Tag: civil war

From Yankee to Marxist Color Revolution: An Interesting Timeline to Consider

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.

I eluded to this in my last post calling out the GOP’s DNA being so similar to that of BLMs. This however was not the original birth or insertion of this parasite onto our shores. We have to go back to the first incursions onto this continent as highlighted in a recent post from Abbeville Institute when Jason Morgan rightly said:

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 ..

Peace out

-SF1

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

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Unemployment Checks – The “Union/Empire” Wanes

Confederate Constitution acknowledging God!

After a month away from this blog, I looked back at my last thoughts on this attempt by politics to hijack this virus scare:

Will our existing political class figure this out? Not a chance.

Will voting help? Not a chance.

The US still has the USPS and Amtrak, if they can be trusted with little things, you can safely say they can’t be trusted with MAJOR things.

This nation will have to split into many smaller republics before any of this can be addressed.

Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things. Whoever is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in big things too. – Luke 16:10 (Bible)

Is there any doubt by those that can critically think that our political apparatus from DC to the state’s governors and to the large (and small) city mayors are not full of want-to-be tyrants and sociopaths? When one follows the money, it gets even more immoral as the political class (BOTH sides of the so-called aisle) want to be re-elected so bad that they were all willing to place a big old pacifier in the mouths of millions of let go workers so that 65% or more would receive more weekly income than they had prior to this crisis. This is indeed immoral since to entice people to sit on their couches in their homes in time will lead to lives without any purpose. Life on the government plantation has ruined other cultures like the American Indian and the African American groups in the USA. This is how you emasculate the male population towards a purposeless life as government becomes both nanny and daddy.

But I digress. We should be in better position today to see the federal and state governments for what they really are. This “union” has been poisoned for some time. In fits and starts one can see how the federal government opted to be the “safety net”, like somehow a “neutral” entity could care for our communities and societies better than the locals could. That this safety net could extend to big business so that there was no risk in forgoing savings and instead buy back stock shares to prop up the stock prices. So whether this is individual or corporate welfare, both are immoral as one robs some people of their money and uses it to its own agenda’s purpose picking winners and losers in the marketplace as well as in towns and cities and farms across this land.

The southern states endured the reallocation of their taxed and tariff-ed economies from at least the War of 1812 up until the so-called Civil War (War Against Southern Independence). The South attempted to be “above-board” with their last ditch effort to save themselves from economic ruin by legally seceding (at first only 7 states) from this “union” (marriage). But Lincoln would not have his cash cow as a next-door free-trade zone, so he labeled it an “insurrection” and used George Washington’s illegal put down of the Whiskey Rebellion (25% tax thanks to Alexander Hamilton, so how bad was King George for wanting 3%?) as a template for saving the union.

This HAS to sound familiar right? The whole US government (in parallel to so many other governments) is trying to “save” us from Covid-19 while actually killing society and communities in the process. From 1861-1865 the “union” lost about 800,000 lives. What will the final death count be for the Covid-19 response by 2024 when the unintended consequences of good intentions has run its course with suicides, PTSD, mental health issues from the economic fallout AFTER the unemployment checks run out (now slated for 31JUL2020 but many want this extended to 31DEC2020)?

Smaller republics are the only answer that makes sense. Not existing state lines, although that would be a start, but republics that have like-minded people geographically grouped so that government reach can be minimized for liberty folks and maximized for totalitarian minded folks.

Reflecting on the course of what the southern states sailed can be very helpful. Sure they were not perfect and should have jettisoned chattel slavery at the very start (although this would have upset both white and black slaveholders) and compensating these owners with hard currency.

Consider what the Confederate government learned in the 80 years under the US Constitution.

