Tag: North

When the Honeymoon is Over: Is the First Fight Always About Money?

One of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard is that the South left the North over slavery. Anyone with a thinking mind should have done their research and realize that when the media/government spins a yarn so very hard and for over a century, it is probably false.

In reading a 1960s well documented book by Murray Rothbard called “Conceived in Liberty, Volume 5: The New Republic”, it becomes apparent that the new “marriage” of several colonial regions in America had some high hopes and dreams that were quickly dashed with some harsh realities. Promises made or implied give away to a selfish attitude that neatly translates for the North into some more economic bondage for the South.

This core resentment and distrust would eventually be the key reason why the South (as of 04MAR1861, just the seven states of the deep south) did not flinch when Lincoln promised them LEGAL and PERMANENT slavery of blacks IF they would simply re-enter the Union. By this time the South was tired of the abusive relationship the North treated them with and it was apparent that as of NOV1860 that the North could elect a president without ANY Southern support or votes spoke volumes.

As the American Revolution ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, the engagement of the thirteen colonies signed 04JUL1776 with the Declaration of Independence led to the creation of the wedding vows on 15NOV1777 followed by the commencement of the marriage on 01MAR1781. Note that the language of the vows talks of a perpetual union, however, by the time a constitutional convention was called in 1787, these original vows were discarded for a new set (the United States Constitution) that “promised” a better relationship. In hindsight, it was all downhill from that point forward.

With the end of the war-period in which these thirteen colonies fought together, but with a wide range of sacrifice, it was time to settle all the debt incurred during this period. It is in this period that some significant character flaws started to make themselves known that should have been red-flags, especially for the South, to anticipate what a continued relationship might look like and if the North could be trusted in the long-term.

Murray Rothbard shares a summary:

“A key to the politico-economic problems of the Confederation period, as well as one of the leading arguments for centralized power, was the swollen corpus of war-born public debt. The mass of federal and state debt could have depreciated and passed out of existence by the end of the war, but the process was stopped by Robert Morris. Morris and the nationalists moved to make the depreciated federal debt ultimately redeemable at par, and also agitated for federal assumption of the states’ debts. This was done to benefit speculators who purchased the public debt at depreciated values and to force a drive for a national taxing power ..”

To have a “spouse” like that to hijack the relationship towards a future that philosophically was repulsive to the independent minded Southern colonies, in effect, USING the South for it’s economic engine (which at that time was much more healthy than the North, this in spite of the major conflicts that occurred in the South during the last 1/2 of the war).

As a result of the nationalists’ efforts to assume the public debt, the value of the public debt, in specie, increased from $11 million in 1780 to $27 million in 1783, the vast bulk of which was held in the northern states. While scrambling to assume some of the debt themselves, the states had also amassed a huge burden of their own debt. Thus, by the end of the war, Massachusetts’ total debt was nearly £1.5 million; Rhode Island, about $0.5 million; Connecticut, over $3.75 million; Pennsylvania, over £4.6 million; Virginia’s over £4.25 million. As a result, payment of interest on the debt amounted to an overwhelming proportion of the state budget, and one estimate is that 50–90 percent of state expenditures went for this purpose ..

Not cool. The elites looked to benefiting themselves and placing the common folk on the hook for all the taxes needed not just to satisfy the interest payments on the debt, but to eventually pay off all the American Revolutionary War debt,

One problem that bitterly divided the states during the Confederation period was the settlement of common accounts. Under the Articles, expenses made by the several states for causes common to them all would be lumped together as “common charges” and the charges paid proportionately by the various states. In short, “debtor” states would pay their share to claimant “creditor” states through Congress and thus settle their accounts. Wartime expenses were clearly a common charge for the general welfare, and therefore those states which had expended more in the war effort (notably the southern states, because of the nature of the last few years of the war) were entitled to payment from the others. Logically, the public debt incurred by Congress should also have been assumed pro rata by the separate states, but the nationalists’ fierce determination to amass and retain a federal debt was able to keep that debt a federal rather than a “common” charge.

Talk about a bait and switch. So the vows that were agreed to in 1781 were just words on paper and the actions after the war’s end were highly dishonorable in regards to the nationalist’s agenda:

Throughout the 1780s the southern states tried to obtain their just settlements, but the northern states faithlessly fell back on technicalities, lack of official vouchers and authorization, etc., to keep the southern states from their just due. Also the South in particular had gone much further than other states in assuming unliquidated federal debt during the war (e.g., Quartermaster and Commissary certificates) and had exchanged them for state debts, only to find Congress (i.e., the North) balking about accepting these federal certificates as evidence for expenditures in the common welfare. Again, the North was depriving the South of their just due.

