Tag: 1783 Treaty of Paris

Fall 1781: Momentum of the Revolutionary War Shifts, So Does “The Cause”

There is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is movement afoot that takes place mainly north of the Potomac River that I contend is normal in this broken world. When freedom breaks out, there are those that instill fear in the people that politics, bigger and more centralized, is needed to secure our future.

While this article is a bit dated (I believe I was still in the US Navy at the time), it does point out a few things that I have been saying off and on in my blog over the past year or so. I bring it up now since my ongoing coverage of Francis Marion’s activities in South Carolina, which actually saved the colonies in their efforts to exit the British Empire, is entering the post-Yorktown phase where military conflicts and such give way back to the political.

The standard American myth celebrates the Constitution as the triumphant culmination of the American Revolution. This is largely untrue and misleading.

Everyone in government schools has heard, the Articles of Confederation was weak and ill equipped to govern the thirteen colonies, let alone all the additional lands that the Treaty of Paris granted in 1783:

The facts, and not that era’s fake news, paints a much different scene:

The alleged “critical period” between the end of the Revolution and the Constitution’s adoption was not dominated by economic depression, political turmoil, and international peril, jeopardizing the independent survival of the American experiment in liberty.

There was no actual threat, but a threat was thought up in the minds of those politicians whose political descendants include the politicians that orchestrated the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the so-called Civil War and so on. In each of these instances, there was a fear introduced into the population that without a war, catastrophe was imminent.

In context, backing up to the period of time before even the Declaration of Independence was penned (raw thoughts by Thomas Paine and edited by Thomas Jefferson), there was a joining of efforts from people in the thirteen colonies across a political and philosophical spectrum. On one hand, we have the RADICALS:

The American Revolution, like all great social upheavals, was brought off by a disparate coalition of competing viewpoints and conflicting interests. At one end of the Revolutionary coalition stood the American radicals—men such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson.

Although by no means in unanimous agreement, the radicals objected to excessive state power in general and not simply to British rule in particular. Spearheading the Revolution’s opening stages, they were responsible for the truly revolutionary alterations in the internal status quo: the abolition of slavery in the northern states, the separation of church and state in the southern states, the rooting out of remaining feudal privileges everywhere, and the adoption of new, republican state constitutions containing written bills of rights that severely hemmed in government power.

These were change agents, those daring visionaries that can see life lived differently, and at the same time knew that this would not be a utopia, but in reality would be a struggle, but a rewarding one.

On the other hand, was a class of people that we might consider to be nationalists or those whose major agenda was that of mercantilism:

At the other end of the Revolutionary coalition were the American nationalists; an array of mercantile, creditor, and landed interests. The nationalists went along with independence but opposed the Revolution’s libertarian thrust. They sought a strong American state with the hierarchical features of the 18th-century British state, only without the British.

So by the fall of 1781 as the British catastrophe at Yorktown reverberated throughout the British Empire, there were nationalist forces that were already parting ways with the radicals, and even the militias that brought them to this day.  By 1783, Francis Marion saw the writing on the wall. The NOV1782 election meant that Marion had to leave Pond Bluff yet again for the 06JAN1783 legislative session. Writing from there on January 18th he shared the inequalities that tainted his excitement about the future of the colony as well of the federation of states. It seems that the Rhode Islander Continental Nathaniel Greene was awarded 10,000 guineas from SC toward the purchase of a SC plantation and quoted an old saying “that kissed goes by favor”.  Georgia had also given Greene 24,000 acres as well. Marion eventually was awarded 300 acres in 1785.

It should be noted that the correspondence Marion had with Greene stopped abruptly as the hostilities stopped in DEC1782. Marion had hoped that Congress would follow through on the promise of a lifetime of half-pay for officers but it would be 50 years before that practice would finally start. Marion lamented that “idle spectators of war” were in charge now.

So too were the more nationalistic military leaders that benefited from a larger government:

Military conservatives such as George Washington induced Congress to focus the Revolutionary effort on a costly conventional force, the Continental Army, rather than the militias. By the 1781 Yorktown campaign, popular disgust at the army’s continuing hand-to-mouth existence gave the nationalists uncontested control of Congress. They proceeded to implement a financial program that gave the central government much more power.