  1. That unlike the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation which BOTH had God, our Creator, as whom we derived our natural rights from, the US Constitution written in 1787 failed to give such indication as its North Star
  2. That the US Constitution failed to protect the people from the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act that made it a crime to criticize the US Government.
  3. That the US Constitution failed to protect various regions of the land from the plundering ambitions of other region’s agenda and greed.
  4. That the US Constitution’s Supreme Court hijacked the ability of the states to determine which laws were unconstitutional.

It is the last point that is highlighted in this article from Abbeville Institite here. I do think it is the proper time to consider what real justice is these days and know how much a failure this a-political Supreme Court has been.

Although the Court would increasingly try to narrow the realm of States Rights, Madison [author of the US Constitution] denied that “the Federal judiciary” was the ultimate judge of such limits because it was the people of the states themselves who were the final authority.

It was in fact the US Government’s (called General government in those days, now labeled the Federal Government) over-reach that set-off a push back politically:

The conflict became obvious when President John Adams pushed through the 1798 Sedition Act, making it a crime to speak ill of the President or Congress. Since it was harshly enforced for some of the mildest criticisms, strict constructionists respond. Among them was future President James Madison who is known as the Father of the Constitution. He denied that the Supreme Court was the ultimate authority on States Rights. This can be seen from the 1798 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions he helped write with Thomas Jefferson condemning the Sedition Act as unconstitutional.

Jefferson’s presidential victory in 1800 guaranteed that the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act would be eliminated, but by 1833 things were simmering again. By this stage of the republic’s life the South was losing its position as being a strong entity within this federation and saw New England culture and character make huge inroads into the federal government’s choosing of winners (railroads, canals and the steel industry) over losers in the marketplace:

Calhoun would build upon the Resolutions to formulate his nullification theory that South Carolina invoked in 1833 to nullify the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the tariff was not uniform in terms of geographic economic impact and therefore unconstitutional. When the Federal Government crossed over constitutional lines, a state could take action as the final authority of constitutionality in its borders, not the Supreme Court. All states could only be forced to conform to such a law by passing a new amendment specifically making it constitutional.

This “one-size-fits-all” approach (sound familiar?) is a recipe for disaster, for just as all individuals are different, so too are the states.

The Supreme Court early on made a huge mistake that made it necessary to add an 11th amendment in 1795 when the US Constitution was less than ten years old:

When a 1793 Supreme Court ruling held the state of Georgia at fault in a suit brought by a South Carolina resident, Georgia denied the Court’s jurisdiction. After the adverse ruling ten other states joined Georgia to ratify a new (11th) Amendment specifying that individuals outside an applicable state could not sue that state without the state’s permission. The Amendment’s prompt ratification indicates a widespread belief that the Court was unexpectedly and quickly overstepping its authority.

Now you know why the Confederate government opted NOT to have a supreme court at least initially. Lesson learned.

Now it is our turn to learn from history and push for a government that is more commensurate to the people’s desire of liberty, freedom and self responsibility .. at least in certain geographical regions of this land we call America.

Peace out.

-SF1

US Civil War #2? No, Civil War #1 was Not a Civil War

I am a detail person. I love properly defined words. Governments and their historians twist words to favor their own agenda. This is why the secession of 7 and then 11 united States AND the resulting conflict for four horrible years is labeled a “civil” war.

What is hilarious is that Lincoln, knowing that secession was legal since he considered it during and even ten years after the Mexican-American War when he said:

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. – Abraham Lincoln, Peoria, Ill., Oct. 16, 1854

So when seven states, each, like an abused spouse, decided to cancel the voluntary contract she had entered into and go her own way, Lincoln decided to call this an “insurrection”.

