The 10 Causes Of The War Between The States (Civil War0 - JamesKing's Blog - Tehachapi News

IS THE U.S. FLAG--THE STARS AND STRIPES--A HATE FLAG ?

Is the U.S. flag--the Stars and Stripes a hate Flag? The answer is a resounding NO. It represents Freedom and Democracy.

However it flies over the murder by abortion of an estimated 50 million babies. It flew over the genocide of the American Indians and millions died. It (and the colonial flags of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York that pre-dated it) flew over the ships of Yankee slave traders for 200 years. It flew over an illegal and unconstitutional invasion of the Southern states from 1861-1865 during which Union soldiers committed murder, plunder, theft, arson, and rape on a huge scale which was planned and condoned by Union officers and president Lincoln. During World War II it flew over the bombing of Dresden Germany which was a cultural and population center and not involved in the war effort. Thousands of innocent children died. It could be compared to the Nazi flag as the human rights violations and atrocities committed under the Stars ans Stripes exceed that of Nazi Germany and the Swastika flag. Yet, amazingly it is the Confederate flag that is being compared to Nazi Germany and the Swastika. The U.S. flag and the Confederate flag are not judged by the same standards and held to the same level of accountability. It is indeed amazing that the Confederate flag which represents a decentralized limited government acting only in defense against invaders is compared to a totally centralized government bent on world conquest. The Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany were polar opposites.

Although most people do not realize or give it much thought, the results and consequences of Southern defeat and surrender in 1865 which ended the War for Southern Independence (War Between the States or Civil War) affect us on a daily basis.

One of the many consequences was the destruction of States Rights. America was founded primarily by Southern gentlemen from Virginia as a Constitutional Federal Republic composed of a limited Federal Government and sovereign states. The 10th Amendment states "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

The Federal Government has forced the "Right to Abortion" upon unwilling Southern states. Christian Confederate leaders would never have voted to allow the mass murder of unborn children and they would not have appointed renegade activist judges to the judicial system.

It is estimated that 50 million babies have been murdered under the U.S Flag (Old Glory-The Stars and Stripes). In order to make abortion socially acceptable to the American public they have perpetrated two big lies. Lie #1- A woman has the right to do anything she chooses with her body. This is not consistent with other laws. A woman cannot legally ride a motorcycle without a helmet. She cannot legally prostitute her body (except in Nevada). She cannot legally inject or ingest illegal drugs into her body. Lie #2- An unborn baby is not yet a living human and it is not murder to terminate its life.

Dehumanizing has long been a brainwashing tool used by politicians and tyrants for political gain. Hitler convinced the German people that the Jews were less than Human and therefore it was acceptable to exterminate them. America used the same mentality to carry out the genocide of the American Indians. The Jews exterminated the inhabitants of the land of Canaan according to the Bible. The Islamic terrorists who crashed planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 consider gentiles as less than human and therefore fair game to murder. Saddam Hussein dehumanized the Kurds in Northern Iraq and gassed them with weapons of mass destruction.

There are only four differences in an unborn child and a person who has been born: #1-size , #2-development , #3-Environment , #4-dependency. Does this mean that unborn babies, children, and adults should have different levels of Constitutional Protection based upon these differences? Most women are smaller than men. Does this mean they should have less Constitutional protection? Children are smaller than grown adults. Should they have less Constitutional protection? The brain of a teenager is not as developed in its ability to make rational logical judgments. Does this mean a teenager should have less Constitutional protection than a mature adult? The difference in the environment of an unborn child and a child that has been born is only separated by a few inches of birth canal. When a person goes from inside a house to the outside of a house they change environment. Should a change of environment lessen or increase Constitutional protection? An unborn baby is dependent upon help and assistance. Children and many older adults are dependent upon other individuals. Should this dependency decrease their level of protection under the Constitution of the United States of America?

Most liberals apparently believe unborn children have and deserve less Constitutional protection than those who have been born. It is my opinion that unborn children deserve the same Constitutional Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as individuals that have been born.

As far as I can determine, everyone that believes in abortion has already been born.

NO- the U.S. flag--the Stars and Stripes is NOT A HATE FLAG. As previously stated it represents Freedom and Democracy. Likewise the Confederate flag is NOT A HATE FLAG--it represents limited constitutional federal government, states rights, resistance to tyranny, and Christian values and principles. It is a grave injustice to call either flag a HATE flag or to compare either flag to the Nazi Swastika. Both should be respected for positive reasons.

Constitution or Union ? Why Confederate Principles are Crucial to American Liberty

CONSTITUTION OR UNION?

Robert E. Lee had to make a decision in 1861. Defend the Constitution or defend the Union? He made the correct decision to defend the Constitution. This makes him an American hero--not a traitor as claimed by some who do not understand the ideas and concepts of government as established by Americas founding fathers. America was founded as a Constitutional Federal Republic composed of a Limited Federal Government and Sovereign States. In 1861 the Federal Government of America was taken over by New England zealots, fanatics, and hypocrites who were driven by greed. They had a blatent disregard for the Constitution when it stood in the way of profit and power.

"All the South has ever desired was that the union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved; and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth."
~~ Gen. Robert E. Lee 1866

"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know where it is today "
Robert E. Lee

Subsequent history has shown that our Confederate ancestors were right; the modern central government is a swollen monstrosity, with its tentacles grasping into every aspect of our lives. The constitutionally-limited government of the Founding Fathers died at Appomattox.

"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969

Constitution or Union? Why the Idea of the Confederacy is Crucial to
American Liberty No symbol in so-called "polite, mainstream" America is
more publicly reviled than that of the Confederate battle cross. No
public figure in any walk of American life could display Confederate
symbols without being savaged in the press and suffering significant
career damage. In some circles, Confederate symbolism probably ranks
slightly above bestiality in terms of acceptability, although I am sure
than in San Francisco, this order would be reversed. In the 2004 presi-
dential campaign. Al Sharpton called the Confederate flag "The American
Swastika". This statement is remarkable. Remarkable because the Confed-
eracy; a decentralized constitutional republic fighting a strictly de-
fensive struggle against invasion, was the polar opposite of Nazi Germ-
any, a completely centralized absolute dictatorship bent on military
conquest. But even more remarkable is that not a single account in the
mainstream press highlighted this inaccuracy. And even more remarkable,
it is almost certain, had a major public figure or publication done so,
they would have been severely attacked for it.

Campaigns all across America have resulted in removing the battle flag
from the state capitol in Columbia South Carolina, a city burned to the ground by
Sherman, removing the battle cross emblem from the Georgia state flag,
and countless less publicized suppressions of Confederate symbolism,
such as the removal of the Confederate flag from Confederate soldiers'
graves in Charlotte North Carolina's Elmwood cemetery. The Confederacy, has in fact,
been the victim of one of history's most successful smear campaigns.
Certainly, part is due to the old truism "the victors write the hist-
ory" and much is due to heightened racial sensitivities in our current
era, in which the Confederacy, which lasted 4 years, is seen as the
principal villain in North American slavery, an institution which last-
ed more than 200 years in both North and South. But I believe there are
more profound reasons for the extreme contempt heaped on the Confeder-
acy. And these reasons strike at the very core of the reality behind
the present day regime in the United States.

Large corporations sometimes clean up their balance sheets by spinning
off a subsidiary to which they assign unwanted operations or debts. In
a real sense., the dominant interpreters of American history have used
the Confederacy as their undesirable historical subsidiary, to which
they have assigned antiquated concepts such as slavery, disunion, and
states rights. By "spinning off" the Confederacy, they are able to
purify and transform the United States into a modern and progressive
social democracy. It is very useful in this interpretation to package
the evil of slavery with the other concepts. This helps to taint these
ideas and prevent close examination of their worth. But their efforts
are only successful if one accepts the superficial view of history
taught in public school "social studies" classes or presented by the
all pervasive supporters of the current American regime. In these pre-
sentations, much of the great intellectual foundation of the early re-
public, such as the Federalist papers and their anti-federalist count-
erparts, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and the writings of
John C. Calhoun, such as his Disquisition on Government, Discourse on
the Constitution and Government of the United States, and the Fort
Hill address, are ignored in a flagrant sin of omission. Of course,
most people do accept this superficial treatment, and so the campaign
is very effective.