While the nationalists attempted to strengthen the Articles of Confederation, their attempts through 1784 were met with resistance from the Radicals after the Treaty of Paris. The economic state of the states were generally fine economically except for two groups that put out a very public fuss:

In reality, American merchants were after uniform navigation laws, because they wanted some coercive means of monopolizing the American carrying trade. And American artisans wanted uniform protective tariffs to stop their customers from buying the cheap foreign goods flooding American markets at the end of the war. The unique economic fortunes of these two groups and their quest for special privileges contributed much to the exaggerated impression of postwar depression.

As we see today, coercive means to monopolize as well as protective tariffs are tools used yet today in 2019. Capitalism will always look to enhance their position by government if it will let them. Corporatism is the curse of politics gone too far.

So the Coup d’etat of the cause for the freedoms gained by the American Revolution would come at a convention in Philadelphia in 1787 whose purpose was to rework the Articles of Confederation, however:

Its official function was to propose revisions to the Articles. But the delegates, meeting in secret, quickly decided to draft a totally new document. Of the 55 delegates, only 8 had signed the Declaration of Independence. Most of the leading radicals, including Sam Adams, Henry, Paine,Lee, and Jefferson, were absent. In contrast, 21 delegates belonged to the militarist Society of the Cincinnati. Overall, the convention was dominated by the array of nationalist interests that the prior war had brought together: land speculators, ex-army officers, public creditors, and privileged merchants.

Things had definitely changed in one decade’s time, and not for the better! Look how far we have come since then.

Not cool!

We are much “safer” today as a result of the this early course change in this nation’s history, safe as slaves.

-SF1

28SEP1781: Siege at Yorktown Begins – Thank the FRENCH/SPANISH Strategists! Peak Liberty Achieved!

Capt. Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis, Spain’s New World Forces strategist

Popular history lavishes praise on George Washington for cornering the British at Yorktown and having the French navy arrive to bottle them up. While the French allowed this myth to prevail, probably due to Washington’s ego (anyone who has really researched GW knows how fragile his ego was), the truth needs to emerge.

This does not take away the accomplishments of George Washington, as he tactically delayed a British victory in the northern colonies for years, but appreciation for French involvement is necessary to understand the true context of this conflict, which was only a minor part of the global conflict going on in 1781 between the British Empire, and the French with their allies, the Spanish.

It needs to be noted that it is at this time in this republic’s history that Americans were the most free. As noted by Albert Nock in the 1930s in his epic book called “Our Enemy, the State” he says:

When political independence was secured, the stark doctrine of the Declaration went into abeyance, with only a distorted simulacrum of its principles surviving.

This is the sad reality. The abandonment of the Articles of Confederation towards the adoption of the US Constitution only accelerated the move AWAY from liberty and freedom. Albert Nock continues:

As well as one can put a date to such an event, the surrender at Yorktown marks the sudden and complete disappearance of the Declaration’s doctrine from the political consciousness of America. Mr. Jefferson resided in Paris as minister to France from 1784 to 1789. As the time for his return to America drew near, he wrote Colonel Humphreys that he hoped soon “to possess myself anew, by conversation with my countrymen, of their spirit and ideas. I know only the Americans of the year 1784. They tell me this is to be much a stranger to those of 1789.” So indeed he found it. On arriving in New York and resuming his place in the social life of the country, he was greatly depressed by the discovery that the principles of the Declaration had gone wholly by the board. No one spoke of natural rights and popular sovereignty; it would seem actually that no one had ever heard of them. On the contrary, everyone was talking about the pressing need of a strong central coercive authority, able to check the incursions which “the democratic spirit” was likely to incite upon “the men of principle and property.”

The American Revolution was effectively hijacked by other interests. We have seen that in recent times as well with that of the Tea Party and other freedom movements that are infiltrated by those who are not friends of liberty and freedom but place their hope in the state.

But I digress.