Evidence is to the contrary however, as people today compare what happened in 1860 after Lincoln’s election:

Yes, there is a civil war looming in the United States. But it will not look like the orderly pattern of descent which characterized the conflict of 1861-65. It will appear more like the Yugoslavia break-up, or the Russian and Chinese civil wars of the 20th Century. – By Gregory R. Copley – Aug 19, 2017

The secession of whole states via legal means was the American patriots of the time effort to make the whole thing “above board”, “by the book” and “in accordance with the laws of the land”. We now know that Lincoln at the outset was not going to let that happen without a fight. It took the first month that he was in office to whip up the worst fears of life for the remaining 27 united States without the Deep South states. Economically, it looked real bad as the Northern economy and Western (Midwest) farmers would potentially lose their closest customers who in FEB1861 voted to become a relative “free trade zone” compared to the US’s 20%+ average tariff rate by setting tariffs at approximately at 13% on average.

A close inspection of Lincoln’s inaugural address (04MAR1861), two days after the US Congress passed a tariff increase (which the Republicans wanted and was in their platform) shows that ..

1. –  if you can believe Lincoln’s words, he was not going to do anything about slavery:

I have 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.

2. – Lincoln’s primary interest lay in collecting duties at all southern ports, as the US general government wanted and needed this revenue stream:

.. 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.

Lincoln contended that divorce was not an option. Of course he “saw” the nation as a singular, and that union was paramount. However, in history we have seen peaceful secession work many times. Lincoln, who once thought and said that governing requires consent of the governed, changed his mind.

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

Properly conceived, the United States in 1861 was actually like polygamy, in that 34 spouses were involved, and 7 wanted to leave this arrangement:

This was NOT the 7 spouses wanting to rule over the WHOLE harem! That would be the true definition of civil war, where the winner gets EVERYTHING!

So in hindsight, the American Revolution was in fact 13 spouses wanting to rule their own households, so basically 13 civil wars as in each colony there was a mix of Tory/Loyalist and Whig/Rebel tendencies plus those that didn’t really care and just wanted peace at all cost.

The American Civil War was not really a civil war as after Lincoln called up 75,000 volunteer troops from the remaining 27 states, 4 of those said no way (Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia) as each of these had already voted once to stay in the union and now voted to leave.

This brings us to 2019. Are we facing a civil war? Again, I contend that most decent people want to be left alone. Most decent people don’t mind if the east coast from DC to MA and the west coast from CA to WA just leave (or stay and the rest of the states leave). Again, Gregory R. Copley shares:

It may, in other words, be short-lived simply because the uprising will probably not be based upon the decisions of constituent states (which, in the US Civil War, created a break-away confederacy), acting within their own perception of a legal process. It is more probable that the 21st Century event would contage as a gradual breakdown of law and order.

I tend to agree with this synopsis as the states are no longer entities with any autonomy, but are puppets of the federal government these days, a direct result of the union forcing the marriage covenant to be permanent.

Many will point to Trump or Brexit as the start of this so-called Civil War 2.0, but like most wars, their roots go back years if not generations:

It is significant that the gathering crisis in the United States was not precipitated by the November 7, 2016, election of Pres. Donald Trump, and neither was the growing polarization of the United Kingdom’s society caused by the Brexit vote of 2016. In both instances, the election of Mr Trump and the decision by UK voters for Britain to exit the European Union were late reactions — perhaps too late — by the regional populations of both countries to what they perceived as the destruction of their nation-states by “urban super-oligarchies”.

The last-ditch reactions by those who voted in the US for Donald Trump and those who voted in the UK for Brexit were against an urban-based globalism which has been building for some seven decades, with the deliberate or accidental intent of destroying nations and nationalism.

I contend that the roots of this go much further back than seven decades, but back to the very end of Amerexit, when the thirteen colonies each received acknowledgement in the 1783 Treaty of Paris that the British Empire would let them go in peace, finally. In the post war era, those former patriots would once again turn on the people to assemble a central government that would “protect” them, at a cost when in fact it was a guerilla war that actually freed the colonies from the British grip.

