anyone. As Grimsley writes, "With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked." A typical practice was to put a hangman’s noose around a slave’s neck and threaten to hang him unless he revealed where the household’s jewelry and silverware were hidden. Some slaves were beaten to death by Union soldiers.

General Phillip Sheridan engaged in the same kind of cowardly, criminal behavior in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the autumn of 1864, after the Confederates had finally evacuated the valley. General Grant ordered him to turn the valley into a "desert," and he and his army did. A sergeant in Sheridan’s army, William T. Patterson, described the pillaging, plundering, and burning of Harrisonburg, Bridgewater, and Dayton Virginia:

The work of destruction is commencing in the suburbs of the town . . . The whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens are aglow with the light thereof . . . such mourning, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy I never saw nor never want to see again, some were wild, crazy, mad, some cry for help while others throw their arms around yankee soldiers necks and implore mercy. (See Roy Morris, Jr., Sheridan, p. 184.)

It is important to recognize that at the time the Valley was populated only by women, children, and old men who were too feeble to be in the army. In letters home some of Sheridan’s soldiers described themselves as "barn burners" and "destroyers of homes." One soldier wrote that he had personally burned more than 60 private homes to the ground, as Grimsley recounts. After Sheridan’s work of destruction and theft was finished Lincoln grandly conveyed to him his personal thanks and "the thanks of a nation."

Historian Lee Kennett, author of Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign, wrote an article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution last year in which he argued that Southerners had been too critical of Sherman. His book is very favorable to Sherman and Lincoln, but he nevertheless wrote on page 286 that:

Had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified (as victors generally do) in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.

If Mr. Kershaw’s lawsuit goes to trial, Lincoln and his high command will finally be put before a tribunal, of sorts. He probably has little if any hope of winning such a case (in federal court!), but the trial record would go a long way toward combating the whitewashing of history that has occurred for the past 140 years.

August 19, 2002

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of the LRC #1 bestseller, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House, 2002) and professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland.

Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com

Thomas DiLorenzo Archives

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[one2many]

FYI

[fone]

I'm not even a southerner but it makes sense to me.

[one2many]

Thanks, it should.

[shuckmaster]

Aw, Shucks!

Another great article from DiLo

[one2many]

The Obituary of the American Republic;
A Truthful look at the Origin of American Empire

================================

http://www.civilwarhome.com/cherokeecauses.htm

CHEROKEE NATION
DECLARATION OF CAUSES; 1861

Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.

When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified.

The Cherokee people had its origin in the South; its institutions are similar to those of the Southern States, and their interests identical with theirs. Long since it accepted the protection of the United States of America, contracted with them treaties of alliance and friendship, and allowed themselves to be to a great extent governed by their laws.

In peace and war they have been faithful to their engagements with the United States. With much of hardship and injustice to complain of, they resorted to no other means than solicitation and argument to obtain redress. Loyal and obedient to the laws and the stipulations of their treaties, they served under the flag of the United States, shared the common dangers, and were entitled to a share in the common glory, to gain which their blood was freely shed on the battlefield.

When the dissensions between the Southern and Northern States culminated in a separation of State after State from the Union they watched the progress of events with anxiety and consternation. While their institutions and the contiguity of their territory to the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri made the cause of the seceding States necessarily their own cause, their treaties had been made with the United States, and they felt the utmost reluctance even in appearance to violate their engagements or set at naught the obligations of good faith.

Conscious that they were a people few in numbers compared with either of the contending parties, and that their country might with no considerable force be easily overrun and devastated and desolation and ruin be the result if they took up arms for either side, their authorities determined that no other course was consistent with the dictates of prudence or could secure the safety of their people and immunity from the horrors of a war waged by an invading enemy than a strict neutrality, and in this decision they were sustained by a majority of the nation.

That policy was accordingly adopted and faithfully adhered to. Early in the month of June of the present year the authorities of the nation declined to enter into negotiations for an alliance with the Confederate States, and protested against the occupation of the Cherokee country by their troops, or any other violation of their neutrality. No act was allowed that could be construed by the United States to be a violation of the faith of treaties.