It should be noted that many Southern militia members never got the pensions deserved and yet so many New Englanders who never fought a battle received the same pension. Basically, the Yankee’s word meant nothing, and this was only the beginning:

As the dispute dragged on during the decade with the southern states unable to redeem their claims, Robert Morris’ wily “solution” proposed in 1783 began to look better to all concerned. An ultra-nationalist’s dream, the proposal was to accept all southern claims without cavil, but not to be paid by the debtor states: to be assumed by the federal government, which would issue federal securities for all claims. In short, the federal government would assume all war-born state debts. The tax-and-debt burdens of the states were, of course, aggravated when the depression of 1784 hit the country, for now a fixed sum of taxes and debt payments had to be exacted from a depressed economy in which prices were generally lower and therefore the real tax burden greater. One critical problem was whether the debt would be paid at its depreciated market value, which at least reflected current economic realities, or whether the state would insist on paying them at their far greater face value, and thus impose an enormously greater tax burden upon the people. The anger of people at paying debt charges was considerably aggravated by the fact that the bulk of this debt had passed from its original owners at highly depreciated amounts into the hands of speculators. Payment of face value, then, would not even benefit the original public creditors; in fact, they too would suffer from being taxed for the benefit of a windfall to a comparative handful of speculators in the public debt.

The way two former colonies would handle this situation showed the difference in character between the regions, which to me meant that they were not compatible for a “tight” marriage but might work in a loose “federation”. Unfortunately, the actions in 1787 with the new “vows” (the US Constitution, coup d’tat) would make this marriage so tight that it could only become abusive in the long haul.

Virginia showed honorable character:

Virginia was sensible enough to pay much of the debt at its depreciated market value, and make its taxes to pay the debt payable in depreciated certificates. Hence, Virginia was able to reduce its debt rapidly and without imposing enormous burdens on its taxpayers .. Numerous county petitions in Virginia pleaded the impossibility of paying taxes, a condition aggravated by the low price of tobacco in the mid-1780s. The Virginia legislature reacted sagely to the protests .. and agreed to lower or suspend taxes, and to allow hemp-growing western farmers to pay their taxes in hemp or flour. Indeed, Virginia agreed, in the spring of 1784, to suspend all tax collections for six months, and then agreed to cut taxes in half for the year 1785.

Massachusetts not so much:

Massachusetts, on the other hand, so handled its debt during the war as to benefit its debt holders and speculators, consolidating its debt by 1784 at twice its market value. To pay this particularly large debt, Massachusetts levied enormous taxes and insisted on collecting them in specie. This is not surprising, since the Massachusetts government was basically run by the very groups that owned the great mass of state debt. The debt burden was borne particularly by the poor, since roughly 33 to 40 percent of Massachusetts’ state revenue was raised by poll taxes, which were equal for each citizen. As a result, it is estimated that at least a third of a Massachusetts farmer’s income after 1780 was extracted from him in taxes, and in specie at that. Farmers and the poor demanded that the state debt at least be scaled down to market value, but the conservative ruling groups angrily refused. Typical of the eastern mercantile oppression over the mass of citizens and farmers was the imposition of excise taxes, which harmed the bulk of consumers. Thus, the tax on spirits (e.g., cider brandy) distilled from one’s own apple orchard was twice the level of the tax on New England rum: a clear privilege to the Boston and other eastern merchants over the western farmers. Tax oppression upon the Massachusetts people was enormous, and the courts ruthlessly threw those who could not pay into jail. Tax defaulters’ property was seized, but in the time-honored way of neighborhood solidarity, local mobs prevented anyone but the owner from bidding for the property.

The rifts were real and would be aggravated over time.  These events should have given caution to the southern states by the late 1780s that had the nationalists accelerate their efforts to centralize the US general government and create a central bank. It seems the longer the South stayed with the North the more the North sensed that it OWNED the South, as a slave and not respected her as a spouse.

Hindsight is indeed 20/20 .. but learning these things from real history is priceless!

-SF1

The Reparations Fad – This Issue is More Complex Than You Think, and It’s a Political Hustle!

