The efforts toward freedom and liberty have been frustrated for centuries, and it was in the mid-late 1700s where such promise seemed at hand. The American colonies were left on auto-pilot until the British Empire was hoping for some ROI and decided to push for some taxes and control. Please note that human nature’s default is that those in power will push for control as well as compensation for their “management” of society towards orderly conduct.
It does seem to be that the people of this era were pretty well versed (no pun intended) in what they experienced and learned in nature as well as what wisdom could be found in the Bible. It was these kind of people (think Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine) that would help draft the Declaration of Independence.
There is a line in this document that does acknowledge ” the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as well as “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as well as “that all men are created equal”. That last quote never implies that we are to be made equal by man, but that God sees us each as equal, as in made on God’s image, uniquely.
So in God’s/Nature’s God eyes, we are all equal, BUT we are each unique and never equal while on this earth. We are born with different gifts and talents, with various thinking capacities as well as emotional and physical capacities. Men are not the same as women, but equal in God’s eyes.
The problem comes with the progressive always wants to play god and make plans to “make” everyone equal, to “make” the climate perfect and to second-guess God’s decision that we are either male or female. They think so highly of themselves that they feel they can improve on what God has created. I am guessing if they want to work on themselves, then I say let them. However, they are never content with that .. they want their ideas to be applied across society with force. This is where government enters.
The opposing force to these ideas used to be the church but it seems like there is so much in-fighting in those circles that there is little energy left to bring wisdom to the discussion. Another opposing force, or so I thought, were “conservatives”. Well, while we have heard for decades about the conservative (political) fight .. it is just smoke and mirrors because obviously there are zero principles involved.
The conservatives have not just recently let the people down in this regard, even in 1871 critical thinkers saw the GOP “conservatives” for what they are .. Robert Lewis Dabney here calls them out for what they were in his day:
“.. Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation..”
“.. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip…” [source https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/equality-is-not-americas-founding-principle ]
In summary, it seems like the opportunity presented in 1776 birthed 13 free and independent colonies by 1783, but quickly was swallowed up by the political fears that led to 1787’s coup d’etat when the US Constitution was secretly birthed and ratified in the next two years. No longer was Nature’s God acknowledged until the Confederate Constitution was ratified in 1861.
The failure of the seven, eleven or thirteen states to secede peacefully from the United States of America would put an end of a reliance on “Almighty God” and His Word, the Bible, in trusting Him with our future as a people and as a country.
The future looks more and more like being first century Christians in the Roman Empire. Always in the minority and always despised until they see the love we can share from our Almighty God and then things may turn around.
I have found it more entertaining every year to hear what Americans think of the 4th of July. Most have never read the Declaration of Independence or even understand the political dynamics of the days in 1776. Most just know it is a day off, an excuse to party. The state (government in control of this land) could not be happier.
Test drive these words and see if your average politician might be tempted to put up barb-wire fences and gun turrets around the US Capitol:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation .. 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…
Alter or abolish is the remedy for a government that no longer has the consent of the people, yet here we are.
The role of government in society has been argued for centuries, yet common sense dictates that every generation could and should struggle with the proper extent that government (i.e. force, coercion, monopoly) should try to “help”.
From an insightful article written by a man 10 years my senior, I have found some interesting “truths” for me to ponder, as well as my kids and grand-kids. For example:
.. can’t we at least be happy when the government helps needy people? No, we can’t. The more goodies the government doles out, the more violent society becomes. That’s because it becomes more and more vital to be at the head of the line for those goodies; without them, you’re left with a crippling tax bill and nothing to show for it. The higher the fraction of people’s income that comes from the government, the more intense becomes the jockeying. You do your best to smear anyone who is claiming to be more worthy of largess than you. Society becomes spontaneously pulverized and at war with itself, all thanks to “help” from the government.
A society at war with itself is advantageous to the state as this distraction can serve to allow it to not only offer to fictitiously broker peace between the warring factions while “managing” the “crisis but also allows it to weigh in violently around the globe as a world-stage bully. A hobby that the state/empire loves to do, experiment around the world with ideas for democracy which then can be modified for use domestically to enhance the “police state”.
