Tag: Charleston Harbor

Why Do Progressives / Yankees Hate Others So Much?

While many normal people can live and let live, it is and has been apparent that there is a breed of people that makes it their business to not just be critical of your views, opinions and culture, but to dictate to you on how you should live.

Sorry, I believe one is most loving of others when they refuse to should on their friends and attempt to should on their foes alike. You do you as long as you don’t infringe my life or agress on my body, my property or my family. PERIOD!

In addition to this, these people routinely accuse others of doing the very thing they have actually done, but point the Pharisaical finger at others with religious and righteous fervor, all the while lying.

The “Yankee” is best defined by Ronald Kennedy as

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.

Yes, this post has to do with the so-called “Civil War”. However, this is also about 2021 as I believe there is a similar break-up brewing where busybodies and do-gooders will comes up with some groups of narratives to paint others as evil, racists and even white-supremacist when they are actually intent on true justice being served, where right is right and wrong is wrong, not this “math is racist” nonsense!

Two facts I would like to point out today that I doubt 1% of the US population was aware of .. that is #1 the real root of “racism” and #2 the real status of Fort Sumter circa 1860:

  1. “.. Jim Crow laws predated the Confederacy and have their origins in…the North. Luxenberg [in his book Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation (W.W. Norton, 2019) by Steve Luxenberg ] relates this in the first pages of the first chapter, where he writes “[s]eparation had no role in the South before the Civil War… It was the free and conflicted North that gave birth to separation… One of those birthplaces was the Massachusetts town of Salem.” He goes on to recount in detail how, even though blacks comprised but one percent of Massachusetts’s population, “Jim Crow” became a “commonly understood phrase in New England’s lexicon” by the late 1830s. On September 8, 1841, Frederick Douglass himself experienced a healthy dose of Yankee tolerance when he was forcibly ejected off a white car on the way from Salem to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. .. the “free” State of Indiana had a brand new constitution in 1851 that included a clause prohibiting any blacks from settling in their State. This should remind students of history that a significant reason the North was better at avoiding racial issues than the South was that Northerners made every effort to avoid blacks altogether…” [source https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/separate-but-equal ]
  2. “..The first actual act of war [CSA cannon fire on Fort Sumter] was not executed in the open in response to military provocation, but in the dark as a damnable piece of subterfuge involving sabotage and the occupation of the buildings and land of a sovereign state located in a sovereign country that was not the country of the attackers involved! In the darkness of Christmas Eve, 1860, Major Robert Anderson, commandant of the federal forces at Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, left that fort – his assigned post according to his government – and after cutting down the flag pole, spiking the fort’s guns and taking his contingent of soldiers together with all munitions and supplies, stealthily made his way by boat to Fort Sumter situated on an island in Charleston harbor. This was done in secret and without any notification by Anderson’s superiors in the federal government that its troops would leave [Fort] Moultrie and thereupon occupy [Fort] Sumter, a facility that had reverted to South Carolina after the the provisions of the lease held by Washington had been allowed to lapse!  The federal government under outgoing President James Buchanan – who was still in office at the time – had signed an agreement with South Carolina – now part of the newly created Confederate States of America – to make no attempt to relieve, rearm, re-supply or send more federal troops into [Fort] Moultrie in exchange for that State government’s promise not to remove the federal troops in that fort by force. Of course, there was no need to re-supply the fort as the people of Charleston sold food to the federal troops despite the fact that South Carolina was no longer in the federal union. [Fort] Sumter, however, was not part of any agreement because it was no longer a federal facility and such troops as remained in Charleston were assigned to Fort Moultrie! But by leaving Moultrie and moving to Sumter in secret and without informing the State of South Carolina or the newly established Confederate government of which that State was a part, Anderson was committing an act that can only be seen as hostile even if no shots were fired at the time..” [source https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-first-shot-revisited ]

Digging a little deeper, because principles matter, it is apparent that Fort Sumter was purchased, initially on long lease, for the use of a fort to be constructed and then much later on a full purchase price. What the South Carolina Attorney General in 1860 pointed out that Congress had not paid that full purchase price, nor had it maintained in full the original long term lease payments part of the contracts, but had invested heavily in the construction costs of the fort. Hence the legal forms of ownership revert to SC due to failure to fulfill the contractual obligations.

Basically, South Carolina had passed full and complete transfer of property to Congress, on the understanding Congress would actually

a) pay the lease while construction of the fort was undertaken, and

b) much later, acquire full property rights after making full payment to South Carolina, along with outstanding lease payments.

The US Congress had never done so, which was why it [Fort Sumter] was not a federal post, as it was not federal property, and why President Buchanan and his US Attorney General were aghast when without orders General Anderson moved to it.

I highly doubt your high school or college American history teacher taught you the finer points of US history, but taught you that racism and Jim Crow laws originated in the southern slavery plantations and that Fort Sumter was “federal property”.  All fake news.