On this anniversary of the beginning of the siege of Yorktown toward being a French-American victory started 238 years ago today, I should probably share some truths about the events leading up to this battle.

Gen. George Washington’s personnel and persistent dreams was to knock out the British forces in New York City with the French navy’s assistance. A pretty good article from the Daily Beast (please pardon all the advertisements) outlines the behind the scenes military and political maneuvering that preceded this strategic decision.

The Franco-American alliance was more than two years old, in July 1780, when the Rochambeau-led Expédition Particulière arrived in Rhode Island with 5,500 troops, some long-range cannon, and a relatively small fleet. The alliance had already had two large military disasters, at Newport in 1778 and at Savannah in 1779. Rochambeau wasn’t sure what he could accomplish either, having been forced to leave behind a good chunk of his army and ships, and being burdened with a set of instructions from Louis XVI, dictated by Lafayette, that in unequivocal language put him under the command of General Washington and made the French troops and ships no more than auxiliaries of the Americans.

There was not much hope at this point in the arrangement. As will be seen, George Washington ended up being one of the most challenging roadblocks toward a decisive victory over the British:

Washington had dreamed of this moment, and of having naval superiority over Great Britain. He had long believed that the only way to end the war was to capture a significant British stronghold and army, and for several years he had been fixated on New York as the most likely target for such an attack. Now, with the French fleet, it could be achieved! But to Rochambeau, an attack on New York seemed difficult and dangerous, as likely to end in the capture of his and Washington’s armies as in the capture of British commander Henry Clinton’s. In Rochambeau’s view, he didn’t have enough ships and men to assure himself and Washington of victory.

When one researches Washington’s life, one will see the many times he wished things to be true that only ended up in disaster. In fact, as a young British officer, his decisions led directly to the start of the French-Indian War. His surprise breakfast massacre of French troops, whom he was to “meet up with and negotiate with” in the Appalachian mountains, led to a war that ended up raising taxes in the colonies that started a revolution.

Again, I digress. Back to the decision on Yorktown vs. NYC.

Washington and Rochambeau first met in Hartford on Sept. 20, 1780, at the home of Washington’s former commissary general and longtime supporter, Jeremiah Wadsworth. To this conference, Washington brought an eight-page plan for the attack on New York. Rochambeau came with a neatly written series of 10 questions, with space on the sheets to record Washington’s answers.

The French queries were an elegant, Socratic trap. By answering the first one honestly, Washington would be led, inexorably and through his own logic, to the only possible conclusion, the one chosen ahead of time by Rochambeau.

So Washington was asked whether naval superiority was essential to a big victory over a target defended by the British Navy. When he responded truthfully, “There can be no decisive enterprise against the maritime establishments of the English in this country, without a constant naval superiority,” his fate was sealed because the French fleet was not yet strong enough.

Washington was being played, but for his and the 13 colony’s own good. The French knew the big picture, the global paradigm and GW was myopic in focusing on only brute force to displace the British from NYC.

After the 10 questions had been answered, Rochambeau insisted that there would be no attack on New York in 1780, and none until Louis XVI dispatched more troops and a larger fleet to America. And he was able to induce Washington to co-sign a letter to the king to that effect. It was the only real product of the conference.

That the French were content with this meant that their focus was on the global situation. They were well aware of their own resourcing issues, and rightly so, they had to protect their own interests first. Nations and empires that want to survive need to know how to hold them, know how to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run (from the military strategist Kenny Rogers).

Eight months later, on May 21, 1781, came the Washington-Rochambeau conference at Wethersfield. In American lore, this is where and when the leaders jointly decided to attack Yorktown. But that’s a myth.

This myth is the key point in all the state approved history books that have been printed in the last couple centuries in the United States. There is nothing you can trust in these books until you have done your own research. The state is convinced that that effort is so labor intensive, the most people will just adopt the history book’s contents as true, because it is easier and it fits the narrative. Happy slave, happy life.

Rochambeau asked: If and when the new and larger French fleet arrived from the Caribbean, “What are the operations that we might have to view at that Epocha?”

