There was a time when “consent of the governed” meant something:
That to secure these [God-given] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consentofthe governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ..
Even Abraham Lincoln, in a moment of clarity (i.e. when he and his Illinois could BENEFIT from something other than a government about to go to war with Mexico for Texas) said:
Quote from 1846, NOT from 1861.
By 1861, with Lincoln wanting those seven states that had left under Buchanan’s watch BACK in the UNION for REVENUE, he changed his mind.
Now think on that a bit. If you reflect on a marriage where one spouse not only takes most of your money, but also abuses you verbally, you have every right to seek a just divorce. So too did these seven southern states.
Post 2020 election, if President Trump loses, those “deplorables” who have been ripped off by democracy morphing into socialism, which Karl Marx said was only a stage before communism (REIMAGINE THIS), are once again going to think about this “consent”. Most deplorables are ardent nationalists that would still invade states that attempt to leave the union.
Secession is THE answer, whether it be the fly-over country or the east and Left coasts, it be time for a divorce!
To be honest, the deplorables will not only have to look at the evil Democratic political party, but also the stupid GOP political party that did nothing to stop the spread of socialism (Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”, Corporate Welfare State, etc). The GOP is secretly in bed with the Democrats and predictably vote in lockstep on the major shifts in this once federated republic:
The Patriot Act
The Invasion of Iraq
Obamacare (and keeping it even when the GOP had control of Prez / Congress)
Illegal Immoral Wars and Interventions: Ukraine, Syria, Libya
So just to be clear, our US political choices include plan 1.1 and plan 1.2, because they are only a little different (tough to see that these are radically different, as both cause more deaths and keeps removing our God-given freedoms):
It is time to learn the differences, but more importantly, to understand what is not talked about in political circles, that of freedom, individuality, consent of the governed and being left alone!
If Trump is re-elected, you will have a little more time to come up to speed on how politics or voting will never fix this. The “Great Reset” is here, so it will be time to:
Empires and collectives will never want freedom as they promise you various utopias. Get smart, recognize a PsyOp, and blend into the woodwork locally while connecting with like minded-people for the road ahead.
As I have stated many times before, there is a bit of misinformation out in our world that can lead people to believe things that are not actually true. This happened well before the Internet’s “fake news” and “fact-check” phenomenon as Mark Train points out here:
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
So take all your history books (especially if they have anything to do with the South and the North and were published after 1865) with a grain of salt when you read them. Source material is out there but mining that is more and more difficult as search engines have been compromised.
While I never expect any politician except perhaps Ron Paul to get history > 90% correct, this latest article laments how Ted Cruz has latched on so some fake history in the last few days:
It is also appalling to me when a conservative such as Glenn Beck or Ted Cruz—who would never allow the politically correct to deceive them on contemporary issues—routinely allow themselves to be hoodwinked on historical topics. Nathan Bedford Forrest is a prime example.
So hang on now and consider these thoughts without accepting them as truth until you do your own homework. Context, as always, is imperative in making wise judgements:
The year 1865 was pivotal in American history. It was the year the Civil War ended, the Confederacy died, the Ku Klux Klan was born, and the Democratic Party transitioned from the party of slavery to the party of white supremacy.
It must be known that the GOP/Republican party was originally a Free Soil party that believed in white land ownership exclusively. Lincoln himself is on record saying many times that the black race was subpar to the white race:
“…I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
Let’s look at the initial focus of this organization instead of focusing on what it became, especially in the 1900s when members were waving the stars and stripes and intimidating the general public into a race war like you see below:
1925 KKK March on Washington DC
Today’s focus if on the first version (1.0) of the Ku Klux Klan that ran from 1866-1869:
It (KKK) was born in the law offices of Judge Thomas Jones in Pulaski, Tennessee. Half its original members were attorneys. Its initial standards were high. One had to be in the Confederate Army at the time of the surrender or in a Union prisoner-of-war camp to be eligible for membership. Its original mission statement called for it to be “an instrument of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy and patriotism” which was to “relieve and assist the injured, oppressed, suffering, and unfortunate, especially widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers.”