The rights that the founding fathers were willing to be called and hunted as “traitors” for can be seen in the following list of illegitimate government actions:
If you are sick, you have the right to be treated by whomever you please, for a price negotiated to the satisfaction of both parties, without government intrusion.
If you have services you wish to offer to the world, you have the right to do so without asking permission from the government. Only if you engage in force or fraud does the government have a right to intrude.
The government has no right to enslave you or your children to fight and die in some trumped-up war. If the nation were ever in genuine danger, there would be no shortage of volunteers to defend it.
The government has no right to tax an amount approaching half of your earnings. The legitimate functions of government can be financed by a tiny fraction of that.
The government has no right to rob you in order to pass out money to some favored victim group. Genuine charity is voluntary, but when the government gets involved, waste and fraud and theft are built in.
The government has no right to force you to pay for the worthless indoctrination centers called “public schools.” That money rightfully belongs to parents so they can make an informed decision for how best to educate their children.
The government has no right to deprive you of the means of self-defense. Any government official who attempts to use force to do so is committing the worst order of crime and should expect an appropriate response.
The government has no right to pull your car over on the highway and steal any cash you may be carrying. Any criminals who participate in this practice should expect an appropriately enraged response from those they seek to rob.
The government has no right to condemn and raze your home to enable some private developer to build a shopping mall.
The government has no right to lock you up if you have committed no crime, on the pretense that some people are irrationally frightened of some microscopic bug, and therefore everyone must hide until the last traces of irrational fear have vanished.
The government has no right to shut down your business for any reason, unless you have been found to have engaged in force or fraud by a non-corrupt court of law.
The government has no right to require you to wear a diaper on your face, or to be injected with an experimental biological agent.
The government has no right to force you to do business with someone you don’t want to do business with. It’s not nice to be a bigot, but bigots pay for discriminating through higher labor costs, lost trade, and a general echoing back of the world to the spirit one projects onto it. For the law to criminalize bigotry merely bottles it up, where it achieves higher and higher pressure until it explodes. It also creates a lawsuit-happy nation where everybody is terminally aggrieved over some perceived slight and wants to whine about it endlessly. The right to freedom of association is absolute.
The government has no right to apply coercion in any way to stop or influence anything you are doing, unless you are violating someone else’s rights. A free individual runs his own life, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Anything else is tyranny.
On July 4th, will you be celebrating your “freedom”? Asking for a friend!
Those who advocate the strategy of “elect better officials” are deluding themselves. Candidates for office always promise to be the new, different, actual, genuine representative of the people who would never violate anyone’s rights. But once they’re elected, it’s only the biggest donors they give a flying consideration about, and they have taken care to ensure that there is no way to sue them for breach of contract. They are accountable to no one but themselves and their own selfish interests, financed with what used to be your money.
Ever-larger government peddles itself as the solution to society’s problems, but intrusive, thieving government is the source of a huge fraction of society’s problems. We do of course need to deal with actual private criminals in order to keep people secure in their homes and property, but when the government turns criminal we have a much bigger problem, and we are left to ourselves to deal with it.
I do hope you see clearly that politics is not the way the people can exit from our existing ramped up tyrannical paradise.
Most people would read that and assume that violence is the only other option at this point, however, as the author of this article suggests, no, but if one is violently attacked by an illegitimate government, self defense is itself a natural right regardless of the law:
Am I in favor of violence? Quite the opposite: I vehemently oppose it. Violence is never justified except in self-defense, where it is absolutely called for in measure proportionate to the threat. That’s why when government officials initiate illegitimate violence, they should not be shocked if their violence is met by necessary self-defense. It is they, and no one else, who are responsible for the illegitimate violence they initiate, and when it is returned to them in equal measure, they have no one to blame but themselves.
When the Redcoats headed to Concord and Lexington to capture the guns the militia had stored in those locations, natural self defense rights were being violated and measures appropriate to the threat were put in place.
Remember that. Wise as serpents, harmless as doves .. and if you don’t have a sword, sell your coat and buy one .. it sure came in handy in Concord and Lexington back in 1775!
In the quest to understand what might be upon us here in 2020, to utilize CSI techniques to identify where this effort against individuals and private property while dutifully labeling everyone into different groups where collectively somehow all the wrongs can be righted, one can use history to double-check that one is not indeed going bat-sh*t crazy.