But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions. The number of the Confederate States has increased to eleven, and their Government is firmly established and consolidated. Maintaining in the field an army of 200,000 men, the war became for them but a succession of victories. Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted by the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of the Northern States themselves to self-government is founded, of altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties. **

Throughout the Confederate States we saw this great revolution effected without violence or the suspension of the laws or the closing of the courts. The military power was nowhere placed above the civil authorities. None were seized and imprisoned at the mandate of arbitrary power. All division among the people disappeared, and the determination became unanimous that there should never again be any union with the Northern States. Almost as one man all who were able to bear arms rushed to the defense of an invaded country, and nowhere has it been found necessary to compel men to serve or to enlist mercenaries by the offer of extraordinary bounties.

But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all the rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In States which still adhered to the Union a military despotism has displaced the civil power and the laws became silent amid arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right to the writ of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was set at naught by the military power, and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any law warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men. The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers; while the press ceased to be free, the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in battle were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of their Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.

Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past, to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and their destiny are inseparably connected with those of the South. The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government.

The Cherokee people and their neighbors were warned before the war commenced that the first object of the party which now holds the powers of government of the United States would be to annul the institution of slavery in the whole Indian country, and make it what they term free territory and after a time a free State; and they have been also warned by the fate which has befallen those of their race in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon that at no distant day they too would be compelled to surrender their country at the demand of Northern rapacity, and be content with an extinct nationality, and with reserves of limited extent for individuals, of which their people would soon be despoiled by speculators, if not plundered unscrupulously by the State.

Urged by these considerations, the Cherokees, long divided in opinion, became unanimous, and like their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, determined, by the undivided voice of a General Convention of all the people, held at Tahlequah, on the 21st day of August, in the present year, to make common cause with the South and share its fortunes.

In now carrying this resolution into effect and consummating a treaty of alliance and friendship with the Confederate States of America the Cherokee people declares that it has been faithful and loyal to is engagements with the United States until, by placing its safety and even its national existence in imminent peril, those States have released them from those engagements.

Menaced by a great danger, they exercise the inalienable right of self-defense, and declare themselves a free people, independent of the Northern States of America, and at war with them by their own act. Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to the obligations of duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, unite their fortunes now and forever with those of the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with entire confidence in the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.

Tahlequah, C. N., October 28, 1861.

THOMAS PEGG,
President National Committee.

JOSHUA ROSS,
Clerk National Committee.

Concurred.
LACY MOUSE,
Speaker of Council.

THOMAS B. WOLFE,
Clerk Council.

Approved.
JNO. ROSS.

**WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. --FROM THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

[one2many]

Burrell Hemphill
Trust of ancestor remembered by great-granddaughter

General William T. Sherman left Columbia 130 years ago headed north toward Chester County and Blackstock. The main body of his troops did not reach Chester County, but turned east and then north again, heading for North Carolina. Raiding parties, or foragers, as they were more nicely known, came into the southern and eastern parts of the county. Burrell Hemphill was a slave, left by his master to guard the Hemphill homestead near Blackstock. He encountered a Union foraging party with tragic results.

Hettie Jean Hemphill Holmes, 83, is the great-granddaughter of Burrell Hemphill. She lives near the old Hemphill place and for decades the story of her grandfather has been handed down from one generation to the next. "He gave his life before he would tell where the silver was hidden,” Mrs. Holmes said. “He wouldn’t betray his master’s trust.”

Burrell Hemphill was a trusted slave of Robert Hemphill, a bachelor property owner who was said to be benevolent and kindly toward his slaves. Robert Hemphill’s plantation spanned 2,200 acres, near Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

"The Yankees asked him to tell them where the silver was hidden. They watched him to see if he would show them where it was hid. But he wouldn’t tell where the silver was so they hanged him.”

Tradition has it that as Sherman’s troops made their advance from Columbia northward, Robert Hemphill headed toward North Carolina, leaving in charge Burrel Hemphill.

Sherman’s plan was to head north making it appear that he was heading for confrontation with General Beauregard’s troops amassed at Charlotte. He then would wheel his army eastward toward Fayetteville, N.C. to connect by water with Union troops in Wilmington, N.C. Troops crossed the Wateree/Catawba at Rocky Mount, near Great Falls, rather than crossing further into Chester County. Sherman’s troops were in the area until February 1865. The left wing of the army was at the Rocky Mount section and the right wing crossed the river at Peay’s Ferry on February 23rd. The right wing built a pontoon bridge across the Wateree at Rocky Mount but it was swept away because of the flooded conditions of the river and all the troops did not get across until February 28. Raiding parties, however, made it to the Hemphill plantation some 10 miles away. There they encountered Burrell Hemphill.