The superficial treatment is not questioned or challenged in
any way since the "graduates" of public schools have not been taught
to think, are poor readers and some are still semi-illiterate.

So why does it matter? Why spend intellectual capital on arguing the
rectitude of the Confederate cause 140 years after Appomattox? Many
would argue with justification that if you are arguing for liberty,
you encounter much opposition by supporting the Confederate cause, and
it would be more expedient to ignore it. But I can make a stronger
case that the constitutional issues surrounding the secession of the
Southern states, Lincoln's destructive and brutal suppression of se-
cession, and reconstruction policies and constitutional amendments,
are so fundamental to understanding the erosion of liberty and expans-
ion of Federal power, that they cannot be ignored.

The other facet of this argument is the Lincoln myth. The metamorphos-
is of a shrewd partisan operative into a national demigod sanctified
violation of the constitution as an acceptable expedient. The Union is
more important than the Constitution. If the great and good Abe Lin-
coln did it, it must be right. For example, I saw former New York gov-
ernor Mario Cuomo defending a present day action of questionable con-
stitutionality by referring to Lincoln's expedient violations of the
same. If Lincoln's "saving the union" can just-
ify the violations of the constitution, that gives a pass to later Pres-
idents, congresses, and federal courts to do the same. If Lincoln and
the Union cause in the War for Southern Independence are axiomatically
right, then all arguments for Limited Federal Government and strict ad-
herence to the constitution will eventually fail. Those of us who be-
lieve that the constitutional compact of limited government is the ess-
ential characteristic of American liberty realize that freedom is not
guaranteed by a taxing, regulating, and warring government. It is guar-
anteed by the ability to "just say no" to such a government though nul-
lification or secession. And a vigorous defense of the Confederate
cause as among the purest expressions of true American liberty and pat-
riotism is essential. This will not be easy and will engender ferocious
opposition. We live in an America where even so-called conservatives
promote the Pledge of Allegiance, a loyalty oath written by a 19th cen-
tury socialist, swearing an oath to "one nation, indivisible" as the
guarantor of "liberty and justice for all". This "my country, right or
wrong" mentality would have been alien to the founding fathers who saw
the constitution as a contract between the states, not a sacred blood
oath binding one to obedience to a national regime. Modern day liberals
and conservatives both promote the use of federal force and confiscat-
ion to achieve their goals, they merely disagree on the details. In the
final analysis, it is a question of the primacy of Constitution or Un-
ion. Do constitutional limits on government trump a desire to preserve
"Union" at all costs? Or does the need to preserve the "Union", i.e.,
the central government, trump constitutional guarantees of liberty?

There is little question as to where America's Founding Fathers would
stand.

Happy Birthday Stonewall Jackson--Christian Confederate General

In Memory of Thomas J. Jackson

Thomas Jonathan(Stonewall) Jackson was born the Twenty-First Day of the First Month, the Year of Our Sovereign Lord & Savior Jesus, The Christ, Eighteen-Hundred Twenty-Four. He was also refered to as "Ole Blue Light" because of his piercing blue eyes. To the degree that the youth of America today would strive to emulate the Christian principles, values, and morals of Confederate Generals Robert Edward Lee and Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson, America would be strengthened as a nation and our love of freedom sustained.

Jackson was born in Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia). The following quotes and other information by or about Jackson that follow show the Christian character of this blessed son of the Old South.

Jan.21, 1824--May 10, 1863

If you desire to be more heavenly minded, think more of the things of heaven, and less of the things of earth. -- Thomas J. Jackson

Thomas J. Jackson's Abhorrence of War

People who are anxious to bring on war don't know what they are bargaining for; they don't see all the horrors that must accompany such an event.

It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils. (Jackson referring to the Lincoln administration)

I am in favor of making a thorough trial for peace, and if we fail in this and our state is invaded, to defend it with terrific resistance. (T.J. Jackson to his nephew, the Year of our Lord, 1861)

Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson Fearlessness in Battle

Lt. General Thomas Jackson speaking to then Captain John D. Imboden: "General" I remarked, "How is it that you can keep so cool and appear so utterly insensible to danger in such a storm of shell and bullets as rained about you when your hand was hit?" He instantly became grave and reverential in his manner, and answered, in a low tone of great earnestness: "Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me." He added, after a pause, looking me full in the face: "That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave"

Robert Lewis Dabney, his chief of staff, states: "It was not unusual to see him pale and tremulous with excitement at the firing of the first gun of an opening battle. But the only true courage is moral courage, and this was so perfect in him, that it had absolutely changed his corporal nature. No man could exhibit a more calm indifference to personal
danger, and more perfect self-possession and equanimity in the greatest perils. The determination of his spirit so controlled his body that his very flesh became impassive; the nearest hissing of bullets seemed to produce no quiver of the nerves; and when cannon balls hurled across his path, there was no involuntary shrinking of the bridle-hand. This power of concentration was of unrivaled force in his mind, and when occupied in profound thought, or inspired with some great purpose, he seemed to become almost unconscious of external things. This was the true explanation of that seeming recklessness with which he sometimes exposed himself on the field of battle."

"When a cannon-ball tore into splinters the tree beneath which he was writing a dispatch, not a muscle of his body moved and he went on writing as if nothing had happened."

Thomas J. Jackson Views on Slavery

"I am very confident," stated Jackson's wife, "that he would never have fought for the sole object of perpetuating slavery . . . He found the institution a responsible and troublesome one, and I have heard him say that he would prefer to see the negroes free, but he believed that the Bible taught that slavery was sanctioned by the Creator Himself, who maketh all men to differ, and instituted laws for the bond and free. He therefore accepted slavery, as it existed in the South, not as a thing desired in itself, but as allowed by Providence for ends which it was not his business to determine."

Thomas J. Jackson, The Christian

Dr. James Power Smith states: "Free from prejudice and all narrowness of spirit, he was seeking light as to faith and duty. In Lexington he went from Church to Church, until he found the gentle saintly and venerable Presbyterian pastor, Dr. William S. White, to be the guide he needed. Slowly, through doubts, with some honest difficulties
honestly dealt with, he came to a personal faith, simple, direct, loving, strong, that took hold of his whole being. The Psalmist says of the wicked man. 'God is not in all his thoughts.' The supreme fact in the character of Stonewall Jackson was that 'God was in all his thoughts.' He believed in and realized the providence and
presence of God, and so believed in and practiced prayer, and prayer that was not so much stated and occasional, as it was continuous and intimate. The thought of God seemed never absent. 'God has given us a brilliant victory at Harper's Ferry today.' And that was the model of all his dispatches." "It was not only that he was a religious man, but he was that rare man among men, to whom religion was everything." "During the Valley Campaign, it became apparent to the soldiers of his army that Jackson was a man of unusual piety. This fact was forced upon the knowledge of the men, not by Jackson's words but by his conduct. They were all impressed with the sincerity and consistency
of his Christian faith. All knew that he was a man of prayer and all believed in him. He made no parade of his religious faith. Whenever possible, he sought a private place for prayer. He did not pose as a Christian who had attained unto perfection. His conversation was as much devoid of cant as his uniform was free from gold-braid . . . . . He had an intense sense of God's presence with him. The Word of God was ringing in his ears continually day and night, and his letters are filled with quotations from it. In every incident of life he saw the visible finger of God." (Quoted from "Stonewall Jackson: A Character Sketch by By H. H. Smith")

Robert Lewis Dabney in "True Courage: a Discourse Commemorative of Lieut. General Thomas J. Jackson" writes: "Jesus Christ is the Divine Pattern and Fountain of heroism. Earth's true heroes are they who derive their courage from him.

Yet it is true, the three kinds of bravery which have been defied, may be mixed in many breasts. Some who have true moral courage may also have animal hardihood; and others of the truly brave may lack it. No Christian courage, perhaps, exists without a union of that which the spirit of personal honor, in its innocent phase inspires; and many men of honor have perhaps some shade of the pure sentiment of duty, mingled with the pride and self-glorifying, which chiefly nerve their fortitude. But he is the bravest man, who is the best Christian. It is he who truly fears God, who is entitled to fear nothing else.