The Marxist push in this land did not spring up overnight, nor only during Obama’s administration, nor after Reagan’s or even FDRs. One needs to go way back to when Europeans came to America’s shores to spot the germ of this parasitic plant.
Being unwelcome in England due to his penchant for religious terrorism, the Yankee was exiled across the sea where he immediately set about destroying the civilizations he found here. He ran wild against the Wampanoag and the Iroquois. He put the Lakota and the Navajo into camps, where they remain. He later crossed another sea, imprisoned the Hawaiian queen, committed genocide against the Moros, napalmed the Vietnamese in their farming villages, and put the torch to the cultural treasures of Japan. Having practiced looting and pillaging in Atlanta, he put his well-honed skills to use in Baghdad, the ruination of museums and relics following wherever he directed his gaze.
I just love this 30,000 foot view of the trends in history to sort all this out or at least consider in light of these trying times that impact our body and soul.
Norman Rockwell’s Icabod Crane
While most assume that Yankee just indicates being from the US north as opposed to Rebel being that from the US southern states, its roots actually had to do with the Dutch in the late 1600s:
[Yankee] a name applied disparagingly by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. It may be from Dutch Janke, literally “Little John,” diminutive of common personal name Jan.
By 1820 Washington Irving’s story of “The Headless Horseman” Ichabod Crane was a Yankee who had come from Connecticut to New York and “made himself a nuisance” so a young New Yorker played a trick on him to send him packing back to “Yankeeland”.
At this time, even in the current region of the Midwest (called “The West”) most settlers and pioneers came from Virginia, Carolinas and even Texas after the War of 1812 to break in the land of prairies and forests past the Ohio River.
The Yankees from New England and New York State came later via railroads, especially just before and after the so-called Civil War to ply their trade in spite of their general repugnant character.
Clyde Wilson has spent his lifetime in part trying to understand the Yankee mindset as he has read so many personal accounts from those with more humble characters encounter this rather unique character originally from the northeast. He noticed in Thomas Jefferson’s writings:
Thomas Jefferson himself once complained that “It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance.” This was long before anyone began debating the issue of slavery. The Yankees said Jefferson, “were marked with such a perversity of character” that America was bound to be forever divided between Yankees and non-Yankees.
Clyde goes on to compare what he has seen in recent years as being a continuation of this:
[Clyde] Wilson describes how New England writers have falsified the history of America by emphasizing the Mayflower Pilgrims while ignoring or downplaying the earlier, Jamestown Pilgrims; by pretending that New Englanders alone won the American Revolution and ignoring the efforts of Francis Marion and other Southern revolutionary heroes; by ludicrously portraying the Virginia planter George Washington as a New England “prig” in their books and movies; and of course reserving their biggest lies in their discussions of the causes and consequences of the “Civil War.” As if to prove Jefferson’s point, Daniel Webster wrote in his diary: “O New England! How superior are thy inhabitants in morals, literature, civility and industry”
Puke. Seriously? I guess Daniel Webster was as much a Yankee then as Hillary Clinton is today:
There is no better example of this today than that “museum-quality” specimen of a Yankee – self-righteous, ruthless, and self-aggrandizing as Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her pay-to-play Clinton Foundation.”
Priceless. At the end of the day their character can be summed up as:
[Clyde] Wilson describes “Yankees” as “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”
Y’all all know these people, from North, South, East and West, they are everywhere!
So it is a great delight to share a few more highlights from Jason’s blog post:
And yet, for all that, the Yankee is nevertheless a human being. With patient tutelage he, too, may be brought into the world of gentility and manners. His is not a hopeless case, no matter how large loom the depredations of his tribe. ..
The United States is a long experiment in this very thing. Our Yankee cousins, inflicted on us as God gave the Philistines to the Hebrews, are a test and a burden, but also a chance to do real charity and teach the wayward how to live like human beings. From age to age the South has tempered the Hun-like nature of the Yankee, patiently bearing with him and quietening him in his atavistic fits…
The Yankee has ever been anxious to take up his weapons and bathe in the blood of innocents as his ancestors did. We know firsthand, unfortunately, how the Yankee behaves when war gets into his head. But even a raging Yankee may be soothed and tamed, with time. American history is the history of the South trying to teach the Yankee to behave like a gentleman. We have not always succeeded, but we have tried.
