Tag: Fort Moultrie

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/ ]

 

Asking the Right Question: Who Fired/Hit First vs. Who ‘Aggressed’ First

Fifty years ago I was a 10 year old who had just moved cross-country to a new state just in time to start 5th grade. I was not the only new kid at school but very soon, at recess, the playground bully was in my face almost on a daily basis. I just wanted to play football with my new friends, I preferred he just leave me alone.

This went on for a week or so before out on the football field once more, he was in my face just itching for a fight. I looked down, and he looked to the crowd for looks of admiration, and never saw the punch coming under his chin. He lifted up in the air a bit and landed on his back with the wind knocked out of him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a teacher approaching and I melted back into the crowd while I heard “hey, what is going on here?” My new friends had seen this day AND every day prior and responded: “he must have slipped on something” and as everyone else nodded, the bully was left to get himself up off the ground.

Now I admit, I was a bit lucky because this bully could have come after me WITH some friends any day after school to settle the score, but he didn’t. And for that I am grateful.

I do hope that you are asking yourself, WHY did he write all this? Well, I just wanted to point out that while I was guilty of throwing the first punch, I was not guilty of being the first aggressor.

So like in my previous post about Pearl Harbor and getting behind the “well-known” story of the “surprise” that day, so too must we look into other events that might have been misinterpreted. This article, from Abbeville Institute, walks one through the days and months that led up to the South Carolina forces firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and rightly highlights the aggressor as well as the one who “threw the first punch”.

Carl Jones starts with the narrative believed by 95% of Americans here in 2018 when he states:

Too often a narrative is passed from one person to the next until it becomes accepted as fact or “common knowledge.” In the society that we live in critical analysis is rarely applied, and so a notion that if scrutinized would be exposed as silly (or worse), instead becomes “fact.” Such is the case with the situation at Ft. Sumter in 1861.

The narrative goes something like this- “The South fired the first shot, and thus instigated the war. The end.”

While it is true that the South did indeed fire first, there is a much deeper question to be answered. Namely, who committed the first act of hostility?

As in the case of my playground incident, one must rewind the relational history of the parties and assess properly where the responsibility of conflict rests with. In the case of South Carolina, New England colonies as well as other norther colonies were at odds in 1775 which almost led to New England battling the British Empire alone!

In Charleston harbor itself, there had already been some actions that had produced several severe irritants months before the “first shot”.  More on that in a minute, but just note that South Carolina aspired to secede peacefully, after their 20DEC1860 secession decision. South Carolina’s governor Francis W. Pickens said after the bloodless victory at Fort Sumter on 13APR1861:

.. When I was called upon to preside over the destinies of this State, after an absence of three or four years from home, I felt that the heaviest and most painful situation of my life had come. But so far as I was concerned, as long as I was Chief Magistrate of South Carolina, I was determined to maintain our separate independence and freedom at any and every hazard. [Great applause.] I felt that the State was in a peculiar position; that we were immediately and at first thrown upon the most scientific and expensive branches of modern warfare. We were then but ill-prepared to meet the sudden issues that might be forced upon us, so that our cause had to present firmness and decision on the one side, with great caution and forbearance. We were, in fact, walking alone over a dangerous gulf. The least misstep or want of coolness might have precipitated our great cause into endless ruin. With the heavy ordnance we had to procure, and the heavy batteries that we were compelled to erect, I felt under these circumstances it required time, exact calculation and high science, and it would have been madness, it would have been folly, to have rushed the brave and patriotic men in my charge upon a work that was pronounced the Gibraltar of the South…

The truth is that the governments of South Carolina and the Confederate States of America had made repeated efforts to resolve the crisis of Fort Sumter, where the Union army had moved to on 26DEC1860, peacefully before any shots were fired. So some background is in order:

During the transition period from the Presidency of Buchanan to Lincoln, there had been two occurrences that had raised the ire of South Carolinians.

First was the fact that 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. 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 the Fort. Although they refrained from attacking the fort, this action by US troops was regarded as an act of war.

Second, 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.

The South Carolina government as well as the Confederacy already had two occurrences where they were deceived by Northern aggression.

Once Lincoln came into office in early March 1861, with William Seward as his Secretary of State, this is what transpired:

.. 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.

South Carolinians were becoming more and more alarmed as the weeks went on, especially due to the fact that Lincoln had delivered in his First Inaugural Address what the seceded States regarded as a Declaration of War:

“.. 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…”

Lincoln had no intention of surrendering, or selling the forts to the Confederacy because doing so would have necessarily signaled to the world that he was recognizing the South’s independence and sovereignty.

Those in Charleston harbor reading the words of Lincoln’s must have wondered what would happen next. Little did they know that only Lincoln and Postmaster Montgomery Blair were for war with the Confederate States of America while the balance of Lincoln’s cabinet wanted peace in March 1861. This all changed later that month when the reality of the United States Congress, reacting to the Confederate States of America’s decision to set tariffs at <10%, raised their own tariff rate TWICE what it was to up to 50% on some items. Having a literal free trade country adjacent to the United States threatened them economically as a majority of the tariff revenue had been collected in Southern ports.

Personally, nothing helps to know a person’s character than hearing what was said by them years ago and compare it to what they do today. Bullies have no character. Compare this quote of Lincoln’s from 1847 to what he was willing to do in 1861:

Interesting, because in 1847 in relation to the secession of Texas from Mexico, Lincoln had recognized the principle upon which America’s War for Independence had been established:

“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.” – Abe Lincoln

But, faced with losing the “duties and imposts” afforded to the US government by virtue of the booming Southern economy, he was forcefully retracting his belief in this “most sacred right.