I. He whose conduct is governed by the fear of God, is brave, because the powers of his soul are in harmony.-- There is no mutiny or war within, of fear against shame, of duty against safety, of conscience and evil desire, by which the bad man has his heart unnerved. All the nobler capacities of the soul combine their strength, and especially, that master power, of which the wicked are compelled to sing: "It is conscience that makes cowards of us all," invigorates the soul with her plaudits. In conscious rectitude there is strength.

This strength General Jackson eminently possessed. He walked in the fear of God, with a perfect heart, keeping all his commandments and ordinances, blameless. Never has it been my happiness to know one of greater purity of life, or more regular and devout habits of prayer. As ever in his great task-master's eye, he seemed to devote every hour to the sentiment of duty, and only to live to fulfill his charge as a servant of God. Of this be assured, that all his eminence and success as a great and brave soldier were based on his eminence and sanctity as a Christian. Thus, every power of his soul was brought to move in sweet accord, under the guidance of an enlightened and honest conscience. How could such a soul fail to be courageous, for the right?"

The Blessed Thoughtfulness of Jackson

Robert Lewis Dabney in "True Courage: a Discourse Commemorative of Lieut. General Thomas J. Jackson" writes: "The night preceding that on which he received his wounds, Gen. Jackson and his staff were in the open air without tents. One of his aids prevailed on the General to accept of him a light covering. In the night, however, when all was wrapped in deep sleep, Jackson arose, and gently laying the covering over the young aid, he lay down again and slept without any protection whatever. In the morning he awoke with a cold, which brought on the attack, eventually causing his death from pneumonia."

Jackson Faced Death Righteously

"I see from the number of physicians that you think my condition dangerous, but I thank God, if it is His will, that I am ready to go." (General Jackson on his deathbed)

Jackson Passed on the Sabbath, Just as Desired

Robert Lewis Dabney in "True Courage: a Discourse Commemorative of Lieut. General Thomas J. Jackson" writes: "He had always desired to die on the Sabbath, and this wish was kindly gratified. And during the morning when his thoughts were not wandering, he made special inquiry about the arrangements for preaching, and was not satisfied until assured that the men should be supplied with religious services, he seemed to sink into a calm repose of both body and mind, from which he never fully rallied. As his thoughts were wandering on some scene, earthly or heavenly, he was heard to murmur "let us pass over the river and rest under the trees," as if the bright unfading scenes on the other side of Jordan were dawning to his gaze; and before the shadows had grown long on that bright Sabbath noon, his noble and holy spirit had passed over the river, and was walking in brightness beneath the trees that fringe the banks of the crystal stream, and had entered upon that rest that remaineth for the people of God."

                         "Servant of God, well done!
                         Rest from thy loved employ,
                         The battle fought, the victory won,
                         Enter thy Master's joy."

As his end drew near, he was told that he had but two hours to live. He calmly replied, "it will then be infinite gain to be translated to heaven, and be with Jesus."

Jackson Lived to Glorify God

"Without God's blessing I look for no success, and for every success my prayer is, that all the glory may be given unto Him to whom it is properly due. If people would but give all the glory to God, and regard his creatures as but unworthy instruments, my heart would rejoice. Alas too frequently the praise is bestowed upon the creature." Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson, The Thirty-First Day of the Seventh Month, the Year of Our Sovereign Lord & Savior Jesus, The Christ, Eighteen-Hundred Sixty Two.

Lastly, I hope y'all enjoyed and learned from the above quotes and other information by or about this blessed Christian & Son of the Old South,

Thomas Jonathan(Stonewall) Jackson

Jan.21, 1824--May 10, 1863

Happy Birthday General Robert E. Lee American Hero

200^th Birthday of Robert E. Lee

Ernest Everett Blevins, mfa

On 19 January 1807, Robert Edward Lee was born to the Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III and Anne Carter Lee at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Many cities, counties, and states have proclaimed 2007 as the year of Lee in recognition of his accomplishments. Lee is most recognized in his role as Confederate General, but for 32 years he honorably served in the United States Army and in 1861 was offered command of that Army.

Lee's early education was in Alexandria, Virginia. After the his father's retirement from the Army he went to recover from illness in the West Indies leaving Virginia when Lee was six years old in 1813. One his return home he died on 25 March 1818 at the home of the daughter of Nathaniel Green on Cumberland Island, Georgia. In January 1863, while inspecting the coastal defenses he visited his father's grave. In 1824, he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point where he graduated second in the class of 1829 without receiving a single demerit. This record stands today. After graduation he was as commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant
of the United States Engineer Corps and on 29 August 1829, assigned to Cockspur Island, South Carolina (now in Georgia) to supervise in the 17 month construction of Fort Pulaski. He later worked on projects in New York and Virginia.

Robert E. Lee married Mary Anna Randolph Custis in June 1831. She was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Custis Washington and adopted son of George Washington. They resided in Arlington House located across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. where they raised seven children. Mary, an only child, inherited the house from her parents.

In 1836, Lee is appointed First Lieutenant and in 1838 rises to Captain. In 1845, Mexican War starts over the annexation of Texas. In August 1846, Lee is sent to Texas after months of watching from afar in Washington. He arrives in San Antonio, Texas and first serves under General Wool but he later reassigned to the staff of General Winfield Scott. Lee was entrusted with the vital duties of mapping out the terrain in advance of the Army. He was responsible for dividing the line of advance for the U.S. troops. During the campaign Lee was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec which was his first and only wound in battle. During his notable service in Mexico, including leading troops into battle, in Mexico rose several ranks to Colonel. While unknown to the public, his reputation in the Army was solid. Later General Scott would call Lee "the best soldier I ever saw in the field." Also serving with Lee in the Mexican War was James Longstreet, Thomas J. Jackson, George Pickett, and U.S. Grant.

In May 1852, Lee was surprised to find his next appointment as the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He felt unqualified for the position, but took on the challenge only to be recognized as one of the best Superintendents of the institution. After serving for three years, Lee was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel the new Second Calvary and assigned to Texas. During this time he spent little time fighting and much of the time trying court martial as various posts. In October 1857 he took a two month leave of absence to return to Virginia to settle his father-in-law's estate. This leave was extended several times because of the poor shape of Arlington and George Washington Curtis' complicated will. Upon Lee's return home he also discovered Mary was quite sick herself with advanced arthritis. This extended stay proved fateful in 1859 when he was called to Washington to be dispatched with troops to Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). At Harpers Ferry Lee put down John Brown's raid of the United States Arsenal. Lee thought the affair at Harpers Ferry minor.

In February 1860, Lee was assigned to command the Department of Texas. Again leaving his family – Mary invalid with arthritis and four unmarried daughters – he grew depressed at seeing less qualified soldiers promoted in part because Lee was not a self-promoter. After 31 years in the Army he felt he had very little to show. From Fort Macon, Texas, Lee watched as Lincoln was elected, South Carolina seceding followed by a rapid secession of states including Georgia (which seceded on Lee's birthday) and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Suddenly in March, Lee was relieved of his duties and recalled to Washington, D.C.

Lee returned to Arlington. At this time Virginia has not left the Union. He met with his old commander Winfield Scott who urged Lee to remain loyal. Several weeks later, Lee is granted the rank of full Colonel. About this time he also received the offer of Brigadier General from the Confederates which he ignored. Then 12 April, Fort Sumter received the opening volley from the Confederates. Lincoln called up 75,000 men and summoned Lee to Washington.

Abraham Lincoln instructed Secretary of War Simon Cameron to offer command of the Union Army to Lee in April 1861. The type of promotion came ill timed for events escalating throughout the spring of 1861. On 20 April he wrote to Secretary Cameron "I have the honor to tender the resignation of my commission as colonel of the First Regiment of Cavalry." The same day he also wrote his sister "With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty as an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I therefore have resigned my commission in the army and save in defense of my native state, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed." Two days later, Lee was summoned to Richmond where Virginia was voting on secession where he was offered command of the forces of Virginia.