You have to know how much the North, especially the government, hated everything about the South after Lincoln was assassinated. In fact, there is some contention that the assassination might have been orchestrated much like our current FBI and CIA helps unstable individuals to carry out these kind of things when a large public figure might go a direction they are not willing to travel. It was well known that Lincoln wanted a peaceful transition back to the Union for these eleven states. Not everyone in government was ready for that, in fact, they rather loved the way Lincoln shifted the republic towards a centralized, tyrannical state. “States rights” were violently dismissed by 1865. Eventually, military districts were established as these states were raped and pillaged one more time for the North’s benefit.
[US government] have a 47% tax on cotton, which they used to subsidize Northern railroads and other large corporations. On the other hand, they did provide pensions to Northern widows and orphans at the expense of Southern widows and orphans.
As 1866 dawned, here was the real ‘state of the South’ under Union occupation:
The loss of the war and the death of the Confederacy were not isolated events. They also signaled the breakdown of the Southern economy and the collapse of law and order in many localities. Gangs of criminals and individual thugs had a field day throughout the South. Union deserters, Southern outlaws, recently freed slaves who did not know how to handle their freedom, and professional criminals ran amuck. Arson, robbery, rape, and murder were the order of the day. At the same time, Carpetbaggers and collaborators pillaged the public treasuries, increased taxes 300% to 400%, ran up huge public debts, pocketed the proceeds, stole land and farms, and enriched themselves at the expense of a helpless and impoverished people.
African Americans suffered most of all. Much of the South’s land was ruined during the conflict, and 1867 was a year of famine. The new Northern rulers had no interest in the Southern people, black or white. Tens of thousands of Negroes literally starved to death. No effort was made on the part of the new rulers to even keep records of how many died.
Public health was almost completely ignored. Smallpox epidemics periodically raged throughout the South in the 1862 through 1868 period. The weakened and malnourished black folks were especially susceptible, often dying at rates of three or four times higher than Southern whites, who were themselves not well nourished. Black children were particularly hard hit. In one six-month period in 1865, 30,000 African Americans died in North Carolina and South Carolina alone. The epidemic lasted six years.
Much like the aftermath of the Iraq invasion in 2003 when the USA really did not have a game-plan except to overthrow their old partner Saddam Hussein, the North did not really want the blacks migrating north and so the GOP used the government offices of the south to entice them to stay. In the end the GOP “used” the blacks to maintain their control in these southern states. Not until the corrupt Grant administration was there the trade-off to allow the people once again to vote in even honorable ex-Confederate officers and enlisted men to public office and allow these states re-entry into the Union in the late 1870s.
It was in this context that Northern politicians actually entertained the thought of a 2nd Civil War:
Not content with theft and neglect, a significant minority of Northern politicians openly advocated a second Civil War. They included Thaddeus Stevens, the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives; General Benjamin F. “Spoons” Butler; Governor Richard Yates of Illinois; carpetbagger Governor Andrew J. Hamilton of Texas; and Senator Jim Lane of Kansas, among others. U.S. Congressman William Anderson Pile advocated “death to all supporters of the South, past or present.” General William T. Sherman wanted Southerners demoted to “demizens”: people who were given certain rights (such as the right to pay taxes) but not others (such as the right to vote). Governor William G. “Parson” Brownlow of Tennessee. A former Methodist preacher, slave owner, and newspaper editor, he believed slavery was “ordained by God.” He nevertheless supported the Union and a second Civil War. “I am one of those who believed that the war ended too soon,” he declared, and “the loyal masses” should not “leave one Rebel fence rail, outhouse, one dwelling, in the seceded states. As for the Rebel population, let them be exterminated.”
About this time in correspondence between Robert E. Lee and Lord Acton in England, Robert E. Lee responded:
.. while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.
At this point in time, in the middle of a despotic domestic scene, great men will arise and protect their families and their land. The character of Nathan Bedford Forrest can be seen in his quotes:
“I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue”
“I went into the army worth a million and a half dollars, and came out a beggar”
So here is Nathan’s entry into this foray and the real source of the term “wizard”:
The government were it was functioning at all was often in the hands of criminals, and they felt compelled to take the law into their own hands. There is a point between civilization and anarchy in which vigilantism is an acceptable, temporary measure, until law and order can be restored. Into that breach stepped Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was receiving a hundred letters a day from his former soldiers, relating eye-witness accounts of outrage and lawlessness .. Forrest applied for membership … In the spring of 1866, the leaders of the KKK met in the Maxwell House in Nashville, Tennessee, and created the position of “Grand Wizard,” a tribute to Forrest’s wartime nickname, “Wizard of the Saddle,” and gave it to the general .. Under Forrest, it [KKK] became, as he said, “a protective political military organization,” i.e., a paramilitary force, a counterbalance to [Governor] Brownlow’s Loyal Legion.