So bent was Lincoln to reject the attempt of 7 states to leave “the union” of 33 states, that he attempted to do so in a way that he would not be seen as the aggressor.

.. The only question in his mind was how to initiate the war, and his efforts to resupply Sumter were an attempt to maneuver the Confederacy into firing the first shot while simultaneously attempting to not appear as the aggressor. This was obvious to everyone on both sides. Two of Lincoln’s trusted secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, disclosed that:

“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.”

The ploy was that Lincoln was to resupply Fort Sumter with food, however he directed the US Navy to send troops as well.

Lost in all this was the fact that until Lincoln’s inauguration speech threatening invasion, from December of 1861 when Union General Anderson had informed by then President Buchanan that due to his relationship with the mayor of Charleston and businessmen in the harbor, he (Anderson) had access to all of the food necessary to keep his troops fed.

Bully tactics yield aggression, and aggression leads to distrust. As a result, US Naval ships were sent to Charleston and on 12APR1861 South Carolina troops under the direction of Confederate General Beauregard aware that the fleet was in route, were given the command to fire on the fort.

Many Norther newspapers (soon to be censored or shutdown by Lincoln, occasionally imprisoning the editors and writers) offered the unvarnished truth in the days that followed:

The New York Evening Day-Book opined:

“We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South…. We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding…. Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it.”

While most people have been indoctrinated to think that Lincoln “saved” the union, he in fact killed the “experiment” in this republic held together by a federation of sovereign states:

The Lincoln presidency was a catalyst for many negative developments in the ever-increasing powers of the executive office. His Presidency haunts us to this day, although far too many fail to recognize this fact. Lincoln overturned the outcome of the Philadelphia convention by forcefully relegating the “States” to “provinces” of an all-powerful Central government. He shredded the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th and 10th Amendments, concocted the blatantly dishonest notion that the union was somehow older than the States, unilaterally invaded a sovereign country- which desired peaceful relations -without consulting congress, and extended Presidential powers well beyond anything delegated, or even hinted at, within the confines of Article II of the Constitution. As well, Lincoln committed the constitution’s own definition of treason by making war against the seceded States, shut down over 300 Northern newspapers and jailed the owners, arrested Maryland legislators who he “suspected” were sympathetic to secession and used the Federal military to effect re-election of political allies. Considering his numerous actions in defiance of the constitutional restraints on his office, as well as direct assaults against personal liberty, any rational observation must conclude that Lincoln was a dictator.

Conclusion: When you wonder where the swamp comes from in the government we have today, with a foreign policy that asserts that the US exceptionalism enables it to bully sovereign nations all across the globe, bullying independent nations that resist tyrannical forces supported by the US military directly or via the CIA indirectly, know that the source of this sociopathic character comes directly through Abraham Lincoln and what he pulled off in April 1861.

-SF1

July 1780 -Kickoff Time for Francis Marion (Swamp Fox) to Morph into a Militia Leader

Life is a process. We are never the same person we were born as, as this process ebbs and flows culminating into the legacy we leave as we depart this world. Such is the case of Francis Marion, an officer in the Continental Army who escaped capture by the British due to his being at his home nursing a injured ankle due to his “character”!

So, I am sure you are wondering about that last line. What could his character have to do with his injured ankle? Apparently, it was common practice of senior officers in the military to hold a drinking party in their home and lock the doors so fellow officers could not leave until they were all plastered, king of a 1700s version of a “team-building” event! Francis Marion, as of 20 January 1780 a Lt. Col., commands the 2nd South Carolina Regiment. On the night of 19 March 1780 at a party on Tradd St. in Charleston being more of a ‘man of moderation’ he decided to exit the party and therefore slipped (no pun intended) out of a window and fell to the street injuring or breaking his leg or ankle. As a result, he returned to his home in Pond Bluff which is 50 miles north of Charleston.

The British decided in early 1780 to redouble their shift in their focus to the southern colonies where they believed they had much more support and then roll up through Virginia and cornering the balance of the Continentals under George Washington near New York City in quick fashion. The British had already captured Savannah, Georgia early in the war in December 1778 after it had failed to capture Charleston on 28 June 1776 when British attacked Sullivan’s Island from the sea while Francis commanded the guns at Fort Sullivan (later called Fort Moultrie). The British naval attack failed when the palmetto logs held against bombardment.

Francis Marion also participated in the attempt to retake Savanna, Georgia in the fall of 1779 but the Continentals and militia failed in their siege. So early in 1780 the British captured and occupied Beaufort, South Carolina on 03 February 1780 and then turned its focus on Charleston.

Starting 28 March 1780 the British laid siege to Charleston and by 12 May 1780, Charleston surrendered. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered all of the existing Continental Army in SC, plus much of the SC militia and NC Militia. Most of the Continental Army officers and men were captured, over 5000 men in all, and signed documents stating that they would not take up arms against the British ever again.

In the days after this the British moved into the South Carolina back country as they had the momentum as news spread causing many people to switch allegiances and now back the British. On 29 May 1780 Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton and his Legion bayoneted 113 Continental soldiers of Col. Abraham Buford’s Virginia unit. Subsequent captures included South Carolina strategic locations such as Moncks Corners, Cheraw, Orangeburgh, Ninety-Six, and Dorchester. A month later on 11 July 1780 they also occupied Georgetown on the South Carolina coast as well, getting very close to Francis Marion’s plantation near St. Stephens.

Francis Marion is 48 years old at this point in time and is 5′ 2″ tall. His ability to lead men mainly on horseback over the next 24 months will be critical to the success of South Carolina and the rest of the colonies to finally break with the largest empire in the world.