Lee grabbled with his loyalties, but settled on his home state in the end. Recall that in the period of United States history, most people saw their allegiance locally to their state first and the United States second.

On 23 May 1861, Virginia left the Union and the next day Federal forces took over Arlington House. Mary Lee had left only 9 days before. During the War Between the States, the Federal Army buried its dead on the plantation lawn in retaliation for Lee's allegiance to Virginia. This will become Arlington National Cemetery and the Lee family will eventually be compensated by the Federal government for the taking of the property.

Lee's first year of Confederate service was a frustrating one dealing with paper, politics, and advising President Jefferson Davis on military matters. Lee requested, but was denied by Davis to go to Manassas. Lee's organization and strategy to concentrate forces at Manassas was critical to the Confederate victory. He later wrote his wife that he was "mortified" that he did not witness the "struggle for my home and neighbors." Lee would have his first field command as an advisor in West Virginia which became a disaster that would haunt him but not taking a more aggressive command of the situation of bickering officers and measles among the ranks. Returning from West Virginia Lee sported his grey beard and a horse named Jeff Davis he bought for $2,000 which he renamed Traveller.

Davis gave Lee command of all Confederate forces on the southeastern coast. Lee traveled the coastline fortifying defenses at Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. This duty was important but did not have the public appeal of field command that he would finally achieve in June 1862.

Union General George B. McClellan marched up the peninsula between the James and York Rivers toward the Confederate capital of Richmond. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, in a move repeated in the Atlanta campaign, retreated further and further back. During the Battle of Seven Pines (31 May to 1 June 1862), Johnston was wounded. Davis gave Lee the command of Johnston's army. Lee ordered earthworks around Richmond which gave him the nickname "King of Spades." Finally Lee attacked McClellan and in a series of battles called Seven Days, Lee pushed McClellan back down the peninsula.

For the next three years Lee lead the Army of Northern Virginia though Sharpsburg , Gettysburg, Petersburg. He split successfully split his army twice in face of superior numbers. Finally, out manned and out supplied, Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at a small farm of Wilmer Mclean at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Ironically McLean moved his family from the site of Manassas in 1861 to Appomattox to get away from the war. McLean later said the war started in his backyard and ended in his parlor.

In the fall of 1865, Lee was offered and accepted the president of troubled Washington College in Lexington, Virginia . The school later was renamed Washington and Lee College in his honor.

Lee was a man of honor, proud of his name and heritage. After the War Between the States, he was offered $50,000 for the use of his name. His reply was: "Sirs, my name is the heritage of my parents. It is all I have and it is not for sale." His refusal to this offer came at a time when he had nothing.

General Robert E. Lee died of a heart attack at his home at Washington College at 9:30 A.M. on 12 October 1870. His last words were "Strike the Tent." Robert E. Lee is buried at his college's Lee Chapel near his family and favorite horse Traveller.

General Robert E. Lee, sought to be an example to the citizens of the South to rebuild the American Union. He signed an oath of loyalty to the United States on 2 October 1865 after his inauguration as president of Washington College. This was the one matter absence when the Congress responded to Lee's formal application in 13 June 1865 – an action endorsed by General Grant. However, this oath was never processed and

somehow misplaced so when Lee died he was a man with no country. This oath reemerged in 1970 in the National Archives. Senate Joint Resolution 23 posthumously restored the oversight with full rights of citizenship to General Robert E. Lee on 22 July 1975 with the signature of the late President Gerald R. Ford.

One hundred years after Lee's oath was sent to Washington, a clerk came across it while sorting through papers at the National Archives. By an act of Congress and with the endorsement of President Ford, Lee's citizenship was restored on 22 July 1975.

Posted with written permission by James W. King

--
Ernest Everett Blevins, MFA
Blevins Historical Research
110 Evergreen Way
Villa Rica, Georgia 30180
770-456-1876
http://blevinshistoricalresearch.com

Historic Preservation Consultant -- Historical and Architectural Research -- Genealogical (Family) Research -- Preservation Planning and Documentation -- House History

Member: Association of Professional Genealogists, Georgia Association of Professional Genealogists, Ambassador of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Historian: Casimir Pulaski SAR, Registrar: Georgia Society of Founders & Patriots, and member of numerous other lineage and heritage societies.

Comparison--Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lee

By Dr. Jimmy T. LaBaume

Along about this time each January, I find myself reflecting upon the lives of two well-known Americans—one is “celebrated” the other is desecrated.

One had his name changed by his father but never bothered to make the change legal. The other was a man or honor, proud of his name and heritage. In fact, when offered a princely sum of money for his name, he replied, “Sirs, my name is the heritage of my parents. It is all I have and it is not for sale.”

One was a devout Christian and once wrote to his wife: "I trust that a merciful God, our only hope and refuge, will not desert us in this hour of need, and will deliver us by His almighty hand, that the whole world may recognize His power and all hearts be lifted up in adoration and praise of His unbounded loving kindness. We must, however, submit to His almighty will, whatever that may be." The other publicly proclaimed to be a Christian but said that the Bible was filled with "legends and myths."

One was a figure of dubious political, ethical, and moral character. So much so that, at the behest of his wife, a federal judge sealed his FBI files for fear of ruining his reputation. The other was a truly great American hero without a hint of a scandal that has been covered up, a shining example of the truth.

One sabotaged his country's war effort. The other declined command of an entire army in order to return to the defense of his homeland against enemy aggression. He said: "I will still follow my native state with my sword, and if need be with my life... These are my principles, and I must follow them. "When he resigned his commission in the United States Army, he said: "I cannot take up arms against my own state. A union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets... has no charm for me."

One was a womanizer and consorted with prostitutes. The last night he spent on earth was at a motel having sex with two prostitutes and physically beating a third. He had a habit of using his tax-exempt organization's money to hire prostitutes to keep him entertained during his tours. The other was a devout family man imbued with wisdom, high moral character, an unfailing sense of duty, true manhood and a heroic nobleness that inspired steadfast loyalty from those who knew him.

One was a true role model; the likes of which is rarely seen today. The other was also a role model; the likes of which are abundant today.

One was a plagiarist. It is a documented and verifiable fact that he plagiarized his way through Boston University and Crozer Theological Seminary. In addition to his Doctorial dissertation, his papers, speeches, and "sermons" were copied word for word from the works of others. The other was honor graduate, second in his class, from at the US Military Academy, West Pont without a single demerit and later devoted his life to higher education.

One was an associate and recipient of financial resources from known communists. He was a dedicated Marxist and Communist and was intimately involved in several Communist front groups. He created an organization that was staffed and funded by Communist individuals and front groups. The other understood that anything granted by a government can be withdrawn by that same government, but anything given to us by our Creator cannot be taken by government because it precedes and supersedes government—the exact opposite of Communist philosophy.

One publicly advocated non-violence but privately encouraged violent acts. Everywhere he went, violence erupted. Many of his "nonviolent" appearances were in reality carefully crafted public image appearances that were usually accompanied by violent acts of his followers. The other said that it was a good thing that war was so terrible; for fear that we might grow to like it.

One is a thoroughly despicable hypocrite, a violent and immoral degenerate, a worthless charlatan, and a Marxist, a plastic icon whose life our society has chosen to celebrate with a national holiday. The other has had textbook writers forced to reword their references to him and, in many cases, delete any mention of him at all. He has had cities remove his portrait and other memorabilia as a result of politicos who have not gone to the trouble to learn the facts about this most honorable of gentlemen. He has had his portraits and plaques slashed and burned, and his statutes spray-painted with obscenities.

Robert Edward Lee was born in Westmorland City, VA on January 19, 1807. Happy Birthday, General!

Martin Luther King--Facts the Media Ignore

WHEN THE COMMUNISTS TOOK OVER a country, one of the first things that they did was to confiscate all the privately-held weapons, to deny the people the physical ability to resist tyranny. But even more insidious than the theft of the people's weapons was the theft of their history. Official Communist "historians" rewrote history to fit the current party line. In many countries, revered national heroes were excised from the history books, or their real deeds were distorted to fit Communist ideology, and Communist killers and criminals were converted into official "saints." Holidays were declared in honor of the beasts who murdered countless nations.