The latest attempt at further fracturing race relations towards ensuring politicians are employed well into the future is the idea of reparations for blacks in the US. Just like the Republicans of the late 1860s and early 1870s, the Democrats of today want to use blacks in the US to enrich their future to provide a government service in the form of money to offset past wrongs. It isn’t that politicians want every black person in the US to get a check, oh no, it is that they would “manage” this enormous fund and determine who is worthy to receive other taxpayer’s money.

Walter E. Williams in a 2014 piece (yes, this subject has been cycling thorough the US for many decades) explains the complexities involved:

One of the most ignored facts about slavery’s tragic history — and it’s virtually a secret today — is that slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years. It did not become a moral issue until the 18th century. Plus, the moral crusade against slavery started in the West, most notably England.

By worldwide, Walter means that blacks AND whites were slaves at one time or another. Even Alphonse-Louis Vinh noted in this recent post that:

Yes, slavery is evil, but this was something that was universal. Slavery was the backbone of our ancestral civilisation, the Greco-Roman World. Slavery has been universal for at least 5,000 years. Slavery still exists in the Muslim world. The monstrous evil of sexual slavery, which is a major concern of mine, exists everywhere, and I want to help destroy it.

To be specific, a decade ago there was NO slavery in Libya, but today, thanks to the US/NATO overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, this horrible practice is again thriving in this region. Bombing the world for “democracy” should be the US Empire’s tagline!

So lets get back to Walter E. Williams list of complexities to consider.

First and foremost:

.. let me say that I agree with reparations advocates that slavery was a horrible, despicable violation of basic human rights. The gross discrimination that followed emancipation made a mockery of the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. I also agree that slave owners and slave traders should make reparations to those whom they enslaved. The problem, of course, is that slaves, slave owners and slave traders are all dead. Thus, punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is out of the hands of the living .. What moral principle justifies punishing a white of today to compensate a black of today for what a white of yesterday did to a black of yesterday?

Exactly. Great question. However, there is more!

Government has no resources of its very own. The only way for government to give one American a dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — confiscate that dollar from some other American .. A large percentage, if not most, of today’s Americans — be they of European, Asian, African or Latin ancestry — don’t even go back three or four generations as American citizens. Their ancestors arrived on our shores long after slavery. What standard of justice justifies their being taxed to compensate blacks for slavery? For example, in 1956, thousands of Hungarians fled the brutality of the USSR to settle in the U.S. What do Hungarians owe blacks for slavery?

Another great question. How on earth is government going to do this “fairly”? DNA testing? Even that has issues in trying to determine the descendants of both white slave-owners and black slaves. But wait, there is more!

During slavery, some free blacks purchased other blacks as a means to free family members.

But other blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves — to work farms or plantations. Are descendants of these slaveholding blacks eligible for and deserving of reparations?

Exactly. How does one determine the motive of people that lived in the US states of MD, KY, MO, DE (yes, these were slave states too) as well as TX, LA, AK, MS, AL, TN, GA, SC, NC, and VA prior to December 1865 when chattel slavery was abolished?

Adding to the complicated nature of this issue is the way slaves were captured in Africa (by African blacks) and placed on US New England slave ships, financed by US New England investors to get the slaves to Washington DC (yes, slave auctions were a thing there), Richmond, VA and Charleston, SC.

When African slavery began, there was no way Europeans could have enslaved millions of Africans. They had no immunity from diseases that flourished in tropical Africa. Capturing Africans to sell into slavery was done by Arabs and black Africans. Would reparations advocates demand that citizens of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya and several Muslim states tax themselves to make reparation payments to progeny of people whom their ancestors helped to enslave?

The final thing Walter corrects is the myth that the slave system made for

Reparations advocates make the foolish unchallenged argument that the United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That’s nonsense that cannot be supported by fact. Slavery doesn’t have a very good record of producing wealth. Slavery was all over the South, and it was outlawed in most of the North.

Buying into the reparations argument about the riches of slavery, one would conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our nation were places where slavery flourished — Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia — while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

Basically, the only reason the North could do what it did in 1861 when it commenced a war on Southern civilians was because it had prospered much more than the South from 1820s on to 1860. It was not always that way as from 1775 to the War of 1812 it was the South that was the most prosperous section of the young nation. So strong was the South that the North considered secession in 1798 and again in 1814 but never pulled the trigger.