Honor and principles are usually not in the Yankee’s repertoire. Individuality and respect for others made in God’s image is in the heart of Southerners whereas ..
.. the Yankee hates order and gentility, and so they range the cities of the plain looking for some scrap of civilization to demolish. Lee, Jackson, Jefferson, all are defaced. Revealing his utter ignorance, the Yankee even lashes out against statues of the 54th Massachusetts, against Lincoln and Grant. (Did you think the Yankee was learning any history in his trade schools?)
At the end of the day, anyone can attempt to know what is good and true from the Southern tradition. One must know that the “slavery” label is the Yankee’s only defense in attempting their own complacency of those days when chattel slavery was actually encouraged by the banks and shipbuilders of the north. Only when the south attempted to leave the union so that their economy would have to adjust did they wage war on a peaceful, orderly, legal secession of seven states.
Everyone who loves his home and wants to protect and preserve his heritage is a partner. There are Southern natives of Michigan and Minnesota, California and Maine, who labor patiently at the arts and at husbandry. It is not a paradox but the deepest truth of America that anyone in the North who holds America dear and loves his family and homeland is a fellow Southerner. Likewise, the South, thronged with Yankees, has largely forgotten what it means to cherish, to forgive, to clear weeds from the heart and give thanks for even the hard things. We have been under Yankee capture for far too long. We all need to learn to be civilized.
Black and white, yellow and brown, red and sable, come, let us live like God intended, bearing with one another, being Christians, helping one another, not nursing hatred in our souls.
Again, there is something here that resonates with today’s world seemly split between those who see others made in God’s image and the balance that see them as worthless users of the earth’s resources (Green agenda) or oppressors (Marxist agenda) of the common man or even the evil elite (New World Order/Central Bank) that demand a financial reset to get all this under control.
Humble reflection is essential to stay the course, to True North, in these days ahead ..
Without a doubt, the current overarching panic has been framed to be that of COVID-19. From all angles, those opportunists are hoping that this crisis can assist them in burying some past or paving the way to some glorious future. Whether it is the unsustainable debt, the banking sector, the pharma sector or even those that deal in welfare (to both corporations (GOP) or individuals (Dems)), everyone it seems are bent on not wasting this crisis.
The very last thing on these people’s mind is that of personal liberties or the free market. To them it is the desire of command and control that consume their soul. Real men (when I use this word I use it the same way our Creator would, meaning men and women), men of character, principled humans who are both compassionate for others and yet principled in not attempting to fix other’s lives or circumstances. Help is afforded when both the opportunity presents itself and the help aligns with what is on the giver’s heart, because surely, Jesus did not heal everyone in the crowds, only those that were on His Father’s heart.
So here we are again where a divided nation is fighting both the effects of a virus as well as the proper method to achieve that. Authoritarians (even the ones that were libertarian just weeks ago) want the government to mandate nothing less than house arrest and martial law all across this land. Libertarian leaning people think the people themselves can figure this out on their own, since only they know their specific and unique circumstance. They might be a city dweller with a network of like minded people that CAN achieve social distancing while also bartering for what may be needed in the weeks to come, OR they might live on a farm or ranch that is miles from their neighbor who can also be in their network for critical supplies.
Montana “social distancing”
What comes to mind then, out of an article penned as Brexit was achieved, is that this is not too different than what face the American people in 1860. Yes there were those who felt righteous enough to demand that others free their slaves immediately, and yet if anyone knew how prepared these slaves were for freedom, it was probably their owners and others on the plantation or farm. While slavery was in fact winding down, there were people willing to demand their agenda no matter the cost, even if it was 700,000 dead soldiers and economically ruined regions of the country that would not recover for a century.
The American leader that most people black and white still rally around today as a man of principled freedom and equality for all is Abraham Lincoln. At times, if you read his very words you have to wonder when in fact he had his heart on the fate of the black slaves and IF his version of “the union” which he was so fond of keeping intact was the best for the marriage that existed between the north and south.