Did you know that much the same process has occurred right here in America?

Every January, the media go into a kind of almost spastic frenzy of adulation for the so-called "Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr." King has even had a national holiday declared in his honor, an honor accorded to no other American, not Washington, not Jefferson, not Lincoln. (Washington and Lincoln no longer have holidays -- they share the generic-sounding "President's Day.") A liberal judge has sealed the FBI files on King until the year 2027. What are they hiding? Let's take a look at this modern-day plastic god.

Born in 1929, King was the son of a Black preacher known at the time only as "Daddy King." "Daddy King" named his son Michael. In 1935, "Daddy King" had an inspiration to name himself after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. He declared to his congregation that henceforth they were to refer to him as "Martin Luther King" and to his son as "Martin Luther King, Jr." None of this name changing was ever legalized in court. "Daddy" King's son's real name is to this day Michael King.

King's Brazen Cheating

We read in Michael Hoffman's "Holiday for a Cheater":

The first public sermon that King ever gave, in 1947 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, was plagiarized from a homily by Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick entitled "Life is What You Make It," according to the testimony of King's best friend of that time, Reverend Larry H. Williams.

The first book that King wrote, "Stride Toward Freedom, - -was plagiarized from numerous sources, all unattributed, according to documentation recently assembled by sympathetic King scholars Keith D. Miller, Ira G. Zepp, Jr., and David J. Garrow.

And no less an authoritative source than the four senior editors of "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.- - (an official publication of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., whose staff includes King's widow Coretta), stated of King's writings at both Boston University and Crozer Theological Seminary: "Judged retroactively by the standards of academic scholarship, [his writings] are tragically flawed by numerous instances of plagiarism.... Appropriated passages are particularly evident in his writings in his major field of graduate study, systematic theology."

King's essay, "The Place of Reason and Experience in Finding God," written at Crozer, pirated passages from the work of theologian Edgar S. Brightman, author of "The Finding of God."

Another of King's theses, "Contemporary Continental Theology," written shortly after he entered Boston University, was largely stolen from a book by Walter Marshall Horton.

King's doctoral dissertation, "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Harry Nelson Wieman," for which he was awarded a PhD in theology, contains more than fifty complete sentences plagiarized from the PhD dissertation of Dr. Jack Boozer, "The Place of Reason in Paul Tillich's Concept of God."

According to "The Martin Luther King Papers", in King's dissertation "only 49 per cent of sentences in the section on Tillich contain five or more words that were King's own...."!

In "The Journal of American History", June 1991, page 87, David J. Garrow, a leftist academic who is sympathetic to King, says that King's wife, Coretta Scott King, who also served as his secretary, was an accomplice in his repeated cheating. ("King's Plagiarism: Imitation, Insecurity and Transformation," The Journal of American History, June 1991, p. 87)

Reading Garrow's article, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that King cheated because he had chosen for himself a political role in which a PhD would be useful, and, lacking the intellectual ability to obtain the title fairly, went after it by any means necessary. Why, then, one might ask, did the professors at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University grant him passing grades and a PhD? Garrow states on page 89: "King's academic compositions, especially at Boston University, were almost without exception little more than summary descriptions... and comparisons of other's writings. Nonetheless, the papers almost always received desirable letter grades, strongly suggesting that King's professors did not expect more...." The editors of "The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers" state that "...the failure of King's teachers to notice his pattern of textual appropriation is somewhat remarkable...."

But researcher Michael Hoffman tells us "...actually the malfeasance of the professors is not at all remarkable. King was politically correct, he was Black, and he had ambitions. The leftist [professors were] happy to award a doctorate to such a candidate no matter how much fraud was involved. Nor is it any wonder that it has taken forty years for the truth about King's record of nearly constant intellectual piracy to be made public."

Supposed scholars, who in reality shared King's vision of a racially mixed and Marxist America, purposely covered up his cheating for decades. The cover-up still continues. From the "New York Times" of October 11, 1991, page 15, we learn that on October 10th of that year, a committee of researchers at Boston University admitted that, "There is no question but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation." However, despite its finding, the committee said that "No thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree," an action the panel said "would serve no purpose."

No purpose, indeed! Justice demands that, in light of his willful fraud as a student, the "reverend" and the "doctor" should be removed from King's name.

Communist Beliefs and Connections

Well friends, he is not a legitimate reverend, he is not a bona fide PhD, and his name isn't really "Martin Luther King, Jr." What's left? Just a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people.

On Labor Day, 1957, a special meeting was attended by Martin Luther King and four others at a strange institution called the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The Highlander Folk School was a Communist front, having been founded by Myles Horton (Communist Party organizer for Tennessee) and Don West (Communist Party organizer for North Carolina). The leaders of this meeting with King were the aforementioned Horton and West, along with Abner Berry and James Dumbrowski, all open and acknowledged members of the Communist Party, USA. The agenda of the meeting was a plan to tour the Southern states to initiate demonstrations and riots.

From 1955 to 1960, Martin Luther King's associate, advisor, and personal secretary was one Bayard Rustin. In 1936 Rustin joined the Young Communist League at New York City College. Convicted of draft-dodging, he went to prison for two years in 1944. On January 23, 1953 the "Los Angeles Times" reported his conviction and sentencing to jail for 60 days for lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion. Rustin attended the 16th Convention of the Communist Party, USA in February, 1957. One month later, he and King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC for short. The president of the SCLC was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The vice-president of the SCLC was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was also the president of an identified Communist front known as the Southern Conference Educational Fund, an organization whose field director, a Mr. Carl Braden, was simultaneously a national sponsor of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which you may have heard. The program director of the SCLC was the Reverend Andrew Young, in more recent years Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the UN and mayor of Atlanta. Young, by the way, was trained at the Highlander Folk School, previously mentioned.

Soon after returning from a trip to Moscow in 1958, Rustin organized the first of King's famous marches on Washington. The official organ of the Communist Party, "The Worker,- - openly declared the march to be a Communist project. Although he left King's employ as secretary in 1961, Rustin was called upon by King to be second in command of the much larger march on Washington which took place on August 28, 1963.

Bayard Rustin's replacement in 1961 as secretary and advisor to King was Jack O'Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O'Dell. According to official records, in 1962 Jack O'Dell was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA. He had been listed as a Communist Party member as early as 1956. O'Dell was also given the job of acting executive director for SCLC activities for the entire Southeast, according to the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat - -of October 26, 1962. At that time, there were still some patriots in the press corps, and word of O'Dell's party membership became known.

What did King do? Shortly after the negative news reports, King fired O'Dell with much fanfare. And he then, without the fanfare, "immediately hired him again- - as director of the New York office of the SCLC, as confirmed by the "Richmond News-Leader - -of September 27, 1963. In 1963 a Black man from Monroe, North Carolina named Robert Williams made a trip to Peking, China. Exactly 20 days before King's 1963 march on Washington, Williams successfully urged Mao Tse-Tung to speak out on behalf of King's movement. Mr. Williams was also around this time maintaining his primary residence in Cuba, from which he made regular broadcasts to the southern US, three times a week, from high-power AM transmitters in Havana under the title "Radio Free Dixie." In these broadcasts, he urged violent attacks by Blacks against White Americans.

During this period, Williams wrote a book entitled "Negroes With Guns." The writer of the foreword for this book? None other than Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also interesting to note that the editors and publishers of this book were to a man all supporters of the infamous Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

According to King's biographer and sympathizer David J. Garrow, "King privately described himself as a Marxist." In his 1981 book, "The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.", Garrow quotes King as saying in SCLC staff meetings, "...we have moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution.... The whole structure of American life must be changed.... We are engaged in the class struggle."

Jewish Communist Stanley Levison can best be described as King's behind-the-scenes "handler." Levison, who had for years been in charge of the secret funnelling of Soviet funds to the Communist Party, USA, was King's mentor and was actually the brains behind many of King's more successful ploys. It was Levison who edited King's book, "Stride Toward Freedom." It was Levison who arranged for a publisher. Levison even prepared King's income tax returns! It was Levison who really controlled the fund-raising and agitation activities of the SCLC. Levison wrote many of King's speeches. King described Levison as one of his "closest friends."