Peace out

-SF1

It is true we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1798

PS Maybe next time we take on the KKK’s (2nd incarnation from 1915-1926) origin and popularity .. ain’t a Southern thing .. as Indiana’s KKK numbered 160,000 to 400,000 alone!

They [2nd Klan] represented the North Eastern Puritan ruling class historical beliefs and religious traditions almost perfectly.  If anything they spread these beliefs to people and places where they generally didn’t exist.  As to being Southern, few of the beliefs and characteristics of the 2nd Klan trace at all to the antebellum South which had a very different religious heritage from the activist North.  This argument is nothing more than looking in the mirror, not liking what you see, and claiming it’s an image of someone else. [source https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/a-skeleton-in-the-yankee-progressive-closet/ ]

 

Character Flaw: US Government Has Lied Us .. Into the War Against Southern Independence (Civil War)

“.. They have surrendered, and this proud fortress [Fort Sumter], that was attempted to be a fortress for despotism, has now become, as its name indicates, a fortress for our independence. Besides one of their most scientific officers on the 26th of last December escaped from what he [Union Maj. Gen Anderson] called a weak fort and untenable, and went over to this strong and powerful position, because he could maintain himself, and because it was pronounced the key of our harbor. He left Fort Moultrie because it was untenable and at the mercy of Sumter. He chose Sumter as his fortress…” – Gov. Pickens of South Carolina 13APR1861
I am continuing the theme that the US government has lied us into all wars, even the War on Covid-19 (to cover up the financial bubble being burst in parallel). We were lied to about the rationale for the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and here we will talk about the so-called ‘American Civil War’.

Character Flaw: US Government Has Lied Us into War of 1812 All the Way to the War on Covid-19

As I have mentioned before, “civil war” is a misnomer due to the fact in a true civil war both parties want to be in power of the WHOLE country after the war is complete. With this war, more appropriately called the War Against Southern Independence, the southern states had no eyes on any of the northern territory or states.

In fact, we do need to separate out a few things here. Secession itself did NOT cause this war. Slavery, protected under the US Constitution, did not trigger this war even though it was pointed to in secession documents to cover the South’s legal exit.

The South wanted their secession to be constitutional in order to deprive the North of a pretext for invasion.  This made it impossible for the Southern states to argue that they were seceding because of the tariff.  The tariff was a federal issue.  The Constitution gave the federal government the right to pass tariffs.  So the real reason the South was leaving the union left the South with no constitutional argument.  On the other hand, slavery was a state’s right guaranteed by the Constitution.  This caused the South to seize on the noncompliance of some northern states with the federal law requiring the return of run-away slaves and make a constitutional issue out of it. This argument then appeared in some of the secession documents of the southern states. – Paul Craig Roberts

So we need to understand that the southern seven states that had seceded had voted on secession AND had withdrawn peacefully.

Southern Independence was indeed achieved as these seven states formed a confederation that Jefferson would have been happy with and saw as inevitable since the early 1800s.The Confederate States of America even took their peaceful approach a step further, they offered to pay the US for the federal property (forts, etc) in the south! Beyond this, they even sought peace negotiations even offering European leaders to be a neutral party as part of this peace conference. Lincoln ignored all of this to preserve his notion that this was an insurrection only and that the states were still part of the union.

In a neat case of Throwback Thursday, try on this Lincoln quote from 1847:

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.

Imagine that, by 1861 Lincoln changed his mind, placing expediency and power over principle. The commensurate politician!

So fast forward to late 1860 and early 1861 when things were happening fast-n-furious, most people with standard high school history probably believe that the firing on Ft. Sumter was the first hostile act of the war.

“FAKE NEWS” Just a little research shows that it just ain’t so. From DEC1860 to APR1861 some definite acts of aggression were made:

  • The first act that torpedoed trust in the relationship between federal units still in occupation of forts in the southern seven states AFTER the state seceded occurred when Major Robert Anderson, who commanded the US troops at Sumter, had of his own discretion moved the troops from Ft Moultrie, an indefensible position, to Ft Sumter in the night of 26DEC1860. He had done so without the direction of President Buchanan, and because the Carolinians were unaware of this, they received the information as a signal that the US intended to forcefully maintain possession of Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston harbor.. Although the South Carolina state troops refrained from attacking the fort, this action by US troops was regarded as an act of war.
  • Florida seceded on 10JAN1861 the very day the US commanding officer in charge of the Pensacola Bay fortifications transferred his command from Fort Barrancas to Fort Pickens. He made the decision to transfer his forces after hearing rumors that the people of Florida were going to seize all of the forts around Pensacola harbor and also that all of the forts in Mobile Bay, Alabama had already been taken. On the night of 13JAN1861 ten men were seen outside of the fort. These men from the Florida State guard were scouting the area to find out more information about the fort and it’s defenses when a shot was fired, a return shot was fired. These were the first shots of the War Against Southern Independence.
  • President Buchanan had ordered a reinforcement of the Fort and the USS Star of the West, loaded with supplies and additional troops, set out for Charleston. Cooper says that Buchanan attempted to rescind the order, but it was too late. The ship was already underway so word of this never reached the command. As with the relocation of troops to Sumter from Moultrie, this attempted resupply was likewise received as a hostile act by the Carolinians whose forces fired warning shots at the vessel on 13JAN1861
  • As the Confederate government was formed in FEB1861, and as Abraham Lincoln took office on 04MAR1861, correspondence between the two entities continued. William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, ostensibly acted as mediator between the Confederate government and the Lincoln administration. Cooper suggests that Seward had presumed to speak on behalf of Lincoln when no such authority had been delegated to him. In all probability, whether intentional or not, Seward was advancing a delaying action on behalf of the administration while a plan of action was formulated. Correspondence between the Confederate government and Seward went on for several weeks with Seward continually stalling and assuring the South that he was in favor of avoiding hostilities. Although he assured the Confederates that Sumter would be evacuated, he deflected any attempts by their officials to ascertain specifics or details.
  • Lincoln’s First Inaugural included the following myth that shocked the seven southern states who knew for fact that voluntary union meant voluntary disunion: “.. No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances … In doing this [rejoin the union] there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. ” – A. Lincoln on 04MAR1861
  • NOTE: Back on December of 1861, Anderson had informed President Buchanan that, due to his relationship with the Mayor of Charleston, as well as with the town merchants, he had access to all of the food necessary to keep his troops fed. This relationship only came to a halt with Lincoln’s inaugural address which the South received as a threat of invasion.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address 04MAR1861
  • 15MAR1861 Lincoln called a cabinet meeting and asked each member of his cabinet to submit in writing their view of what should be done with regards to Fort Sumter. Every member, except Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, voted against resupply and voiced their opposition to send reinforcements.
  • By 18MAR1861, a press laid clear what was ahead for the region: “.. The ‘Boston Transcript’ presented the underlying Republican argument for a Federal conquest of the Confederacy: specifically to keep prices of manufactured goods high by ensuring collection of Federal import taxes , not only in seceded States, but in Federal States as well. The Confederate Constitution prohibited all but modest taxes on imports, far below the Federal tax rate, which Republicans would soon triple on average: The Transcript argued “it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding States are now for commercial independence.
  • 20MAR1861 United States Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware began a three day speech on the prospects of war and the legality of secession. He began by offering a resolution in the hope of avoiding what he predicted would be a long, bloody conflict. It read: “Resolved by the Senate of the United States, That the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, has full power and authority to accept the declaration of the seceding States that they constitute hereafter an alien people, and to negotiate and conclude a treaty with “the Confederate States of America” acknowledging their independence as a separate nation; and that humanity and the principle avowed in the Declaration of Independence that the only just hosts of government is “the consent of the governed,” alike require that the otherwise inevitable alternative of civil war, with all its evils and devastation, should be thus avoided.
  • Senator Orville Browning, a close friend and confidant of Lincoln’s, advised him: “In any conflict…..between the government and seceding States, it is very important that the traitors shall be the aggressors, and that they be kept constantly and palpably in the wrong. The first attempt……to furnish supplies or reinforcements will induce aggression by South Carolina, and then the government will stand justified, before the entire country, in repelling that aggression, and retaking the forts.”

So President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to ‘send bread to Anderson’; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun the civil war.

After Lincoln maneuvered the South into “firing the first shot” on 12APR1861, in a 01MAY1861 letter to Gustavous Fox, who commanded the naval detachment charged with resupplying Sumter, the following:

You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.

Mission Accomplished, Lincoln had successfully provoked war while, in his mind, maintaining the appearance of a non-aggressor. FDR took note of this in 1940 many months before Pearl Harbor in DEC1941.

At this point war was still not a sure thing, but Lincoln used the firing on federal property, even though no man was killed, as his justification to keep Congress from meeting until he had called up volunteers and prepared for war on the south.

The only reason a War for Southern Independence was needed was because the northern states invaded the south. The north, under Lincoln’s leadership would not let the south go and would call their action the putting down of a general insurrection. I have plenty of previous posts (post, post, post, post, post, post, post, in 2020 alone) that touch on much of the lead up to this war.

Remember US Senator James A. Bayard who spoke eloquently with logic back on 20MAR1861 to anyone who would hear. Later in 1861 when his son-in-law went off to fight for the Union Army in this War Against Southern Independence he again spoke wisdom:

“In embarking on this war therefore, you enlist in a war for invasion of another people. If successful it will devastate if not exterminate the Southern people and this is miscalled Union. If unsuccessful then peaceful separation must be the result after myriads of lives have been sacrificed, thousands of homes made desolate, and property depreciated to an incalculable extent. Why in the name of humanity can we not let those States go?”

Today, here in the awesome year of 2020, I ask the same question about portions of California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota and much of the New England states, can’t the United States federal government honor the possible roadmap shown in the 1990s by the USSR and peacefully split into many republics that can “serve” their own cultures the best?

Peace out.

-SF1