John Marquardt from the Abbeville Institute only a week ago penned an article that is rich in unpacking what really happened 150 years ago as well as the economic factor that was at the root of almost all the BAD decisions by politicians along the way. Lets work our way through some critical quotes and see where this leads:
1775:
… thirteen of its major colonies, with a cry of “no taxation without representation,” declared their independence, seceded from the British Empire and joined together to form the United States of America. Faced with the loss of a vast source of the revenue needed to fill coffers drained by its seemingly endless wars with France, Great Britain opted to wage war on its own colonies.
1860:
… seven of the States in the new American nation felt that the weight of long economic oppression by the Federal government was more than they should be forced to bear and opted to secede from the Unites States to form their own more perfect union . . . and once again the action brought forth a war in which the central government attacked its own citizens to prevent their departure.
At this point I think it is helpful to see Lincoln’s own thought processes and see how they changed through the years (an inevitable characteristic of being a politician as there is nothing off the table morally when a crisis is at hand):
1848:
.. when Lincoln was a U. S. congressman from Illinois, he gave a speech in the House of Representatives in which he stated “any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
1858:
“neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave States, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.”
Lincoln said that he did not understand the Declaration of Independence “to mean that all men were created equal in all respects,” and added that he was not in favor of “making voters or jurors of Negros nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people.” He then went on to say that “there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
Lincoln was not a huge fan of the blacks it is very apparent, but his core philosophy that he never gave up was that the blacks were never to be allowed to migrate north and take away jobs from whites, which would cause economic upheaval. One has to come to terms that back in 1860, it was conceivable that the northern regions were more racist than southern regions who interacted with blacks on a daily basis:
The North feared that slave labor would compete unfairly with its own low-wage, largely immigrant labor force which, unlike slaves, could be willfully hired and fired as needed and did not require food, housing, clothing or even rudimentary medical attention.
It is at this point that John paints the real economic condition of the United States in 1860. Have you ever been taught this in schools as part of a CSI to understand what businessmen around the country thought about seven states leaving the Union? I doubt it, so here it goes, consider it COVID-19 home schooling:
In regard to the true economic cause behind the War, just as it was with Great Britain’s case in 1776, the gaping hole that would be formed in the Federal revenue served as the actual rationale for the Union to wage war on the departed Southern States. In 1860, there were more than thirty-one million people in the thirty-three States and ten Territories, with only a third of these, including almost four million slaves, living in the South. According to the U. S. Federal Abstract for 1860, the total Federal expenditures for that year amounted to some sixty-three million dollars, with over eighteen million of this being used mainly to finance railways, canals and other civil projects in the North. On the other hand, Federal revenues at that time amounted to a little over fifty-six million dollars. As there was then no corporate or personal income tax and revenue from domestic sources, such as the sale of public land, amounted to less than three million dollars, the remaining fifty-three million dollars were provided by what was termed “ad valorem taxes,” in other words, the tariff on foreign goods imported by the United States. The basic problem with this, however, was that as much as three-quarters of that revenue was collected in Southern ports, which meant that there would be a loss of up to forty million dollars in Federal revenue if the Southern States left the Union. Added to this was the fact that well over half of America’s four hundred million dollars in exports in 1860 were agricultural products from the South, mainly cotton, rice and tobacco.
You can see the predicament that Lincoln had when he was inaugurated in early March 1861. You can also see what the British view was back in 1775 and why they did what they did.
Now project yourself forward in time and try to understand what the so-called united States of America faces in 2020.
Will the economic crisis cause everyone to stick together and pay the $25T in debts over the next hundred years OR will regions of the US be allowed to go their separate ways?
Would anyone in the federal government be willing to let ANY state go in peace?
These are the questions one must answer themselves, along with, what is the moral path forward? Personally I think that bankruptcy is the only moral path forward, but as I was told in the US Navy, ‘opinions are like *ssholes, everyone has one’.
Ok then, let us look to see how Lincoln (Trump-like?) evolved as President:
04MAR1861:
Lincoln stated that he would “hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the (Federal) government, and collect the duties and imposts . . . but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against, or among the people anywhere.”
.. [then] stating he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Pretty clear that economics forced his hand to propose the absurd notion that tariffs would still be collected in the seven states that LEFT the union while he had no real heart change on the fate of the black slaves.