FBI: King Bought Sex With SCLC Money

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had for many years been aware of Stanley Levison's Communist activities. It was Levison's close association with King that brought about the initial FBI interest in King.

Lest you be tempted to believe the controlled media's lie about "racists" in the FBI being out to "get" King, you should be aware that the man most responsible for the FBI's probe of King was Assistant Director William C. Sullivan. Sullivan describes himself as a liberal, and says that initially "I was one hundred per cent for King...because I saw him as an effective and badly needed leader for the Black people in their desire for civil rights." The probe of King not only confirmed their suspicions about King's Communist beliefs and associations, but it also revealed King to be a despicable hypocrite, an immoral degenerate, and a worthless charlatan.

According to Assistant Director Sullivan, who had direct access to the surveillance files on King which are denied the American people, King had embezzled or misapplied substantial amounts of money contributed to the "civil rights" movement. King used SCLC funds to pay for liquor, and numerous prostitutes both Black and White, who were brought to his hotel rooms, often two at a time, for drunken sex parties which sometimes lasted for several days. These types of activities were the norm for King's speaking and organizing tours.

In fact, an outfit called The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, which is putting on display the two bedrooms from the Lorraine Motel where King stayed the night before he was shot, has declined to depict in any way the "occupants - -of those rooms. That "according to exhibit designer Gerard Eisterhold "would be "close to blasphemy." The reason? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent his last night on Earth having sex with two women at the motel and physically beating and abusing a third.

Sullivan also stated that King had alienated the affections of numerous married women. According to Sullivan, who in 30 years with the Bureau hadáseen everything there was to be seen of the seamy side of life, King was one of only seven people he had ever encountered who was such a total degenerate.

Noting the violence that almost invariably attended King's supposedly "non-violent" marches, Sullivan's probe revealed a very different King from the carefully crafted public image. King welcomed members of many different Black groups as members of his SCLC, many of them advocates and practitioners of violence. King's only admonition on the subject was that they should embrace "tactical nonviolence."

Sullivan also relates an incident in which King met in a financial conference with Communist Party representatives, not knowing that one of the participants was an infiltrator actually working for the FBI.

J. Edgar Hoover personally saw to it that documented information on King's Communist connections was provided to the President and to Congress. And conclusive information from FBI files was also provided to major newspapers and news wire services. But were the American people informed of King's real nature? No, for even in the 1960s, the fix was in "the controlled media and the bought politicians were bound and determined to push their racial mixing program on America. King was their man and nothing was going to get in their way. With a few minor exceptions, these facts have been kept from the American people. The pro-King propaganda machine grinds on, and it is even reported that a serious proposal has been made to add some of King's writings as a new book in the Bible.

Ladies and gentlemen, the purpose of this information is far greater than to prove to you the immorality and subversion of this man called King. Start to think for yourselves. Consider this: What are the forces and motivation behind the controlled media's active promotion of King? What does it tell you about our politicians when you see them, almost without exception, falling all over themselves to honor King as a national hero? What does it tell you about our society when any public criticism of this moral leper and Communist functionary is considered grounds for dismissal? What does it tell you about the controlled media when you see how they have successfully suppressed the truth and held out a picture of King that can only be described as a colossal lie?

Comparison Of Confederate and U.S. Flag

Individuals, groups, and organizations who denounce the Confederate States of America, the Confederate flag, and the celebration of Confederate Memorial Day appear very ignorant, biased, and hypocritical.

The Confederate flag represents Limited Constitutional Federal Government, States Rights, Resistance to Tyranny, and Christian Values and Principles. In claiming that the Confederate flag represents slavery and racism they make no comparison to the U.S. flag (Stars & Stripes) and to the history of the United States of America. Slavery began in the North in Massachusetts. Soon after the Pilgrims landed they began enslaving the Pequot Indians. In 1641 Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery by statute. The five states that imported slaves in the colonial era were Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York. The slave trade was still in operation at the beginning of the War Between the States and the slave ship "Nightingale" was captured by Capt. John Julius Guthrie, who soon became a Confederate naval officer, on April 21, 1861. It was registered to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Thus the slave trade in America was carried on under the U.S. flag and the flags of the Northern colonies and states with U.S. money. The U.S. flag flew over slavery for 90 years as compared to 4 for the Confederate flag. New York City had the second highest slave population in the U.S. The official flag of the KKK is the U.S. flag, not the Confederate flag. Indiana and Ohio in the 1920 era were the largest Klan states and all photographs of that era show them flying the U.S. flag. The U.S. flag flew over the concentration camp incarceration of loyal Japanese U.S. Citizens during World War II while some of their fathers and sons fought and died for the U.S. as American soldiers. The U.S. participated in the allied bombing of Dresden,Germany in World War II which was a population center and not involved in the war effort. Thousands of innocent children were burned alive. Finally the U.S. flag flies over a nation that has murdered an estimated 50 million babies by abortion.

The U.S. flag flew over the genocide of the American Indians. Their land was taken without fair compensation and they died by the thousands from starvation and disease as they were herded onto reservations. It was the U.S. government that broke every treaty ever made with the Indians. The U.S. flag flew over the Trail Of Tears endured by the Cherokee.

Given these facts, which flag has flown over more human rights violations, the U.S. flag or the Confederate flag? Which flag is more associated with slavery ? Which flag has had more racist acts committed under it ? Clearly the answer is the U.S. flag. Both the United States of America and the Confederate States of America and the flags, heroes, and symbols of each nation should be respected and honored for positive reasons.

The Yankee Problem In America

The Yankee Problem in America
Since the 2000 presidential election, much attention has been paid to a map showing the sharp geographical division between the two candidates’ support. Gore prevailed in the power- and plunder-seeking Deep North (Northeast, Upper Midwest, Pacific Coast) and Bush in the regions inhabited by productive and decent Americans. There is nothing new about this. Historically speaking, it is just one more manifestation of the Yankee problem.

As indicated by these books (listed at the end), scholars are at last starting to pay some attention to one of the most important and most neglected subjects in United States history – the Yankee problem.

By Yankee I do not mean everybody from north of the Potomac and Ohio. Lots of them have always been good folks. The firemen who died in the World Trade Center on September 11 were Americans. The politicians and TV personalities who stood around telling us what we are to think about it are Yankees. I am using the term historically to designate that peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can be easily recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around. Puritans long ago abandoned anything that might be good in their religion but have never given up the notion that they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the world, into the perfection of their own image.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, raised a Northern Methodist in Chicago, is a museum-quality specimen of the Yankee – self-righteous, ruthless, and self-aggrandizing. Northern Methodism and Chicago were both, in their formative periods, hotbeds of abolitionist, high tariff Black Republicanism. The Yankee temperament, it should be noted, makes a neat fit with the Stalinism that was brought into the Deep North by later immigrants.

The ethnic division between Yankees and other Americans goes back to earliest colonial times. Up until the War for Southern Independence, Southerners were considered to be the American mainstream and Yankees were considered to be the "peculiar" people. Because of a long campaign of cultural imperialism and the successful military imperialism engineered by the Yankees, the South, since the war, has been considered the problem, the deviation from the true American norm. Historians have made an industry of explaining why the South is different (and evil, for that which defies the "American" as now established, is by definition evil). Is the South different because of slavery? white supremacy? the climate? pellagra? illiteracy? poverty? guilt? defeat? Celtic wildness rather than Anglo-Saxon sobriety?

Unnoticed in all this literature was a hidden assumption: the North is normal, the standard of all things American and good. Anything that does not conform is a problem to be explained and a condition to be annihilated. What about that hidden assumption? Should not historians be interested in understanding how the North got to be the way it is? Indeed, is there any question in American history more important?