All government would react, but it is interesting how Tennessee’s governor reacts:
Governor Brownlow sought to pass a law making it legal for anyone to shoot a former Confederate on sight.
Now there is a data point to think about. What was it that really made the Union and the GOP so hateful? The treatment of blacks? I highly doubt it, it was more like when a spouse seeks to leave a marriage due to abuse and the other spouse ramps up the abuse to keep them in the “union”. What the South was to the North before the war was tariff income. After the war it became conquered territory to be used and abused.
Forrest knew the support he had from his former soldiers:
If that law passed, Forrest declared, there would be a second war, although he did not want it, but he would look upon the activation of Brownlow’s militia as a declaration of war. He also declared that he could raise 40,000 Klansmen in Tennessee and 550,000 throughout the South in five days. No one wanted to fight a half a million man cavalry army under Nathan Bedford Forrest ..
The Tennessee governor relented.
Just a few years later:
In February 1869, Brownlow resigned as governor. His successor sought to work with the Democrats, was conciliatory to his former enemies, and restored voting rights to Southern veterans and Confederate sympathizers. Forrest, meanwhile, became concerned that white trash elements were taking over large parts of the organization and were using it for their own nefarious and hateful purposes. As a result, Nathan Bedford Forrest issued General Order Number One, disbanding the Ku Klux Klan. “There was no further need for it,” Forrest commented later, “. . . the country was safe.”
So was Nathan Bedford Forrest this horrible guy? No. He had a heart for the people oppressed by the likes of Brownlow and other Northern politicians that had a hate streak for all things of the South. Obviously, if the South was that bad, why didn’t Northern politicians just let her go?
This point in time (1860) was not when friction started between the three major regions of the “united States of America”. Please note that in many documents, the “u” in union was because the emphasis on this “new nation” launched in 1776 was on the States and the powers it reserved for themselves verses the power delegated to the general (now called federal) government. The Articles of Confederation spelled this out better in print and in practice. The Constitution, however, was construed in secret backrooms in Philadelphia in 1787 and became a document that Patrick Henry would prophetically claim “I smell a rat”.
The most telling aspect of the state bent of the original view of this “republic” experiment was the language used to describe it until 1860. An example is the phrase “the United States are a republic.” Yes, you read that right. It sounds wrong only because everyone has been taught that the United States is singular and not plural. In our eyes, it is a nation, it is “one” .. and as the socialist pledge teaches us, it is indivisible.
So what happened? Well if you can imagine a marriage of two regions, south (the strongest region in the 1770s) and the north (the weakest region at this time) set aside their differences to fight off an empire. Successful as they were, they knew that only because England was pulled into a world war on various fronts and the assistance of the French, they were very lucky. Exiting these war years with the Articles of Confederation holding them somewhat together (general government could not tax, raise armies or borrow money), there came an effort to “strengthen” these bonds out of fear. The new marriage vows were designed to allow a stronger bond, general government taxes (a whiskey tax of 25% that put the British Empire’s stamp tax that the colonies revolted against to shame) and other new powers that centralized control. Patrick Henry, George Mason and Richard Henry Lee all saw through the sham of this shift towards tyranny. Eventually Thomas Jefferson would see the defects of this modified republic experiment, but it was too late. A great quote by William M. Robinson, Jr. about this moment in time is:
“The successful working of the dual system (Madison’s ‘dual sovereignty’) depended on the concert and mutual respect of the State and federal governments. When this noble experiment in government was launched in 1789, the world watched with interest and wondered whether human nature would be equal to it.”
Human nature was not equal to it. Compromises was made and even though eventually ten amendments were added (but note these “bill of rights” were not central to this document), these modified “vows” hung heavier and heavier as the country grew and expanded.