The myth abounded that formal confederation was necessary to win the war, although the war would be virtually won by the time confederation was finally achieved. The war was fought and won by the states informally but effectively united in a Continental Congress; fundamental decisions, such as independence, had to be ratified by every state. There was no particular need for the formal trappings and permanent investing of a centralized government, even for victory in war. Ironically, the radicals were reluctantly pulled into an arrangement which they believed would wither away at the end of the war, and thereby helped to forge an instrument which would be riveted upon the people only in time of peace, an instrument that proved to be a halfway house to that archenemy of the radical cause, the Constitution of the United States. – Murray Rothbard in ‘Conceived in Liberty Vol IV p.243

It is both sick and sad that even radical patriots turned back to central government as the safe way forward. Allowing the smaller states to work in a loose confederation would have provided a true “land of the free” much more than our tyrannical US Empire has allowed us domestically.

As the fictional Benjamin Martin said at the close of the movie The Patriot (2000)

“With the war ending .. I take measure of what we have lost. And what we have won.”

What was won was colonial-centric liberty and freedom from British Empire oppression, what was soon lost was that very same thing. Squandered, politics has a way of doing that every time.

-SF1

Collateral Damage: Can We Make Civilians Spectators Again? Probably Not

I am fully aware that the term “collateral damage” as used by the US Empire refers to the “unfortunate” death of innocent civilians as a result of “pre-war” sanctions. The most popular clip on the Internet is Secretary of State Madeline Albright being interviewed about the 500,000 children that died as a result of sanctions on Iraq between Gulf War I and II:

The reason I ‘air-quote’ the term pre-war is that in all reality, sanctions themselves are an act of war, even though it is on the economic variety. While there are no guns used, there is force used to ensure that the economic activity sanctioned actually does not take place, and that is indeed backed by guns. It is both coercion and violence-based. The state dictates that peaceful trade can not take place and its edicts will be followed, as the consequences to any business is well known. No business can go rogue in the sanction war.

Truth be told, we in the US on the domestic front are again close to having personal conversation scrutinized for words of support towards these sanctioned countries filled with people who desire peaceful trade with American citizens. If one supports Palestinian people, one is assumed to be anti-Semitic, if one supports Russian people, one is assumed to be a Russian-bot.

There was a time when war’s harm toward civilians caught in the crossfire was recognized and attempts were made toward international rules that safeguarded citizens as much as possible from the political conflicts that broke out across the world. By the 1700s in fact, this was the norm, which is why there was such disgust when British dragoon leader Banastre Tarleton would kill both the wounded enemy as well as civilians that appeared to “aid the enemy”.

By the time seven states decided to leave the American union in 1861, this norm had not yet changed. Most of the civilized world’s battles took place on the outskirts of cities.

From an article written by one who has seen war with his own eyes since Vietnam, Tom’s Dispatch writes about this time period:

In fact, the classic American instance of war-as-spectator-sport occurred in 1861 in the initial major land battle of the Civil War, Bull Run (or, for those reading this below the Mason-Dixon line, the first battle of Manassas). “On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex,” wrote William Howard Russell who covered the battle for the London Times. “The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood — ‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond tomorrow.’”

Yes, a picnic lunch adjacent to a large battle. You now know how everyone assumed that civilians would not be targeted. People in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya pretty much know the opposite is true with the US Empire in the 21st century.

Reflecting back once more:

That woman would be sorely disappointed. U.S. forces not only failed to defeat their Confederate foes and press on toward the capital of the secessionist South but fled, pell-mell, in ignominious retreat toward Washington. It was a rout of the first order. Still, not one of the many spectators on the scene, including Congressman Alfred Ely of New York, taken prisoner by the 8th South Carolina Infantry, was killed.

By in large, the southern armies were driven by principles. The leadership time and again desired to spare the civilian population of the havoc of war. When Robert E. Lee’s army invaded the northern states of Maryland and Pennsylvania, his men were under strict orders NOT to help themselves to the resources of these civilians but rely on their own supplies. This was even apparent at the end of the war in 1865 when a hungry, tired and destitute southern army under Robert E. Lee retreated from Richmond and came across a rare cow in the countryside. Robert E. Lee directed his hungry men to return that cow to its rightful owner.