Early April 1861 before Ft. Sumter:
Virginia, which still remained in the Union, commissioned a three-man delegation headed by John Baldwin, a pro-Unionist and former judge of the State Supreme Court of Appeals, to meet with Lincoln at the White House in an effort to negotiate a peaceful settlement. During their meeting, the president was reported as saying privately to Baldwin “but what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery (i.e., the Confederates)? Am I to let them go on and open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry with their ten-percent tariff? What, then, would become of my tariff if I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once.”
By early April, Lincoln and his cabinet, the majority of the New Englanders as well as the farmers in the West (now called the Midwest) all saw clearly the economic ramifications of having just 7 states leave the union. Like today, the panic and gross exaggeration seemed to consume people and they were all looking to the US government to do something, ANYTHING!
Lincoln’s Cabinet
It is well documented that Lincoln’s plan to send troop transports to Charleston harbor where his Union garrison had broke a gentleman’s agreement on Christmas 1860 and moved from Ft. Moultrie to Ft. Sumter was to have the South Carolina cannon to fire the first shot (not unlike FDR’s efforts to have Japan do the same at Pearl Harbor, or Bush II’s efforts to have 9/11 be allowed) so he could be “justified” in his next action:
Lincoln’s call to the Union for seventy-five thousand volunteers to suppress what he termed the “rebellion” of the Southern States. Lincoln’s call not only led to the secession of Virginia, but Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee as well, and brought about a war that made casualties of five percent of America’s population, devastated a third of the nation’s States and left deep wounds in the American psyche that to this day have not yet completely healed.
Lincoln, a lawyer, never addresses the seceded states from this point forward, but relied on George Washington’s legislation created during the Whiskey Rebellion to “legally” put down the southern “insurrection” as if it was an unorganized scene of violence that had to be safely extinguished for the safety of the masses.
Keep this in mind for 2020, just sayin’.
By 1862, it was obvious what had happened:
A comparison between the conflicts of 1776 and 1861 was also made in a “London Times” article of November 7, 1861, in which it was said of the War Between the States that the “contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces.”
In a letter written in March of 1862, Dickens stated “I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus; slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it . . . but the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed the South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily recover it’s old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.”
So whatever became of Lincoln’s transition toward loving the black slave? Well, we do know that Lincoln was surrounded by a culture that he was totally in alignment up to the so-called Civil War:
… pertaining to racial discrimination, Dickens said “Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale.”
When the war went poorly and Lincoln was doubtful to his re-election and the possibility of an externally arranged peace conference, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation which sounded good but did not actually free one slave (and later admitted that this was a “war measure”). One can see that even this act was not from his heart as can be revealed by the following quotes:
“Send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” ~ Lincoln, speaking in favor of ethnic cleansing all blacks from the United States.
“I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I favor colonization.” ~ Lincoln, in a message to Congress, December 1, 1862, supporting deportation of all blacks from America.
“They had better be set to digging their subsistence out of the ground.” ~ Lincoln in a War Department memo, April 16, 1863
After securing a 2nd term as president he continued to meet with northern Black leaders about his plan to export blacks to the Caribbean or back to Africa after the war. For those black slaves that remained:
“Root, hog, or die” ~ Lincoln’s suggestion to illiterate and propertyless ex-slaves unprepared for freedom, Feb. 3, 1865.
So here you see that war and economics changes everything and allows politicians to make decisions that in peacetime or prosperity would have been prevented, one way or another.
It seems that today, most Americans have given in to their lot as tax slaves happy for just enough freedom for them to claim they live in the land of the free and are able to worship the flag and eat the occasional apple pie. To a majority of Americans, they know little of their history that would help them to see the red flags all around them as freedom and liberty evaporate in this once free land (mainly in 1783-1878).
May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.
I can dream can’t I? One day at a time everyone, one day at a time, however, it is good and well to dream and hope for a better tomorrow where the lessons of this crisis are well learned!
One of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard is that the South left the North over slavery. Anyone with a thinking mind should have done their research and realize that when the media/government spins a yarn so very hard and for over a century, it is probably false.