Lastly, do we really want to open up this can of worms in the 21st century as to reparations for past slavery? The fact is that every nation in the world owes REPARATION to somebody ELSE.

Case in point is in this 2002 post about a case for reparations that was filed here in the US by Jack Kershaw of Menphis, TN:

[Jack] wants to file a class-action lawsuit against the US government for reparations. Not on behalf of the descendants of slaves but on behalf of Southerners of all races whose ancestors were the victims of the US government’s rampage of pillaging, plundering, burning, and raping of Southern civilians during the War for Southern Independence [so-called American Civil War]

While the Southerners of 1865-1877 and beyond were undoubtedly trashed by the vindictive Northern army and later Republican politicians, should we go back multiple generations across this globe and transact billions or trillions of dollars IF there is evidence to do so?

To be honest, the South took it on the chin for only wanting out of the marriage to this psycho partner called the Yankee/Northerner/Defender of the Union. Not only was this a legal move constitutionally (Lincoln was very careful to never acknowledge that secession took place), it was the right thing to do as it was well known by 1860 that the North got rich in part due to the tariff revenue generated in the South being REDISTRIBUTED to Northern “improvements” (steel industry, railroads, etc).

Some examples of wartime atrocities abound. To start with, the specific targeting of civilians was outright illegal when the North started the war against the “insurrection” (Lincoln’s word) in the South:

In 1860 international law — and the US government’s own military code — prohibited the intentional targeting of civilians in war, although it was recognized that civilian casualties are always inevitable. .. The kind of wanton looting and destruction of private property that was practiced by the Union army for the entire duration of the war was forbidden, and perpetrators were to be imprisoned or hanged. This was all described in great detail in the book, International Law, authored by San Francisco attorney Henry Halleck, who was appointed by Lincoln as general in chief of the Union armies in July 1862.

Early on in the war, frustrated Union officers took war to a new level and outside the bounds of law:

Unable to subdue their enemy combatants, many Union officers waged war on civilians instead, with Lincoln’s full knowledge and approval. Grimsley describes how Union Colonel John Beatty warned the residents of Paint Rock, Alabama, that “Every time the telegraph wire was cut we would burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we would hang a man; and we would continue to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport.” Beatty ended up burning the entire town of Paint Rock to the ground.

Note that this vengence was not aimed only at white civilians in the south (only 5% of them actually owned slaves since in a typical family of 5 at that time, the father generally owned the slaves), …

Slave states NOT in the Confederate States of America (CSA):

DELAWARE 112,216 1,798 18,966 110,418 587 3% 2%
KENTUCKY 1,155,684 225,483 166,321 930,201 38,645 23% 20%
MARYLAND 687,049 87,189 110,278 599,860 13,783 12% 13%
MISSOURI 1,182,012 114,931 192,073 1,067,081 24,320 13% 10%

 

 

… but the targeting included the slaves themselves. This actually makes more sense as post-war there was NOT a mass migration of blacks to the Northern states. Blacks may have initially thought that the white army from the North was there to free them, but the fact is, most Northerners did not want blacks competing for their jobs. The very potential for this mass migration was what prompted Lincoln, a “free-soil” Republican, to seriously consider sending blacks back to Africa or to the Caribbean.

In October of 1864 Sherman even ordered the murder of randomly chosen citizens in retaliation for Confederate Army attacks. He wrote to General Louis D. Watkins: “Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses . . ., kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon . . .” (See John Bennett Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137).

The indiscriminate bombing of Southern cities, which was outlawed by international law at the time, killed hundreds, if not thousands of slaves. The slaves were targeted by Union Army plunderers as much as anyone. As Grimsley writes, “With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked.” A typical practice was to put a hangman’s noose around a slave’s neck and threaten to hang him unless he revealed where the household’s jewelry and silverware were hidden. Some slaves were beaten to death by Union soldiers.

It is no doubt that black slaves knew that the North was not their true friends. The “Underground Railroad” went to Canada, not to any particular northern state. Only Wisconsin ever nullified the Fugitive Slave Act which mandated that escaped slaves were required by law to be returned to their owners in the slave states.

The fact that when both Indiana (1816) and Illinois (1818) abolished slavery upon statehood, they also ensure that black immigration was minimized by requiring blacks to produce legal documents proving they were free and posting bond of up to $1000 (in 1860 dollars – approximately $30,000 today!). Additional anti-immigration legislation was enacted (and supported by Lincoln) in Illinois in 1819, 1829 and 1853 and in Indiana in 1831 and 1852 as well as in the Michigan Territory in 1827. The bottom line was that Northern whites, and politicians themselves, feared black immigration!