According to standard accounts of American history (i.e., Northern mythology), New Englanders fought the Revolution and founded glorious American freedom as had been planned by the "Puritan Fathers." Southerners, who had always been of questionable character, because of their fanatic devotion to slavery, wickedly rebelled against government of, by, and for the people, were put down by the armies of the Lord, and should be ever grateful for not having been exterminated. (This is clearly the view of the anonymous Union Leaguer from Portland, Maine, who recently sent me a chamber pot labeled "Robert E. Lee’s soup tureen.") And out of their benevolence and devotion to the ideal of freedom, the North struck the chains from the suffering black people. (They should be forever grateful, also. Take a look at the Boston statue with happy blacks adoring the feet of Col. Robert Gould Shaw.)

Aside from the fact that every generalization in this standard history is false, an obvious defect in it is that, for anyone familiar with American history before the War, it is clear that "Southern" was American and Yankees were the problem. America was Washington and Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase and the Battle of New Orleans, John Randolph and Henry Clay, Daniel Morgan, Daniel Boone, and Francis Marion. Southerners had made the Constitution, saved it under Jefferson from the Yankees, fought the wars, acquired the territory, and settled the West, including the Northwest. To most Americans, in Pennsylvania and Indiana as well as Virginia and Georgia, this was a basic view up until about 1850. New England had been a threat, a nuisance, and a negative force in the progress of America. Northerners, including some patriotic New Englanders, believed this as much as Southerners.

When Washington Irving, whose family were among the early Anglo-Dutch settlers of New York, wrote the story about the "Headless Horseman," he was ridiculing Yankees. The prig Ichabod Crane had come over from Connecticut and made himself a nuisance. So a young man (New York young men were then normal young men rather than Yankees) played a trick on him and sent him fleeing back to Yankeeland where he belonged. James Fenimore Cooper, of another early New York family, felt the same way about New Englanders who appear unfavorably in his writings. Yet another New York writer, James Kirke Paulding (among many others) wrote a book defending the South and attacking abolitionists. It is not unreasonable to conclude that in Moby Dick, the New York Democrat Herman Melville modeled the fanatical Captain Ahab on the Yankee abolitionist. In fact, the term "Yankee" appears to originate in some mingling of Dutch and Indian words, to designate New Englanders. Obviously, both the Dutch New Yorkers and the Native Americans recognized them as "different."

Young Abe Lincoln amused his neighbors in southern Indiana and Illinois, nearly all of whom, like his own family, had come from the South, with "Yankee jokes," stories making fun of dishonest peddlers from New England. They were the most popular stories in his repertoire, except for the dirty ones.

Right into the war, Northerners opposed to the conquest of the South blamed the conflict on fanatical New Englanders out for power and plunder, not on the good Americans in the South who had been provoked beyond bearing.

Many people, and not only in the South, thought that Southerners, according to their nature, had been loyal to the Union, had served it, fought and sacrificed for it as long as they could. New Englanders, according to their nature, had always been grasping for themselves while proclaiming their righteousness and superiority.

The Yankees succeeded so well, by the long cultural war described in these volumes, and by the North’s military victory, that there was no longer a Yankee problem. Now the Yankee was America and the South was the problem. America, the Yankee version, was all that was normal and right and good. Southerners understood who had won the war (not Northerners, though they had shed a lot of blood, but the accursed Yankees.) With some justification they began to regard all Northerners as Yankees, even the hordes of foreigners who had been hired to wear the blue.

Here is something closer to a real history of the United States: American freedom was not a legacy of the "Puritan Fathers," but of Virginians who proclaimed and spread constitutional rights. New England gets some credit for beginning the War of Independence. After the first few years, however, Yankees played little part. The war was fought and won in the South. Besides, New Englanders had good reasons for independence – they did not fit into the British Empire economically, since one of their main industries was smuggling, and the influential Puritan clergy hated the Church of England. Southerners, in fighting for independence, were actually going against their economic interests for the sake of principle.

Once Southerners had gone into the Union (which a number of wise statesmen like Patrick Henry and George Mason warned them against), the Yankees began to show how they regarded the new federal government: as an instrument to be used for their own purposes. Southerners long continued to view the Union as a vehicle for mutual cooperation, as they often naively still do.

In the first Congress, Yankees demanded that the federal government continue the British subsidies to their fishing fleets. While Virginia and the other Southern states gave up their vast western lands for future new states, New Englanders demanded a special preserve for themselves (the "Western Reserve" in Ohio).

Under John Adams, the New England quest for power grew into a frenzy. They passed the Sedition Law to punish anti-government words (as long as they controlled the government) in clear violation of the Constitution. During the election of 1800 the preachers in New England told their congregations that Thomas Jefferson was a French Jacobin who would set up the guillotine in their town squares and declare women common property. (What else could be expected from a dissolute slaveholder?) In fact, Jefferson’s well-known distaste for mixing of church and state rested largely on his dislike of the power of the New England self-appointed saints.

When Jeffersonians took power, the New Englanders fought them with all their diminishing strength. Their poet William Cullen Bryant regarded the Louisiana Purchase as nothing but a large swamp for Jefferson to pursue his atheistic penchant for science.

The War of 1812, the Second War of Independence, was decisive for the seemingly permanent discrediting of New England. The Yankee ruling class opposed the war even though it was begun by Southerners on behalf of oppressed American seamen, most of whom were New Englanders. Yankees did not care about their oppressed poorer citizens because they were making big bucks smuggling into wartime Europe. One New England congressman attacked young patriot John C. Calhoun as a backwoodsman who had never seen a sail and who was unqualified to deal with foreign policy.

During the war Yankees traded with the enemy and talked openly of secession. (Southerners never spoke of secession in time of war.) Massachusetts refused to have its militia called into constitutional federal service even after invasion, and then, notoriously for years after, demanded that the federal government pay its militia expenses.

Historians have endlessly repeated that the "Era of Good Feelings" under President Monroe refers to the absence of party strife. Actually, the term was first used to describe the state of affairs in which New England traitorousness had declined to the point that a Virginia president could visit Boston without being mobbed.

Yankee political arrogance was soulmate to Yankee cultural arrogance. Throughout the antebellum period, New England literature was characterized and promoted as the American literature, and non-Yankee writers, in most cases much more talented and original, were ignored or slandered. Edgar Allan Poe had great fun ridiculing the literary pretensions of New Englanders, but they largely succeeded in dominating the idea of American literature into the 20th century. Generations of Americans have been cured of reading forever by being forced to digest dreary third-string New England poets as "American literature."

In 1789, a Connecticut Puritan preacher named Jedidiah Morse published the first book of American Geography. The trouble was, it was not an American geography but a Yankee geography. Most of the book was taken up with describing the virtues of New England. Once you got west of the Hudson River, as Morse saw it and conveyed to the world’s reading public, the U.S. was a benighted land inhabited by lazy, dirty Scotch-Irish and Germans in the Middle States and lazy, morally depraved Southerners, corrupted and enervated by slavery. New Englanders were pure Anglo-Saxons with all virtues. The rest of the Americans were questionable people of lower or mongrel ancestry. The theme of New Englanders as pure Anglo-Saxons continued right down through the 20th century. The alleged saints of American equality operated on a theory of their racial superiority. While Catholics and Jews were, in the South, accepted and loyal Southerners, Yankees burned down convents and banished Jews from the Union Army lines.

A few years after Morse, Noah Webster, also from Connecticut, published his American Dictionary and American spelling book. The trouble was, it was not an American dictionary but a New England dictionary. As Webster declared in his preface, New Englanders spoke and spelled the purest and best form of English of any people in the world. Southerners and others ignored Webster and spelled and pronounced real English until after the War of Southern Independence.

As the books show, Yankees after the War of 1812 were acutely aware of their minority status. And here is the important point: they launched a deliberate campaign to take over control of the idea of "America."

The campaign was multi-faceted. Politically, they gained profits from the protective tariff and federal expenditures, both of which drained money from the South for the benefit of the North, and New England especially. Seeking economic advantage from legislation is nothing new in human history. But the New England greed was marked by its peculiar assumptions of moral superiority. New Englanders, who were selling their products in a market from which competition had been excluded by the tariff, proclaimed that the low price of cotton was due to the fact that Southerners lacked the drive and enterprise of virtuous Yankees! (When the South was actually the productive part of the U.S. economy.)

This transfer of wealth built the strength of the North. It was even more profitable than the slave trade (which New England shippers carried on from Africa to Brazil and Cuba right up to the War Between the States) and the Chinese opium trade (which they were also to break into).