Washington’s response: “Should the West India Fleet arrive upon this Coast—the force thus Combined may either proceed in operation against New York, or may be directed against the enemy in some other quarter, as circumstance may dictate.”

Still NYC-centric .. even the next day after a night’s reflections:

The next day, Washington rote in his diary that he had “Fixed with Count Rochambeau” to proceed with a campaign against New York, to begin once the French had transferred to the Hudson River to join his Continentals. He added, almost as an afterthought, that he had agreed to “extend our views Southward as circumstances and a naval superiority might render more necessary & eligible.”

Washington was not budging. This was his fight, it was his terms, and Rochambeau was technically reporting to Gen. George Washington!

Maybe we should shift toward looking into the real strategist’s mind, that of Rochambeau:

In late July, when Rochambeau did move to the Hudson River, just below Peekskill, where his forces encamped next to Washington’s, the French left behind in Rhode Island the resident fleet and the largest of the cannon, which they believed would be wrecked if dragged over Connecticut’s roads. The cannon would have to be brought by ship to whatever target. To my mind—although no documents say so—the abandoning of the cannon argues that Rochambeau had already decided they would soon be transferred by ship to the Yorktown peninsula.

Actions speak louder than words. The excuse Rochambeau had would have convinced Gen. Washington who at this point was just giddy that maybe this was the year that the French navy would arrive.

Indeed, by mid-July Rochambeau had made a significant end-run around Washington’s cherished objective. He, and his new Newport fleet commander, de Barras, and the French plenipotentiary at Philadelphia, La Luzerne, had all sent word to Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse, then in the Caribbean, that the best target in America was the large British force on the relatively exposed Yorktown peninsula, where it could not long survive without naval reinforcement.

Inside the French chain of command, this strategic sharing of information sets the tone for what is about to come. From July to November is peak hurricane season in the Caribbean. This might be good timing to get the French assets (ships, guns and men) out of the Caribbean for an alternative mission.

Around that time, aboard the majestic Ville de Paris at Cap-Français, Haiti, de Grasse was meeting with Captain Francisco de Saavedra, a former theology student who had become Spain’s New World forces strategist. They laid out a two-punch plan for ridding the hemisphere of the British. The first blow would be against Yorktown, the second, once de Grasse had returned to the Caribbean and in conjunction with the Spanish fleet there, would be against Jamaica. To enable de Grasse to depart for northern waters, Saavedra committed the Spanish fleet to act as guardian for the French-controlled islands in the Caribbean. As Saavedra put it in his diary, they “could not waste the most decisive opportunity of the war,” to take the Cornwallis army while it was at its most vulnerable.

Who knew that the decision about Yorktown was actually made in Haiti, with French and Spanish strategists? You don’t read any of that in most US History books now do you?

As de Grasse set out for the Yorktown peninsula, he sent ahead a letter to Rochambeau. Forwarded to the Hudson by de Barras, it reached Rochambeau and Washington on Aug. 14. It said that de Grasse was en route to the Yorktown peninsula, “the spot which seemed to be indicated by you, M. le comte, and by MM Washington de la Luzerne and de Barras as the surest to effect the good which you propose.”

Some sources say that Washington was disappointed but then committed his forces to join in the march to Yorktown. Other sources say that Washington lashed out at this news and then went and pouted for an hour before recomposing himself and getting on with the PLAN, the French Plan. In either case, eventually he came around and supported this plan.

Before Rochambeau and Washington’s armies arrived at Yorktown, the battle was essentially won by de Grasse, whose fleet outmaneuvered the British and then, along with de Barras’s, occupied Chesapeake Bay. That forced the British fleet to return to New York, leaving Cornwallis and his army utterly exposed.

At this point it was just a matter of time in defeating the British forces under Cornwallis at Yorktown since there was no re-supply line afforded them. This was NOT the end of this conflict as both Charleston and NYC would not be evacuated by the British until over a year after the Yorktown victory was secured on 17OCT1781. Peace itself was not secured until the Treaty of Paris was signed on 03SEP1783, almost TWO years after Yorktown!

