Tag: South Carolina

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/ ]

 

14APR-22APR1781: Tough Times Can Produce Innovations that Matter

In my last American Revolutionary War post, I suggested that after some darkness, that change was in the air, and that a new course might be upon the efforts in South Carolina to exit the British Empire. Time to hoist the sails, capture that wind and move forward:

Francis Marion believes it is time to slip away into North Carolina to preserve their numbers in light of the nearby British force bent on Marion’s destruction. On this night, a detachment from Lt. Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, part of the Continental Army, arrives and all talk of slipping away is put aside. The rest of Lee’s Legion is on their way. Not only that, news was delivered that Gen Greene had stopped Corwallis at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.

Marion and Lee wasted no time in embarking on some new tactics toward controlling most of South Carolina and Georgia for the cause. It is interesting that the great military minds that do adapt to new strategies sometimes, when they have a second chance, they can then secure a region militarily. In this case, General Greene of the Continental Army was about to adopt the “war of posts” strategy that he had dissed before.

What had allowed the freedom to operate was that Cornwallis was so impacted by the Guilford Court House battle in North Carolina that he decided to move his troops to Wilmington NC on the coast to recover. After this his plan was to then invade Virginia never again to enter South Carolina. Greene used this opportunity to secure South Carolina and Georgia land so that if a peace treaty were to be achieved, the colonies would have these territories.

With Cornwallis’ exit from the deep south colonies, the various Tory elements in South Carolina started to melt away into the countryside as news spread of Cornwallis’ departure from the region. The British left only significant forces at Camden, Georgetown and Charleston along with other troops at various posts across the colony numbering 8,000 in total. These posts were along the supply line that kept forces 800 strong supplied in Camden which is over one hundred miles away from the coast and ports.

Greene’s army numbered only 1,400 but was on the move now deep into South Carolina. In this scenario, Watson gave up chasing Marion and dumped his artillery and heavy baggage into a creek and sped toward Camden to join forces with British officer Rawdon and then circled back steering clear of the rebel forces going back to the coast at Georgetown.

“Lighthorse” Harry Lee arrived at Marion’s camp on April 14th, 1781 and filled in Marion on the details of Guilford CH, a bloody battle that the British technically won but having outrun their own supply line, Cornwallis’ troops were a mess. British cavalry officer Tarleton himself had several finger amputated from wounds he suffered in the conflict.

Lee articulated how his troops would now focus on the larger garrisons at Camden and Ninety-Six while the militia (Pickens, Sumter and Marion) work away on the smaller posts in SC. However, it was another target that Lee had in mind that Marion did not see “eye-to-eye” on. Lee wanted to lay siege to Fort Watson WITH Marion, while Marion wanted to continue his chase of British office Watson. Marion had seen first hand both the disastrous Savannah siege in 1779 and also Thomas Sumter’s attempted siege in which he got impatient and lost a lot of his men.

While the 49 year old Marion was technically in charge and 25 year old Lee was second in command, the fact that Lee had 300 troops to Marion’s 80 at this time probably led to Marion acquiescing.

Fort Watson was surrounded on April 15th, however, all the trees around the fort were gone so there was no way sharpshooters could be utilized. The British had learned much from previous militia encounters. Cutting off the water supply was also attempted but the the well right outside the fort could be used at night through a covered passage had been built. After the siege had started, the 120 defenders started digging a well inside the fort and struck water on the fourth day of the siege.

The rebels had requested a six-pounder from Greene which would have made quick work of this fort since it had no cannon of its own, but the men bringing the cannon got lost and returned to Greene’s location outside Camden.

The bottom line was that Marion’s men were not prepared for a siege and were not experienced at it. This was not their strong suite. Morale was sinking and Marion was corresponding with various militia’s around the state about some significant issues that distracted Marion from a situation he was not comfortable in:

  1. Militia Capt. Snipes was free-lancing/looting around the state and bad-mouthing Marion suggesting that people should not send supplies to him
  2. “Sumter’s Law”, which paid ten months of service to men with plunder from local Tories (horses, clothing and slaves), was causing many potential militia members to join Sumter instead of Marion’s militia. Marion did not agree with the plunder reward, but was in the minority opinion on this one.
  3. Rumor was out that Marion’s men killed three prisoners in their care according to the Brit commander in Charleston and Marion’s mentor suggested in a letter that he half-believed it.