In summary, reparations are best applied in real-time, within the generation of the offense. This is why even an author who suggests that Southerners are hard on General Sherman and Sheridan would state on the record:

Historian Lee Kennett, author of ‘Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign’ page 286:

“Had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified (as victors generally do) in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.”

Now you know.

-SF1

You Keep Hearing About Slavery .. But I Don’t Think You are Getting the Whole Scoop

If you want to stay ignorant, do not read any further .. but if you have any doubts that it was not ONLY the South whose hands (and $) was tied up into the slave trade (until 1808 in the USA) and slavery itself until 9 months after the War Against Southern Independence ended .. read on and read the whole thing at this link: https://www.unz.com/freed/fun-with-slavery/
 
Know the truth, and it will set you free.
Quotes from UNZ
 
“..First, slavery was always bad, frequently hideous, much worse in the Deep South than in Tidewater or New York, and consequent to the same desire for cheap labor that now results in importing Mexicans and exporting jobs to China. Any notion that abuses were rare or exaggerated is twaddle. A vast amount of contemporary writing documents this…”
 
… in the South AND the North. Yes snowflakes, one needs to know that in 1741 Manhattan had the 2nd largest slave population of any city in the thirteen Brit colonies here in North America .. after Charleston, South Carolina.
 
“.. Second, the slave trade being phenomenally profitable, much like the drug trade today, many were involved who today choose to forget this: Yankees, Arabs, Jews, Quakers, and Southerners. It was strongly defended by many Christians in the South, and attacked by Christians in the North, who had no financial stake in it. Yankees owned slaves and, in the draft riots in New York in 1863, lynched and burned them alive…”
 
Just think this through, entertain a thought without believing it for once .. if the deep South (7 states) had peacefully seceded .. all the Northern banks who had financed so much there would stand to lose interest income .. yeah, when it comes down to money, people and businesses throw away principles.
 
“.. Third, among the historically illiterate a notion exists that the South consisted of rich aristocrats living in mansions. A few, yes. Most, not even close. Poverty among whites in the South and the associated Appalachia was often extreme…”
 
Kind of like today, the “elite” gets all the perks and the rest of the people get less, much less.
 
“.. Fourth, freeing the slaves was an easy solution if you didn’t have the problem. If you were a planter with a wife and three little girls, would you give up your house and subject your family to poverty, rape, robbery, and revenge from blacks? I am not asking whether you think they should have done it, but whether in the circumstances you would do it. Another way of putting it: For what moral cause would you, today, give up your job, house, and investments, and step on the sidewalk with your family?..”
 
So easy to look back with scorn .. but that last sentence is key, what moral issue would YOU risk all?
 
“.. You might have done what many slaveowners did, what George Washington did: free your slaves in your will. (This reminds me of Saint Augustine’s cry, “Oh Lord, grant me chastity, but not just yet.”) You could thus express your opposition to slavery while enjoying its benefits…”
 
Yeah, pass down the hardships to your kids (oh yeah, GW had no kids) ..
 
“.. Fifth, many today would say that Southerners deserved their problems, having brought them on themselves by enslaving blacks. But of course they did not. By 1861 most were born into a slaveholding society. Most were not enthusiastic about it, but had little idea what to do.
 
Anyone interested in just how divided whites were about slavery might the debates in 1831-2 in the Virginia House of Delegates. There was heated argument favoring no emancipation, gradual emancipation, immediate and total emancipation, and Lincoln’s solution of sending blacks back to Africa…”
 
In the end, because no one would get a majority .. the can was kicked to a future generation(s) to deal with.
 
Context is crucial here .. what if you heard the result of freeing slaves ended up in some horrible revenge violence .. well remember in you history books when they talked about the Haitian Slave Revolt? Why the puzzled face? Oh yeah, you never heard of that did you.
 
“.. Sixth–and important–was the Haitian slave revolt of 1791-1804, of which few Americans have heard. Black Haitians butchered and tortured the whites in an unspeakable bloodbath. Southerners, well aware of this, decided that freeing the slaves would be mass suicide. As it happened when the slaves were emancipated after the Civil War, no bloodbath came. Events in Haiti provided ample reason for not taking the chance…”
 
Bingo .. one data point but hey, it is a solid data point!
 