Now you know.

-SF1

17SEP1787 – Coup d’etat in Philadelphia: US Constitution

Anyone who attended public school in the last 100 years have been taught that the US Constitution was one of the milestones in this country’s birth and maturation process towards being and becoming the land of the free.

This is rubbish. Americans were more free in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris than they were after the US Constitution was revealed on 17SEP1787 and finally ratified by 11 of the 13 former colonies two years later in 1789.

For those that would like to dig into the details rather than be persuaded by a single blog post I would recommend Sheldon Richman’s book ‘America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited‘:

This book challenges the assumption that the Constitution was a landmark in the struggle for liberty. Instead, Sheldon Richman argues, it was the product of a counter-revolution, a setback for the radicalism represented by America’s break with the British empire. Drawing on careful, credible historical scholarship and contemporary political analysis, Richman suggests that this counter-revolution was the work of conservatives who sought a nation of “power, consequence, and grandeur.” America’s Counter-Revolution makes a persuasive case that the Constitution was a victory not for liberty but for the agendas and interests of a militaristic, aristocratic, privilege-seeking ruling class.

Personally, way back in MAR1976 when I was a high school senior and 17 years old, I made the oath below:

“I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

Enlisting in the US Navy, I had little to no idea as to the words I was repeating. At that time I was not aware how defective the Constitution was, the way it was created (the charge in 1787 was to amend the Articles of Confederation, not to replace it) and the way it has been abused.

Note that my first charge in this oath I took is to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. So what if the President of the US is that enemy, how can I still “obey the orders of the President of the United States”?

Looking back in history, I see that many if not all the presidents have subverted the US Constitution either in the letter or spirit of that defective document. LBJ, FDR, Wilson, Lincoln and even Washington all said that some existing crises necessitated their decisions and actions. So what good is this document (as Lysander Spooner said)?

The answer is “Absolutely Nothing!” This document does nothing to restrain tyranny in these united States as it was originally intended, by some of its authors.

But I digress, for a better question is why was this document needed? Why were the Articles of Confederation just tossed aside? Why was this document drafted in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia behind closed doors in tremendous secrecy?

The truth is, if word leaked out of the actual contents, the original intent and the agenda that was behind this major shift, the revolution that had just concluded would have been set ablaze again. The authors of this document were in a race against time and did everything in their power to ensure that the adoption took place as quickly as possible to avoid reflection and contemplation in the public square that would kill the proposal once the consequences of its agenda became apparent.

They were actually insisting that the states ratify first and then propose amendments later. The document had no bill of rights and it actually gave more power to the general or central government. It was a political coup d’état. No wonder Patrick Henry said he smelled a rat.

It was nothing less than an oligarchical coup to ensure that the moneyed interests, bankers and aristocrats could cement their positions and mimic the United Kingdom from which they had been recently divorced.

In the interests of truth, the document that should be taught before the US Constitution is in fact the Articles of Confederation that was conceived in 1776 and adopted in 1781. As William Buppert explains:

As Austrian economists have discovered, bigger is not necessarily better. The brilliant and oft-dismissed Articles of Confederation (AoC) and Perpetual Union are a testament to voluntarism and cooperation through persuasion that the Constitution disposed of with its adoption. Penned in 1776 and ratified in 1781, the spirit and context of the Articles live on in the Swiss canton system and are everywhere evident in the marketplace where confederationist sentiments are practiced daily. The confederation’s design divines its mechanism from what an unfettered market does every day: voluntary cooperation, spontaneous information signals and the parts always being smarter than the sum A. confederation according to the Webster’s 1828 dictionary is:

  1. The act of confederating; a league; a compact for mutual support; alliance; particularly of princes, nations or states.

This ‘marriage’ retains the freedom of the entities that would voluntary join to also exit. What is obvious is that the US Constitution did not guarantee this exit clause, otherwise the state constitutions of New York and Virginia would not have had exit rights penned into their own documents. Furthermore, when the Constitutional Convention convened in 1787, 55 delegates came but 14 later quit as the Convention eventually abused its mandate and scrapped the Articles of Confederation instead of revising it.