Sherman’s army generally burned many homes and other pieces of property in their path as they marched northward from Savannah. The foragers were supposed to be searching for food for the troops, but generally they hunted for and took the valuables that were left behind by fleeing refugees. As the Yankee foraging party rode up to the two-story home, Burrell Hemphill pleaded with the soldiers to spare the lives and the property of the plantation. The Union soldiers demanded that Hemphill take them to the silver and valuables buried on the property. When he refused, they tortured him, tying him to a horse and dragging him from the Hemphill home to the church which is about a half mile or more. Torture would not entice Burrell to reveal the whereabouts of the valuables. The soldiers took him behind the home, secured a rope on the limbs of a blackgum tree and hung him. They were not satisfied just to hang him, however. The soldiers repeatedly shot him, leaving his body riddled with bullets. As chilling a death as Burrell Hemphill suffered, his 12 year old grandson, Charles, was a witness to the horrifying events.

His dedication and bravery are remembered on a granite marker in the church yard at Hopewell A.R.P. Church. Hemphill is not buried there, Mrs. Holmes said. Family members have said that they do not know exactly where he is buried, although Mrs. Holmes said that she has heard that there was a slave cemetery near Hopewell church’s cemetery but she has never seen it. Her family has lived on land near the Hemphill place for generations. She grew up in a family with eight children, although her father, who was married three times, had a total of 33 children, Mrs. Holmes being the last. She grew up, like so many children in the rural South, working in the fields.

The family members still remember what Burrell Hemphill did, although the details are fading from everyone’s memory as the years pass.

The stone in the Hopewell church yard honors his loyalty with this inscription.

In memory of
Burrell Hemphill killed by Union soldiers Feb. 1865
Although a slave, he gave his life rather than betray a trust. He was a member of Hopewell

(This article originally appeared in the Chester News and Reporter, February 17, 1995.)

[dighton]

"The Tyrant Lincoln burned my g-g-g grandma's piano" alert.

[shuckmaster]

Click Here!

[one2many]

Is that the sound of a yapping little black dog I hear?

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EBONY EDITOR CALLS LINCOLN
A 'RACIST' IN HIS NEW BOOK

Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

-----------------------------------------------------------

Abraham Lincoln "was a racist who opposed equal rights for black people, who loved minstrel shows, who used the N-word, who wanted to deport all blacks," a veteran journalist and historian says.

"There has been a systematic attempt to keep the American public from knowing the real Lincoln and the depth of his commitment to white supremacy," says Lerone Bennett Jr., whose new book, "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," examines Lincoln's record.

While the book may be shocking to readers accustomed to viewing the nation's 16th president as "The Great Emancipator," Mr. Bennett denounces that view as the "Massa Lincoln Myth."

"We're dealing with a 135-year-old problem here," says Mr. Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine. "It's one of the most extraordinary efforts I know of to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history."

"Forced Into Glory" is creating a stir both inside and outside academia.

The book is a "full-scale assault on Lincoln´s reputation," Columbia University history professor Eric Foner declared in a 2,000- word review in the Los Angeles Times. In the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a University of Florida professor called Mr. Bennett's book a "compelling critique."

Time magazine columnist Jack E. White said the book "rips off the cover" of attempts by historians to hide "the unflattering truth about Lincoln's racist ideals."

Drawing on historical documents, "Forced Into Glory" chronicles Lincoln's racial beliefs and his actions toward blacks and slavery:

ITEM; Lincoln publicly referred to blacks by the most offensive racial slur. In one speech, Lincoln said he opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories because he didn't want the West "to become an asylum for slavery and n---s."

ITEM; Lincoln was, in the words of one friend, "especially fond of Negro minstrel shows," attending blackface performances in Chicago and Washington. At an 1860 performance of Rumsey and Newcomb's Minstrels, Lincoln "clapped his great hands, demanding an encore, louder than anyone" when the minstrels performed "Dixie." Lincoln was also fond of what he called "darky" jokes, Mr. Bennett documents.

ITEM; Lincoln envisioned and advocated an all-white West, declaring at Alton, Ill., in 1858, that he was "in favor of our new territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home . . . as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over."

ITEM; Lincoln supported his home state's law, passed in 1853, forbidding blacks to move to Illinois. The Illinois state constitution, adopted in 1848, called for laws to "effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state."