“.. The sentiment was reinforced in 1831 by Nat Turner’s revolt in which slaves in Virginia revolted and butchered some sixty whites, families included…”
 
OK .. two data points ..
 
“.. Seventh, Southerners believed that they knew the Negroes and that they could not function as equals of whites and thus would destroy society. Except for ardent abolitionists–perhaps for ardent abolitionists–so did Northerners, but by then these latter didn’t have many Negroes and never expected to…”
 
So .. were the Southerners right? I mean we are over 150 years post slavery and it seems that in the 1950s it was the most tranquil for blacks as they had low unemployment and a vast majority of dads were part of the family. Did the US government blow that up by being a daddy to the majority of black families (so that they would vote Democrat? Thanks LBJ)
 
“.. Eighth, controversy, usually witless, persists over whether the South fought to preserve slavery. The usual approach is to quote Southern planters, politicians, and newspapers as to the sacred quality of the peculiar institution and how God liked it. QED.
 
But of course these were the slave-owners, the rich, and their hangers on. They favored slavery for the same reason American businesses favor remote wars in Afghanistan: they make money at it. People do not fight bloody wars over years for the benefit of people that, after the war, they will have no desire to associate with. If you had asked a thousand Confederate infantrymen why they were fighting, do you think they would have said, “I’m fighting and dying and seeing my friends screaming gutshot so that rich bastards can own slaves while I live in a shack?” ..”
 
No shit Sherlock …geez people, learn you REAL history for once so you can stand your ground on the truth. In context for TODAY consider:
 
“.. You, the reader, probably do not favor mistreatment of women and girls. Would you favor fighting a war in Afghanistan in which America would lose over six and a half million dead–proportionately to population, what the country lost in the Civil War–to impose civil rights for women in Afghanistan?..”
 
Would you!!!
 
On to EPIC HYPOCRACY!
 
“.. Ninth, hypocrisy. You, the reader, probably live (as I long did) in a society in which millions of blacks live pointless lives, shooting each other in decaying cities with horrible schools. If you are a Yankee of the usual intolerable virtue, as so many are, note that blacks suffer these awful conditions chiefly in Southern cities such as Trenton, Newark, Camden, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Flint, Gary, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Washington DC. What have you done about it–other than, perhaps, talk? And you are in no danger of the consequences of whatever you might propose. Southerners were…”
 
Ya think? Y’all can’t understand it I am sure, ever, must be some heavy cognitive dissonance is my guess .. in any case, “Bless Your Hearts”
 
“… Tenth, it is worth noting that the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, now also sold as a moral measure by the sainted Lincoln, in fact freed not a single slave. It applied only in the Southern states, where it was intended to ignite a revolt. Slaves in the North remained in slavery. Lincoln himself said, in letter after letter after document after speech and before Congress, over and over and over, that he would not oppose slavery in the South if only it would come back to the Union, and–yes, boys and girls–he wanted to send blacks back to Africa…”
 
Textbooks come from New York, so you can understand what that jewel is not in your high school or college history books.
 
Next is Lincoln’s view, as he nor his state (Illinois) wanted blacks there (illegal to migrate there before the so-called Civil War)
 
“.. IN fact, the North wanted no blacks of any kind, having discovered that sweating European immigrants was more profitable. If you own slaves, you have to feed them and care for them no matter the business climate. This was suited to an agricultural economy. But the North was industrial. It made more sense to pay helpless immigrants almost nothing while they lived in tubercular filth with their children working twelve hours a day and dying of preventable diseases. After all, the next ship in would bring more. In short, it was the moral equivalent of slavery but more cost-effective and without the stigma…”
 
The bottom line is that the North was complicit in this slavery thing:
 
“.. Eleventh, edited out of history for an American public with a bumper-sticker mind is that slavery was a product of the North. Slave ships in hundreds left from New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut for Africa. When the slave trade was outlawed in 1808, Northern slavers sold contraband slaves to the South or to the godawful sugar-raising West Indies or to South America. The North grew rich from the cotton of the South, financed its plantations, and provided the slaves. Further huge profits came from trading in the products of the sugar plantations, which it turned into rum…”
 
So don’t get all uppity with the Yankee high morals .. it is just that they write the textbooks .. as historical fraud is promoted generation after generation here in the “land of the free”.