In reading a 1960s well documented book by Murray Rothbard called “Conceived in Liberty, Volume 5: The New Republic”, it becomes apparent that the new “marriage” of several colonial regions in America had some high hopes and dreams that were quickly dashed with some harsh realities. Promises made or implied give away to a selfish attitude that neatly translates for the North into some more economic bondage for the South.
This core resentment and distrust would eventually be the key reason why the South (as of 04MAR1861, just the seven states of the deep south) did not flinch when Lincoln promised them LEGAL and PERMANENT slavery of blacks IF they would simply re-enter the Union. By this time the South was tired of the abusive relationship the North treated them with and it was apparent that as of NOV1860 that the North could elect a president without ANY Southern support or votes spoke volumes.
As the American Revolution ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, the engagement of the thirteen colonies signed 04JUL1776 with the Declaration of Independence led to the creation of the wedding vows on 15NOV1777 followed by the commencement of the marriage on 01MAR1781. Note that the language of the vows talks of a perpetual union, however, by the time a constitutional convention was called in 1787, these original vows were discarded for a new set (the United States Constitution) that “promised” a better relationship. In hindsight, it was all downhill from that point forward.
With the end of the war-period in which these thirteen colonies fought together, but with a wide range of sacrifice, it was time to settle all the debt incurred during this period. It is in this period that some significant character flaws started to make themselves known that should have been red-flags, especially for the South, to anticipate what a continued relationship might look like and if the North could be trusted in the long-term.
Murray Rothbard shares a summary:
“A key to the politico-economic problems of the Confederation period, as well as one of the leading arguments for centralized power, was the swollen corpus of war-born public debt. The mass of federal and state debt could have depreciated and passed out of existence by the end of the war, but the process was stopped by Robert Morris. Morris and the nationalists moved to make the depreciated federal debt ultimately redeemable at par, and also agitated for federal assumption of the states’ debts. This was done to benefit speculators who purchased the public debt at depreciated values and to force a drive for a national taxing power ..”
To have a “spouse” like that to hijack the relationship towards a future that philosophically was repulsive to the independent minded Southern colonies, in effect, USING the South for it’s economic engine (which at that time was much more healthy than the North, this in spite of the major conflicts that occurred in the South during the last 1/2 of the war).
As a result of the nationalists’ efforts to assume the public debt, the value of the public debt, in specie, increased from $11 million in 1780 to $27 million in 1783, the vast bulk of which was held in the northern states. While scrambling to assume some of the debt themselves, the states had also amassed a huge burden of their own debt. Thus, by the end of the war, Massachusetts’ total debt was nearly £1.5 million; Rhode Island, about $0.5 million; Connecticut, over $3.75 million; Pennsylvania, over £4.6 million; Virginia’s over £4.25 million. As a result, payment of interest on the debt amounted to an overwhelming proportion of the state budget, and one estimate is that 50–90 percent of state expenditures went for this purpose ..
Not cool. The elites looked to benefiting themselves and placing the common folk on the hook for all the taxes needed not just to satisfy the interest payments on the debt, but to eventually pay off all the American Revolutionary War debt,
One problem that bitterly divided the states during the Confederation period was the settlement of common accounts. Under the Articles, expenses made by the several states for causes common to them all would be lumped together as “common charges” and the charges paid proportionately by the various states. In short, “debtor” states would pay their share to claimant “creditor” states through Congress and thus settle their accounts. Wartime expenses were clearly a common charge for the general welfare, and therefore those states which had expended more in the war effort (notably the southern states, because of the nature of the last few years of the war) were entitled to payment from the others. Logically, the public debt incurred by Congress should also have been assumed pro rata by the separate states, but the nationalists’ fierce determination to amass and retain a federal debt was able to keep that debt a federal rather than a “common” charge.
Talk about a bait and switch. So the vows that were agreed to in 1781 were just words on paper and the actions after the war’s end were highly dishonorable in regards to the nationalist’s agenda:
Throughout the 1780s the southern states tried to obtain their just settlements, but the northern states faithlessly fell back on technicalities, lack of official vouchers and authorization, etc., to keep the southern states from their just due. Also the South in particular had gone much further than other states in assuming unliquidated federal debt during the war (e.g., Quartermaster and Commissary certificates) and had exchanged them for state debts, only to find Congress (i.e., the North) balking about accepting these federal certificates as evidence for expenditures in the common welfare. Again, the North was depriving the South of their just due.