ITEM; Lincoln blamed blacks for the Civil War, telling them, "But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another."

ITEM; Lincoln claimed that "the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure white."

ITEM; Repeatedly over the course of his career, Lincoln urged that American blacks be sent to Africa or elsewhere.

In 1854, Lincoln declared his "first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia - to their own native land." In 1860, Lincoln called for the "emancipation and deportation" of slaves.

In his State of the Union addresses as president, he twice called for the deportation of blacks. In 1865, in the last days of his life, Lincoln said of blacks, "I believe it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves."

Such facts may not be well-known, but they are "not hidden in the records. . . . You can't read the Lincoln record without realizing all that," Mr. Bennett says.

Lincoln became "a secular saint," Mr. Bennett says, partly because of the circumstances of his 1865 assassination, immediately after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

"Without question, I think the manner of his death, the time of his death . . . all these were major factors in turning Lincoln into the American icon," Mr. Bennett says, noting that Lincoln was later praised even by those who had been his harshest critics during his life.

"There was an explosion of emotion in the North" after Lincoln's assassination, Mr. Bennett says. Lincoln "was appropriated, he was used."

Historians have hidden much of the truth about that era, Mr. Bennett adds.

"People in the North don't know how deeply involved the North was in slavery," he says, adding that Illinois "had one of the worst black codes in America. People don't know that. . . . Black people were hunted like beasts of the field on the streets of Chicago, with Lincoln's support."

Lincoln still has his defenders, of course. In criticizing Mr. Bennett's book, syndicated columnist Steve Chapman has said that Lincoln's "racial attitudes evolved as he grew older."

Mr. Chapman also cited the opinion of Civil War historian James McPherson that if Lincoln had pursued a more vigorous anti-slavery policy, he would have lost support in the North and, ultimately, lost the war against the Confederacy.

In recent years, Lincoln has been most commonly criticized by conservatives who see him as centralizing federal power and trampling on constitutional rights. The late historian M.E. Bradford was denied appointment as chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1981 when his critics - including columnist George Will -drew attention to Mr. Bradford's anti-Lincoln writings.

Mr. Bennett's criticism in "Forced Into Glory" however, is from the left, faulting Lincoln for opposing racial equality.

Mr. Bennett, 71, first took on the Lincoln myth in 1968, writing an Ebony magazine article that caused "a firestorm all across the country," he says.

Despite the controversy, the article did begin "what some historians say was a re-evaluation of Lincoln" - a re-evaluation that has not gone far enough, he says.

"Major historians will talk about this problem of reinterpreting Lincoln, but they will do it at the end of a 700-page book, in the footnotes," Mr. Bennett says.

The idea of turning that 1968 Lincoln article into a book "was never far from my mind," Mr. Bennett says. "But about seven years ago, I started working on it again. I started putting together a group of essays . . . and as I read it again, I started adding to it, and it became 600 pages, 700 pages - I had to cut out 200 pages."

It was worth the effort, he says, to help Americans face the real Lincoln.

"The myth is an obstacle to understanding," Mr. Bennett says. Lincoln "is a metaphor for our real determination to evade the race problem in this country."

Lincoln gets credit for the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not actually free any slaves, Mr. Bennett says.

"The most famous act in American history never happened," he says, noting that Lincoln issued the proclamation only under pressure from Radical Republicans in Congress - men such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.

Along with abolitionists such as Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, the Radicals were "the real emancipators," Mr. Bennett says. "There were several major white leaders [during the Civil War] who are virtually unknown today, who were far in advance of anything Lincoln believed."

It is a "moral imperative" for Americans to know the truth about Lincoln, Mr. Bennett says.

"Cynics may not believe that the truth will set you free; but lies will definitely enslave you," he says. "I don't see any way to get away from the duty to tell the truth." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Hillary's Folly]

Senator Clinton Submits Reparations Bill, Tax Increase

And regarding Lincoln, "The Surreal Lincoln."

[fone]

True history is far more interesting than anything the revisionists can dream up. Thanks.