Another phase of the Yankee campaign for what they considered their rightful dominance was the capture of the history of the American Revolution. At a time when decent Americans celebrated the Revolution as the common glory of all, New Englanders were publishing a literature claiming the whole credit for themselves. A scribbler from Maine named Lorenzo Sabine, for one example among many, published a book in which he claimed that the Revolution in the South had been won by New England soldiers because Southerners were traitorous and enervated by slavery. As William Gilmore Simms pointed out, it was all lies. When Daniel Webster was received hospitably in Charleston, he made a speech in which he commemorated the graves of the many heroic Revolutionary soldiers from New England which were to be found in the South. The trouble was, those graves did not exist. Many Southern volunteers had fought in the North, but no soldier from north of Pennsylvania (except a few generals) had ever fought in the South!

George Washington was a bit of a problem here, so the honor-driven, foxhunting Virginia gentleman was transformed by phony folklore into a prim New Englander in character, a false image that has misled and repulsed countless Americans since.

It should be clear, this was not merely misplaced pride. It was a deliberate, systematic effort by the Massachusetts elite to take control of American symbols and disparage all competing claims. Do not be put off by Professor Sheidley’s use of "Conservative Leaders" in his title. He means merely the Yankee ruling elite who were never conservatives then or now. Conservatives do not work for "the transformation of America."

Another successful effort was a New England claim on the West. When New Englanders referred to "the West" in antebellum times, they meant the parts of Ohio and adjacent states settled by New Englanders. The rest of the great American West did not count. In fact, the great drama of danger and adventure and achievement that was the American West, from the Appalachians to the Pacific, was predominantly the work of Southerners and not of New Englanders at all. In the Midwest, the New Englanders came after Southerners had tamed the wilderness, and they looked down upon the early settlers. But in Western movies we still have the inevitable family from Boston moving west by covered wagon. Such a thing never existed! The people moving west in covered wagons were from the upper South and were despised by Boston.

So our West is reduced, in literature, to The Oregon Trail, a silly book written by a Boston tourist, and the phony cavortings of the Eastern sissy Teddy Roosevelt in the cattle country opened by Southerners. And the great American outdoors is now symbolized by Henry David Thoreau and a little frog pond at Walden, in sight of the Boston smokestacks. The Pennsylvanian Owen Wister knew better when he entitled his Wyoming novel, The Virginian.

To fully understand what the Yankee is today – builder of the all-powerful "multicultural" therapeutic state (with himself giving the orders and collecting the rewards) which is the perfection of history and which is to be exported to all peoples, by guided missiles on women and children if necessary – we need a bit more real history.

That history is philosophical, or rather theological, and demographic. New Englanders lived in a barren land. Some of their surplus sons went to sea. Many others moved west when it was safe to do so. By 1830, half the people in the state of New York were New England-born. By 1850, New Englanders had tipped the political balance in the Midwest, with the help of German revolutionaries and authoritarians who had flooded in after the 1848 revolutions.

The leading editors in New York City, Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant, and the big money men, were New England-born. Thaddeus Stevens, the Pennsylvania steel tycoon and Radical Republican, was from Vermont. (Thanks to the tariff, he made $6,000 extra profit on every mile of railroad rails he sold.)

The North had been Yankeeized, for the most part quietly, by control of churches, schools, and other cultural institutions, and by whipping up a frenzy of paranoia about the alleged plot of the South to spread slavery to the North, which was as imaginary as Jefferson’s guillotine.

The people that Cooper and Irving had despised as interlopers now controlled New York! The Yankees could now carry a majority in the North and in 1860 elect the first sectional president in U.S. history – a threat to the South to knuckle under or else. In time, even the despised Irish Catholics began to think like Yankees.

We must also take note of the intellectual revolution amongst the Yankees which created the modern version of self-righteous authoritarian "Liberalism" so well exemplified by Mrs. Clinton. In the 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson went to Germany to study. There he learned from philosophers that the world was advancing by dialectical process to an ever-higher state. He returned to Boston, and after marrying the dying daughter of a banker, resigned from the clergy, declared the sacraments to be a remnant of barbarism, and proclaimed The American as the "New Man" who was leaving behind the garbage of the past and blazing the way into the future state of perfection for humanity. Emerson has ever since in many quarters been regarded as the American philosopher, the true interpreter of the meaning of America.

From the point of view of Christianity, this "American" doctrine is heresy. From the point of view of history it is nonsense. But it is powerful enough for Ronald Reagan, who should have known better, to proclaim America as the shining City upon a Hill that was to redeem mankind. And powerful enough that the United States has long pursued a bipartisan foreign policy, one of the guiding assumptions of which is that America is the model of perfection to which all the world should want to conform.

There is no reason for readers of Southern Partisan to rush out and buy these books, which are expensive and dense academic treatises. If you are really interested, get your library to acquire them. They are well-documented studies, responsibly restrained in their drawing of larger conclusions. But they indicate what is hopefully a trend of exploration of the neglected field of Yankee history.

The highflying Yankee rhetoric of Emerson and Hillary Rodham Clinton has a nether side, which has its historical origins in the "Burnt Over District." The "Burnt Over District" was well known to antebellum Americans. Emersonian notions bore strange fruit in the central regions of New York State settled by the overflow of poorer Yankees from New England. It was "Burnt Over" because it (along with a similar area in northern Ohio) was swept over time and again by post-millennial revivalism. Here preachers like Charles G. Finney began to confuse Emerson’s future state of perfection with Christianity, and God’s plan for humanity with American chosenness.

If this were true, then anything that stood in the way of American perfection must be eradicated. The threatening evil at various times was liquor, tobacco, the Catholic Church, the Masonic order, meat-eating, marriage. Within the small area of the Burnt Over District and within the space of a few decades was generated what historians have misnamed the "Jacksonian reform movement:" Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from the Angel Moroni; William Miller began the Seventh Day Adventists by predicting, inaccurately, the end of the world; the free love colony of John Humphrey Noyes flourished at Oneida; the first feminist convention was held at Seneca Falls; and John Brown, who was born in Connecticut, collected accomplices and financial backers for his mass murder expeditions.

It was in this milieu that abolitionism, as opposed to the antislavery sentiment shared by many Americans, including Southerners, had its origins. Abolitionism, despite what has been said later, was not based on sympathy for the black people nor on an ideal of natural rights. It was based on the hysterical conviction that Southern slaveholders were evil sinners who stood in the way of fulfillment of America’s divine mission to establish Heaven on Earth. It was not the Union that our Southern forefathers seceded from, but the deadly combination of Yankee greed and righteousness.

Most abolitionists had little knowledge of or interest in black people or knowledge of life in the South. Slavery promoted sin and thus must end. No thought was given to what would happen to the African-Americans. In fact, many abolitionists expected that evil Southern whites and blacks would disappear and the land be repopulated by virtuous Yankees.

The darker side of the Yankee mind has had its expression in American history as well as the side of high ideals. Timothy McVeigh from New York and the Unabomber from Harvard are, like John Brown, examples of this side of the Yankee problem. (Even though distinguished Yankee intellectuals have declared that their violence was a product of the evil "Southern gun culture.")

General Richard Taylor, in one of the best Confederate memoirs, Destruction and Reconstruction, related what happened as he surrendered the last Confederate troops east of the Mississippi in 1865. A German, wearing the uniform of a Yankee general and speaking in heavily accented English, lectured him that now that the war was over, Southerners would be taught "the true American principles." Taylor replied, sardonically, that he regretted that his grandfather, an officer in the Revolution, and his father, President of the United States, had not passed on to him true American principles. Yankeeism was triumphant.

Since the Confederate surrender, the Yankee has always been a strong and often dominant force in American society, though occasionally tempered by Southerners and other representatives of Western civilization in America. In the 1960s the Yankee had one of his periodic eruptions of mania such as he had in the 1850s. Since then, he has managed to destroy a good part of the liberty and morals of the American peoples. It remains to be seen whether his conquest is permanent or whether in the future we may be, at least to some degree, emancipated from it.