Ultimately, actions spoke louder than words when even the much admired Washington was revealed as having none of the talk of independence and wanting a firm hand on the yoke of the states to make them obey their masters on high. Washington’s behavior in the Whiskey Rebellion cast away any doubts of the imperious behavior of the central government a mere four year after the adoption of the Constitution.

There were those who stood in the way, but typical to politics in general, these people are marginalized. Patrick Henry gave the firmest defense of the skeptical posture when he questioned the precarious position the Constitution put to the state’s sovereignty on 5 June 1788 at the Virginia Ratifying Convention. It should be noted that the savvy ‘Founding Lawyers’ ensured that the process of ratification was sped along by bypassing the bicameral house requirements and simply asking the states to conduct ratifying conventions. Henry’s text says:

“How were the Congressional rights defined when the people of America united by a confederacy to defend their liberties and rights against the tyrannical attempts of Great-Britain? The States were not then contented with implied reservation. No, Mr. Chairman. It was expressly declared in our Confederation that every right was retained by the States respectively, which was not given up to the Government of the United States. But there is no such thing here. You therefore by a natural and unavoidable implication, give up your rights to the General Government. Your own example furnishes an argument against it. If you give up these powers, without a Bill of Rights, you will exhibit the most absurd thing to mankind that ever the world saw — A Government that has abandoned all its powers — The powers of direct taxation, the sword, and the purse. You have disposed of them to Congress, without a Bill of Rights — without check, limitation, or controul. And still you have checks and guards — still you keep barriers — pointed where? Pointed against your weakened, prostrated, enervated State Government! You have a Bill of Rights to defend you against the State Government, which is bereaved of all power; and yet you have none against Congress, though in full and exclusive possession of all power! You arm youselves against the weak and defenceless, and expose yourselves naked to the armed and powerful. Is not this a conduct of unexampled absurdity? What barriers have you to oppose to this most strong energetic Government? To that Government you have nothing to oppose. All your defence is given up. This is a real actual defect. . . “

We, in 2019, are feeling the full effects of this constitution’s real purpose with the emergence of the government spying on its citizens and the whole Red Flag law emergence. Total control implies that all guns are in the government’s hands so that “All your defence is given up”

Helpless tax slaves is the aim of the government we have today, thanks in part to the efforts of Madison, Hamilton and John Jay.

It appears that James Madison tried to reverse himself somewhat by introducing ten amendments called the Bill of Rights, but it was too little, too late, and only represented a piece of paper:

“Our constitutions purport to be established by ‘the people,’ and, in theory, ‘all the people’ consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of ‘the people’ exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.”~ Lysander Spooner

-SF1

Total War and Unconditional Surrender: America’s Export to the World

If one were to believe the history books, the American Experience and Exceptionalism shone bright and clear from the effort and success to leave the British Empire to the rescue of Europe in WWI and WWII. Actual history shows that our exceptional export of ideas and character were not a rosy as the history books might paint.

There was a way that nations fought from the 1600s and into the 1700s that had been influenced by both Christianity as well as those who understood that war happened when politics failed, which meant that the people in general were caught in the middle of various power struggles in Europe. The American Revolution was fought mainly around large population centers usually having armies square up to each other in open fields and having at it. There were exceptions on both sides where military leaders like Banastre Tarleton and even some patriot militia would discard honorable warfare to achieve short-term military objectives, but in the end those tactics had their own “blowback”. The civilian sentiment played an important role in the way the effort for independence of each of the 13 states would play out before the British grew tired of the conflict and costs.

Even the War of 1812 was fought this way and the treaty signed a few years later involved both parties at the negotiation table just like what they did in Paris in 1783 after the American Revolutionary War. Once again, principles, honorable principles prevailed even when warfare was “in session”.

The War Against Southern Independence (called the American Civil War in US government history books) unveiled the inherit evil that is at the core of humans in a broken world. Driven by desperation, principles are cast aside in the effort to short-cut to a desired outcome.