We do however know that there were civilian deaths during this internal conflict where one section of the country desired to depart in peace. Tom’s Dispatch explains:

Judith Carter Henry was as old as the imperiled republic at the time of the battle. Born in 1776, the widow of a U.S. Navy officer, she was an invalid, confined to her bed, living with her daughter, Ellen, and a leased, enslaved woman named Lucy Griffith when Confederate snipers stormed her hilltop home and took up positions on the second floor.

“We ascended the hill near the Henry house, which was at that time filled with sharpshooters. I had scarcely gotten to the battery before I saw some of my horses fall and some of my men wounded by sharpshooters,” Captain James Ricketts, commander of Battery 1, First U.S. Artillery, wrote in his official report. “I turned my guns on that house and literally riddled it. It has been said that there was a woman killed there by our guns.” Indeed, a 10-pound shell crashed through Judith Henry’s bedroom and tore off her foot. She died later that day, the first civilian death of America’s Civil War.

We know she was not the last to die. Many would die as Union army cut swaths through the south in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Civilian’s fields, silver and homes would not be spared, nor were their personal bodies as many women were raped by the marauding troops from the north. As in many countries in the Middle East today, these atrocities would not soon be forgotten.

Tom’s Dispatch (Nick Turse) continues:

No one knows how many civilians died in the war between the states. No one thought to count. Maybe 50,000, including those who died from war-related disease, starvation, crossfire, riots, and other mishaps. By comparison, around 620,000 to 750,000 American soldiers died in the conflict — close to 1,000 of them at that initial battle at Bull Run.

So by 1865 these ratios were starting to change. Civilian deaths are hard to estimate, but you can be assured that military deaths these days are minimal when compared to those of innocent civilians.

In Vietnam, we saw this on black and white TV before the government decided to control more of what the masses would view:

A century later, U.S. troops had traded their blue coats for olive fatigues and the wartime death tolls were inverted. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. Estimates of the Vietnamese civilian toll, on the other hand, hover around two million. Of course, we’ll never know the actual number, just as we’ll never know how many died in air strikes as reporters watched from the rooftop bar of Saigon’s Caravelle Hotel ..

Since the 1960s, this trend has only accelerated and has not only produced more of what our own CIA calls “blowback” (I mean, when you blow up funeral processions with drones, you will multiply the number of freedom-fighters, errr I mean “terrorists” in a region) but it also has cause economic and political refugees seeking a better life in other regions of the world. For both the military-industrial complex and politicians, this is actually a win-win for them. How sick is that?

Tom’s Dispatch article winds down by saying:

In this century, it’s a story that has occurred repeatedly, each time with its own individual horrors, as the American war on terror spread from Afghanistan to Iraq and then on to other countries; as Russia fought in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere; as bloodlettings have bloomed from the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Sudan, from Myanmar to Kashmir. War watchers like me and like those reporters atop the Caravelle decades ago are, of course, the lucky ones. We can sit on the rooftops of hotels and listen to the low rumble of homes being chewed up by artillery. We can make targeted runs into no-go zones to glimpse the destruction. We can visit schools transformed into shelters. We can speak to real estate agents who have morphed into war victims.  Some of us, like Hedrick Smith, Michael Herr, or me, will then write about it — often from a safe distance and with the knowledge that, unlike Salah Isaid and most other civilian victims of such wars, we can always find an even safer place.

A safer place. I am sure this is what those imprisoned in Gaza feel, or those in Libya near Tripoli these days, or in various areas of Iraq and Afghanistan and even in areas of Syria.

This will probably all “come home to roost” as our foreign policy of intervention and disruption plus regime change causes people to uproot and move. There is always “baggage” involved when violence displaces families.

This all will not end well, nor will this country be exempt from the fallout.

-SF1