[billbears]

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

One more time for good measure bump!! The Founding Fathers got it, heck even that worthless Hamilton understood it. Another great article from DiLorenzo

[one2many]

Ouch! 'Dat newpaper sure hurts the feelings when it smacks the little black dog on the arse!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Here is the column which appeared today in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Larry, who happens to be black, has wanted to get this off his chest in a public forum for some time. He prepared this with black history month in mind, and the paper bit on it! It appeared on the op-ed page, and is the largest column on it. The logo which has been running all through the paper "Black History Month In Celebration" appears as an inset in the column (this is some Black history that they haven't yet seen though). – A Southerner

Headline "Black history distorted by 'political correctness' "

By Larry Sykes

As a black Southerner, I am upset when witness to "knee-jerk" attacks on white Southerners such as Merlene Davis' "Class on Slavery Teaches White Man's 'Truth'".

Davis was in quite a lather to preach that a college class claimed by an Associated Press reporter to have taught that Southern slaves were "happy" should be muzzled. Her basic reaction to the report was that Southern whites should only be allowed to teach the "evil" parts of their heritage. There was one problem she missed out on, though: the story was a hoax. Videotapes of the class proved that the AP reporter had made up the story about a history class teaching that slaves were happy. While I saw this information on AP wires, I did not see anything carried in the Herald-Leader.

Instead of seeking the truth, "politically correct" blacks have created their own "truth", in which anything that can be connected with American slavery in the Old South is entirely evil - and anything less than this race-baiting propaganda is not acceptable to teach as history. This "truth" ignores the historical facts that American slavery would not have existed without blacks selling fellow blacks into slavery, or that the first slaveholder in the American colonies was black. What seemed to scare Davis the most, though, was that anyone might actually study the "Slave Narratives", since some of what is in them won't fall in line with the revisionist history we are taught today.

Davis says that just because blacks loved the South they didn't love slavery. No one claims that they did; the important point is that most blacks did love their home - the South. Davis then correctly says that thousands of blacks fought for the Confederacy, and did so with patriotism. This is an important truth, which is actively being erased by politically correct forces.

Davis is to be commended for admitting this. She goes on, though, to speculate that blacks fought for the Confederacy because they were somehow duped by whites into doing so through a white conspiracy to keep them completely ignorant of events around them. I disagree; this is an insult to the intelligence of blacks that developed numerous methods of communication and ways to keep that information to themselves and who had eyes and ears with which they could witness the events unfolding around them. The blacks who supported the Confederacy - by keeping the farm going at home, or by supporting and fighting with the army on the front - did not do so because they were duped. They did so because their homes were being invaded - the black wives, sweethearts and sisters were being abused and raped as well as the wives, sweethearts and sisters of the white Southerners by the northern "bands of angels" in Union blue - and because their patriotism overcame the fact that they did not yet share fully in the benefits of society.. Black Confederates did reasonably expect, especially if the South had won, some reward for their patriotism.

In spite of losing the war, though, the patriotism of Confederate blacks was still often rewarded, as evidenced by the Tennessee pension records and other sources. It is today that we try to avoid honoring their patriotism. Why else would Dr. Emory Emerson, a descendant of a black Confederate soldier and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have been "disinvited" from the services dedicating a monument which only memorialized the service of blacks in the Union army?

To end her attack, Davis says that Southerners can celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but must always remember that men who forged this heritage were evil racists. Then she says to Southerners about their brief years as an independent nation that they are, essentially, best forgotten. My hope is we never forget when the Southern states stood up to defend states' rights and the constitution against a military invasion of the most powerful army on the planet. Just as I hope my 26 years of military service defending my country and constitution would not be forgotten, we should never forget the bravery of the Southern soldier, most of whom didn't own slaves anyway, in taking arms and giving their lives to defend their civil rights, their constitution, and their country.

The civil rights movement of the 1960's in the South would not have succeeded without brave Southern whites that joined with us. The civil rights movement was not about taking away the justifiable pride Southerners have in their heritage, but in securing constitutional guarantees for all. Blacks enjoying constitutional freedoms is not in opposition to, but rather an extension of, states securing their constitutional rights as well. Somehow, though, today what we see is a "civil rights" movement which wants to rob the South of its heritage, pride and symbols. The best way we can stop this wrong is for Southern blacks to repay the favor from the 1960's, and stand today with our Southern white friends, to protect the heritage and symbols of the South, before our common history is completely rewritten and erased by "political correctness".