The truth be known, the seven states that seceded actually took the high ground in formulating their reason for divorce with the federation. They knew that the US Constitution, the law of the land, was to be central in their rationale in desiring to exit, just like the 13 colonies did with England 80 years prior. Lawyer speak made these documents stress the way the slavery issue made the separation a necessity. The Constitution had allowed chattel slavery, and so the seven southern states made their case based on this “issue”.

In reality, the main issue was financial and economic in nature, but to prove that based on the Constitution would have been a tough fight. The southern region in general was the wealthiest in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was penned but by 1860 this region had seen their power be eclipsed by the North and the West (existing Midwest). Tariff revenue sources were a hot issue since the South bore the brunt of that expense. Additionally, this revenue funded not only the general government but also internal improvements, mainly in the northern states. Also, industries like the railroad and steel industry received corporate welfare at the expense of the southern businessmen. Additionally, southern plantations were financed by the Northeast elite bankers and until 1808 these same businessmen supplied the slave ships that would transport blacks rounded up by other blacks on the African continent to the United States and other areas in the Caribbean after it was illegal to do so in the US. The southern chattel slavery economic profitability was on the downward trend as most economists expected maybe 5-10 years left in this business model.

It should also be noted once more that Lincoln offered the seven southern states “perpetual legal slavery” via the proposed 13th amendment (Corwin Amendment) if they re-entered the union. Not one state considered that. They really wanted independence and all the risks that entailed instead of a continued marriage to the northern states. Even if it meant that run-away slaves making their way to the United States (all but those seven states that seceded) would indeed be free and not be required by law to be returned as the Fugitive Slave Act mandated. Most people in the North did NOT want ex-slaves fleeing north to take the lowest paying jobs, as even Lincoln feared this.

With that long introduction and setting of context, there was an article that brought to light (for me anyway) what this internal conflict offered to the world. A clip from it said:

So in a very literal sense the Civil War was the first World War. It not only created a powerful nation of organized resources and potential military might, but the greater world wars took their pattern from the American one, even to the trench system Lee set up at Petersburg .. What this country brought to Europe was unconditional surrender. The actual phrase was used by Roosevelt in the Second World War, but it was not his phrase. Grant had delivered it to the Confederate Command at Fort Donelson in February, 1862. Its implication is total surrender or total destruction, or slavery, or whatever. A strange alternative to be delivered by one Christian state to another; and yet it had precedent in Sherman’s harrying the lands of Mississippi and Georgia ..

U.S. (Unconditional Surrender) Grant or William Tecumseh (Total War) Sherman transitioned warfare to not only be brutal for military personnel and civilians in proximity, but also back to the way pre-Christian influenced empires operated, the slaughtering/slaving of the people in conquered lands.

The nineteenth century abandoned God officially, and the faith of Christian communicants was absorbed into the powerful western will; and this will set out, openly at last, to know and control not only nature but the universe. In the late stages of any society there is always the aging form and the formlessness of the new pistis, but this is no new faith; it is a perversion of faith, the final and open acceptance of Machiavelli’s science of politics, the politics whose end is absolute power, whose technique is reason without any theological restraint.

The transition from a republic that was a federation of states to a democracy that makes politics a god, will always keep evolving lower and lower in morality as the narcissist leaders practice power over principles.

Sherman said “War is Hell,” and by this he meant total war, openly carried out upon the civil population, with the shrewd understanding that if the source of supply was cut off, the armies would dwindle and perish.

This policy was then brought to the American Indians, then to the Spanish empire after Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba and to the Germans during WWI as well as the failure to include the Germans in the negotiated surrender, treating Germany like the North treated the South after the war with military districts, corrupt politics and the hatred of the people.

Yes, this part of the American “Exceptionalism” is rarely taught in schools or even in “approved” books. I would rather have American history taught in books like the authors of the Bible described the events of the Hebrew people, the nation Israel and the leaders of Jesus’ day .. communicating the good, the bad and the ugly.

Truth.

Truth-seekers these days have to expend a lot of effort to mine the accounts of days gone by, but it is written that “the truth shall set you free”

-SF1