Working from a piece from Abbeville Institute on the defining differences in constitutions it is shared about what changed between 1787 and 1860:
Between 1789 and 1861 the US Constitution became a cudgel splintering on the anvil of human nature. No Founder could foresee the social, political and economic upheavals of the next 70 years: the stunning acquisition of land called the Louisiana Purchase doubling the size of a once small Republic cuddled along the Atlantic seaboard; the explosive value of cotton in the 1800 teens; our Industrial Revolution in the 1820’s; a population growth from 3.9 million in 1790 to 31.5 million in 1860, mostly in the North. Neither Jefferson nor Hamilton believed a Republic could govern so large a landmass and diverse a population. By 1860 Washington was long rutted on the road of Empire where human nature roams by instinct to the acquisition of further wealth and power.
By 1860 there was a strong North who had emerged as a leader in political power that left the south and the west (both Midwest and Pacific West) in the shadows. The ability of the general government to tweak tariff revenue dis-proportionally among the regions and subsidize northern “internal improvements” and industry were particularly prominent since about the 1830s. Redistribution of tax monies is never an easy pill to swallow. By 1860, the South felt backed into a corner and when the election results were in, it understood that the North could elect a regional president with only 39% of the country’s votes. This was a marriage that they could no longer be a party too.
However, instead of arguing purely on emotional lines, they decided to use the legality of their exit, by stating that “slavery” was their reason in many of the secessionist documents. Secession/divorce was never ruled out as an option as the North had considered that when it was the weaker partner in 1798 and 1814. Even Lincoln knew he could not push on the slavery issue legally during his first inaugural address in March 1861:
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—
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.
So here we are, seven states had legally seceded from the united States and the newly elected president, the first one elected specifically by a section of the nation alone, is saying that the Constitution limits his ability to end slavery.
Lincoln does not stop there however, from his same speech he says:
I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
Yes, Lincoln was willing to make slavery permanent in the states that desired this, IF these seven states would return.
When you read the first inaugural address you can’t say that slavery was the issue for the war that followed, because to Abraham Lincoln, slavery was not worth fighting over. A future post will discuss why a war had to be the only response the North considered when the southern seven states refused to re-join the union. It should be noted that the reasons for secession differ from the reasons for war.
As a side note, when comparing the US and CSA constitutions (again, from the Abbeville Institute article referenced earlier), the slavery sections are identical:
… the CSA [constitution] enunciates what was understood but not written in 1787, especially in three places: 1) the CSA extends the Fugitive Slave Clause to Territories; 2) in the governance of Territories the CSA allows slavery until the Territory becomes a State. The people of that State then choose whether to be a Slave or Free State; 3) the CSA explicitly forbids the Central government interfering with slavery in any State. This last was also the 1861 US Corwin Amendment that Lincoln supported. All three were part of the original, unwritten understanding of the US Founders.
In summary, the major differences were not about slavery, but about sovereignty, which is as follows:
1. Eliminated ‘dual sovereignty’. No powers were granted to the Central government. Specific powers were delegated.
2. Created a Defined and Unmistakable Federal government.
3. Mandated a solitary 6 year term for the President; gave the President a line item veto; required a mere majority vote in Congress for fiscal spending initiated by the President, but a 2/3’s majority if initiated by Congress.
4. Placed Constitutional amendment conventions entirely in the hands of the States. The Central government had no role but the mandate to issue a call for a convention when 3 of the 7 States had already proposed amendments.
That alone does not look like a slavery-centric divorce/exit plan. This is about letting states have primary powers and specifically giving the general government limited powers. This had been the rub all along!
Also, on a final note, Lincoln too used the marriage analogy in his first inaugural address, but claimed that the “nation” could not do this:
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 [communication], either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
Lincoln has been proven wrong many times on this .. especially with the breakup of the USSR and the subsequent republics that were successfully birthed as a result.
In summary, 1860’s election changed the course of this federated republic, and the reactions to this new reality included the death of over 700,000 men and the ravaging of the southern region physically, emotionally and financially for the next hundred years. In the northern mind, one must pay an eternal price from desiring separation and divorce. Forced to be in this marriage, the south has never been the same, and this marriage has never been the same. Is it over yet?