* Larry Sykes, a Mississippi native and an Army Airborne veteran, lives in Lexington At 09:20 AM 2/25/99 -0500, you wrote: >I would like to send Mr. Sykes a copy of "The Tragic Era" as a thank you >for standing for Southron Truth. Wes, James Turner and I met Larry Sykes at the Kentucky Division Reunion last June. He was there reenacting Confederate as a member of Morgan's Men. Larry is an interesting fellow -- in his 40's, and a television camerman or something like that. He told James and I that he just gotten tired of people telling him what he, as a black man, should think and decided to investigate history for himself. What he found was that he had been spoon-fed propaganda rather than fact, and it didn't take him long to decide that the Confederate position was the right one. While we were conversing a 54th Mass. reenactor ( in his Union Suit) strolled by, said hello to Larry, and gave him a puzzled look, no doubt wondering about Larry's Johnny Reb attire. He says to Larry, "what you doing in that?" and Larry immediately replied "fighting for freedom". You shoulda seen the look on that yankee boy's face!. I nearly busted a gut trying to keep from laughing out loud. Several of the Kentucky boys are trying to help Larry with his genealogy so he can advance from associate member status. When the fight starts, Larry will be with us, and I'll be glad to have him. P.

[one2many]

"Many whites came to this country as slaves, or indentured servants, including my ancestors from Germany. But the bleeding-heart liberals don't cry for the white man's suffering, only for the poor, oppressed "coloreds." Take a long, hard look at our sick, violent, crime-ridden, openly gay society, and realize that this is what our heroic Confederate ancestors were fighting against." –Cracker Tex

The America My Grandchildren Will Grow Up In
Source: CNS Commentary
Published: October 20, 2000
Author: Chuck Baldwin

My daughter and her husband just gave my wife and me our third grandchild. My son and his wife will soon give us our fourth. The thrill of seeing them born is accompanied with the trepidation of wondering what kind of a country they will grow up in.

It is very unlikely that they will be able to ride a bicycle all over town as I did. The risk of them being kidnapped by some sex pervert is just too great for their parents to allow them to do that.

Unless they attend a private Christian school or are home-schooled, they will not learn that George Washington and Robert E. Lee were great American statesmen. They will not know what it's like to have their classes opened with prayer and Bible reading, or hear the great stories that depict the gallantry and courage of America's heroes.

Instead, they will be subjected to multiculturalism, sex-education and secular humanism. They will listen as America's Founding Fathers are impugned, denigrated and scandalized. Instead of learning about the evils of communism, they will be taught that communism is tolerable, even palatable.

In this new America that my grandchildren will grow up in, curse-free television will not be known; neither will they know that there was a time when Disney World was family friendly. Society will teach my grandchildren that guns are evil and homosexuality is normal. They will learn that man has no Creator and that man's highest achievement is to be tolerant of every anti-western, anti-Christian idea to come along.

Entertainers will encourage my grandchildren to be immoral, while ministers will encourage them to be pacifists. Schools may not teach them to read and write, but they will thoroughly indoctrinate them with liberal, socialist ideology.

It is really incredible to think that the America I grew up in seems to be gone forever. In less than two generations, America's Christian culture has been swept onto the trash heap of history.

Yet, are not our children and grandchildren worth fighting for? Are we really so self-centered that we would willingly sacrifice their future upon the altar of greed and complacency? Is not the America that we knew worth preserving? If a free and independent Christian America was worth the sacrifice at Valley Forge, it is certainly worth the sacrifice of a determined and committed people today. Is it not?

[billbears]

What seemed to scare Davis the most, though, was that anyone might actually study the "Slave Narratives", since some of what is in them won't fall in line with the revisionist history we are taught today.

Reading the Narratives on and off again for the past few months. All I can say is that the truth of this needs to be taught and shouted from the top of ever mountain in the Smokies. Granted, they didn't like being slaves but the Narratives themselves point out they liked the yankees even less

[End The Hypocrisy]

Meanwhile, how about a lawsuit against the Millions For Reparations folks for inciting riots Saturday? Could the deep-pocketed http://www.MillionsForReparations.com folks be to blame for all the racial violence that transpired in Cincinnati this weekend?