It should be noted that many Southern militia members never got the pensions deserved and yet so many New Englanders who never fought a battle received the same pension. Basically, the Yankee’s word meant nothing, and this was only the beginning:
As the dispute dragged on during the decade with the southern states unable to redeem their claims, Robert Morris’ wily “solution” proposed in 1783 began to look better to all concerned. An ultra-nationalist’s dream, the proposal was to accept all southern claims without cavil, but not to be paid by the debtor states: to be assumed by the federal government, which would issue federal securities for all claims. In short, the federal government would assume all war-born state debts. The tax-and-debt burdens of the states were, of course, aggravated when the depression of 1784 hit the country, for now a fixed sum of taxes and debt payments had to be exacted from a depressed economy in which prices were generally lower and therefore the real tax burden greater. One critical problem was whether the debt would be paid at its depreciated market value, which at least reflected current economic realities, or whether the state would insist on paying them at their far greater face value, and thus impose an enormously greater tax burden upon the people. The anger of people at paying debt charges was considerably aggravated by the fact that the bulk of this debt had passed from its original owners at highly depreciated amounts into the hands of speculators. Payment of face value, then, would not even benefit the original public creditors; in fact, they too would suffer from being taxed for the benefit of a windfall to a comparative handful of speculators in the public debt.
The way two former colonies would handle this situation showed the difference in character between the regions, which to me meant that they were not compatible for a “tight” marriage but might work in a loose “federation”. Unfortunately, the actions in 1787 with the new “vows” (the US Constitution, coup d’tat) would make this marriage so tight that it could only become abusive in the long haul.
Virginia showed honorable character:
Virginia was sensible enough to pay much of the debt at its depreciated market value, and make its taxes to pay the debt payable in depreciated certificates. Hence, Virginia was able to reduce its debt rapidly and without imposing enormous burdens on its taxpayers .. Numerous county petitions in Virginia pleaded the impossibility of paying taxes, a condition aggravated by the low price of tobacco in the mid-1780s. The Virginia legislature reacted sagely to the protests .. and agreed to lower or suspend taxes, and to allow hemp-growing western farmers to pay their taxes in hemp or flour. Indeed, Virginia agreed, in the spring of 1784, to suspend all tax collections for six months, and then agreed to cut taxes in half for the year 1785.
Massachusetts not so much:
Massachusetts, on the other hand, so handled its debt during the war as to benefit its debt holders and speculators, consolidating its debt by 1784 at twice its market value. To pay this particularly large debt, Massachusetts levied enormous taxes and insisted on collecting them in specie. This is not surprising, since the Massachusetts government was basically run by the very groups that owned the great mass of state debt. The debt burden was borne particularly by the poor, since roughly 33 to 40 percent of Massachusetts’ state revenue was raised by poll taxes, which were equal for each citizen. As a result, it is estimated that at least a third of a Massachusetts farmer’s income after 1780 was extracted from him in taxes, and in specie at that. Farmers and the poor demanded that the state debt at least be scaled down to market value, but the conservative ruling groups angrily refused. Typical of the eastern mercantile oppression over the mass of citizens and farmers was the imposition of excise taxes, which harmed the bulk of consumers. Thus, the tax on spirits (e.g., cider brandy) distilled from one’s own apple orchard was twice the level of the tax on New England rum: a clear privilege to the Boston and other eastern merchants over the western farmers. Tax oppression upon the Massachusetts people was enormous, and the courts ruthlessly threw those who could not pay into jail. Tax defaulters’ property was seized, but in the time-honored way of neighborhood solidarity, local mobs prevented anyone but the owner from bidding for the property.
The rifts were real and would be aggravated over time. These events should have given caution to the southern states by the late 1780s that had the nationalists accelerate their efforts to centralize the US general government and create a central bank. It seems the longer the South stayed with the North the more the North sensed that it OWNED the South, as a slave and not respected her as a spouse.
Hindsight is indeed 20/20 .. but learning these things from real history is priceless!