Analysis:
1) The U.S. Code statute;
2) Some of the most pertinent facts:

http://uscode.house.gov/usc.htm

18 USC Sec. 2101

Riots: (a) Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including, but not limited to, the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, with intent -

(1) to incite a riot; or

(2) to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot; or

(3) to commit any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; or

(4) to aid or abet any person in inciting or participating in or carrying on a riot or committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; and who either during the course of any such travel or use or thereafter performs or attempts to perform any other overt act for any purpose specified in subparagraph (1), (2), (3), or (4) of this subsection - Shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

---

Here's SOME of the stuff that was communicated to those at Saturday's MillionsForReparations.COM demonstration in D.C., not to mention to folks not in attendance by way of the media, and probably by cellphone and the like:

"I want to go up to the closest white person and say, 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing,' and then slap him, just for my mental health." -Charles Barron, a member of the New York City Council

"Remember Inglewood, California!" [not far from where the Rodney riots took place a decade ago]. "The next time we come here, we're gonna take over the U.S. Treasury." -Louis Farrakhan

"Pass reparations, or pass the ammunition." -President of the new black panther party

"Black power! Black power! BLACK POWER!" -practically every speaker at that Reparations rally.

I'm sure that absolutely NONE of this had any impact on what transpired in Cincinnati soon thereafter??? How about on future civil unrest? If all the alleged culprits were instead caucasian, wouldn't there be some very busy lawyers and potential defendants right now?

[serinde]

The blacks who supported the Confederacy - by keeping the farm going at home, or by supporting and fighting with the army on the front - did not do so because they were duped.

Another thing not mentioned in many history lessons is how much former slaves did to support the South after the war. Although technically free and able to leave, many stayed around and continued to "keep the farm going" after the Union army trashed everything. A lot continued to do their old "slave" work, just to put their part of the country back together again. I don't believe the South could have recovered without their support.

[stainlessbanner]

'I know that in the beginning I, too, had the old West Point notion that pillage was a capital crime, and punished it by shooting.'

- William T. Sherman; a few years later he and president Ulysses Grant would use his war crimes against the south as justification for the ethnic cleansing of American Indians.

"I hold about 1,000 prisoners captured in various ways, and can stand it as long as you; but I hardly think these murders are committed with your knowledge, and would suggest that you give notice to the people at large that every life taken by them simply results in the death of one of your Confederates. Of course you cannot question my right to "forage on the country." It is a war right as old as history. The manner of exercising it varies with circumstances, and if the civil authorities will supply my requisitions I will forbid all foraging. But I find no civil authorities who can respond to calls for forage or provisions, therefore must collect directly of the people. I have no doubt this is the occasion of much misbehavior on the part of our men, but I cannot permit an enemy to judge or punish with wholesale murder. Personally I regret the bitter feelings engendered by this war, but they were to be expected, and I simply allege that those who struck the first blow and made war inevitable ought not, in fairness, to reproach us for the natural consequences. I merely assert our war right to forage and my resolve to protect my foragers to the extent of life for life. "

- Gen. W.T. Sherman, US, to Gen. W. Hampton, CS, informing him of his ordered continuation and sanction for northern looting of southern civilian property, February 24, 1865

"I expect Kilpatrick here this p.m. and will send him well to the left. He reports that two men of his foraging parties were murdered after capture by the enemy and labeled "Death to all foragers." Now, it is clearly our war right to subsist our army on the enemy. Napoleon always did it, but could avail himself of the civil powers he found in existence to collect forage and provisions by regular impressments. We cannot do that here, and I contend if the enemy fails to defend his country we may rightfully appropriate what we want. If our foragers act under mine, yours, or other proper authority, they must be protected. I have ordered Kilpatrick to select of his prisoners man for man, shoot them, and leave them by the roadside labeled, so that our enemy will see that for every man he executes he takes the life of one of his own."

- William T. Sherman to Major-General Howard, Commanding Right Wing, February 23, 1865

"Send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let it be known that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon rom Resaca to Kingston"

- Gen. William T. Sherman, orders to Gen. Louis Watkins, 1864

"Our armies traverse the land and waves of disaffection, sedition and crime close in behind and our track disappears. But one thing is certain, there is a class of people, men, women, and children who must be killed or banished before we can hope for peace and order even as far South as Tennessee."

- Gen. William T. Sherman, letter to Stanton, June 21, 1864

"For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian with its Depots, Storehouses, Arsenals, offices, Hospitals, Hotels, and Cantonments, no longer exists."

- Gen. William T. Sherman to Gen. Grant, 1864

[stainlessbanner]

Ok, I'm a cut and paste cookie monster today : )