The siege was taking its toll on the ones facilitating the siege until an innovative spirit emerged in militia leader Lt. Col. Hezekiah Maham. A tower would be built out of range from the Brits in the fort, but tall enough for sharpshooters to do their work. The fort walls were 7 foot on top of a 23 foot mound so the tower would have to be very, very high. Geometry as well as ballistics played a part in this experiment.

By April 22nd it was ready with a perch at the top with openings for the long rifles. The rebels sharpshooters rained down fire into the fort and simultaneously a patriot unit was taking down the stockade section of the fort itself. A surrender request was made and the commander McKay put up the white flag. In his journal it seemed the British inside the fort refused to fight any longer. Generous terms were offered and the British troops made their way to Charleston.

Lee and Marion reaped a bounty of ammunition and public praise was awarded to Maham and his innovation. Lee, whose ego usually precedes himself, actually came to praise Marion publicly and asked to be formally placed under Marion’s leadership “in some degree”. Greene wrote Marion and said praise would travel to General Washington and the world.

With Fort Watson out of the picture, it would be the first of many dominoes to fall for the British in South Carolina as the summer heat started returning to the region.

-SF1

1775 Snapshot of South Carolina: What Triggered SoCaroxit?

Post French-Indian War – Proclamation 1763

We are all very familiar to Brexit, and other exit movements with the EU here in 2019. Back in the 1770s, there had been seeds of an effort toward self government in South Carolina for well over a decade. The book ‘South Carolina and the American Revolution‘ by John W. Gordon does a good job at painting the social, military and economic climate in this colony that pitted the success of this colony due to Mother England against a very typical desire for autonomy of the political class present at this point in time.

This post represents the first of several in which I hope to capture the overarching issues at play when people, families and communities risked their own lively-hood for the dream of self-governance and self-determination that liberty minded people rightfully act on out of love for themselves, their children and generations to come.

We should know that the roots of political conflicts, known as wars, usually run back in time to previous wars and their treaties and compromises. Such is the case of setting the state for 1775 in South Carolina. The 1763 Treaty of Paris (not to be confused with the 1783 version that settled the American Revolutionary War) was the culmination of seven years of fighting not just in North America, but among the three global powers in the world at the time, Spain, France and England. While the English technically won the conflict and received various territories as a result, this empire also took on much debt toward that result.

England gained Florida from Spain and Canada from the French but were restricted from settling areas beyond the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains as seen in the map at the top of this post:

“We do therefore, with the Advice of our Privy Council, declare it to be our Royal Will and Pleasure, that no Governor or Commander in Chief in any of our Colonies of Quebec, East Florida, or West Florida, do presume, upon any Pretence whatever, to grant Warrants of Survey, or pass any Patents for Lands beyond the Bounds of their respective Governments, as described in their Commissions: as also that no Governor or Commander in Chief in any of our other Colonies or Plantations in America do presume for the present, and until our further Pleasure be known, to grant Warrants of Survey, or pass Patents for any Lands beyond the Heads or Sources of any of the Rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the West and North West, or upon any Lands whatever, which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them.”

Since the British empire had a large navy and a rather small army, and was most interested in sail trade, the priority of lands far removed from the oceans were just not high enough on their list. With the war over, it was now time to settle the war debt which included imposing new taxes on the thirteen American colonies as they had benefited from the protection from the French and the Indians.

If you look closely at the map at the top of the post, you can see where Indian lands are in 1763 South Carolina in the upstate region. The Cherokee, which inhabited much of the state in previous decades, had sided with the British during the 1758-1761 French & Indian Wars and were rewarded with protection by the British empire with this Proclamation of 1763. This is what upset the pioneer spirited settlers of South Carolina as they moved west as more people came to the colonies in the decade to follow. This “penned in” action helped the settlers to decide rather quickly if they wanted to stick with the British Empire, or to risk the path to independence.

By 1775, with similar rumblings in the northern British Colonies in America, South Carolina decided that they had what it took to manage their own affairs, even if it meant they no longer had the naval protection the British Navy offered from overseas forces that could threaten their independence.

Obviously, this independent spirit for liberty lingered on through the generations all the way to December 1860 when once again, South Carolina would attempt another “SoCaroxit”

American Revolutionary War: 3D Layers to Causes, Principles Used and Results

The advantage of taking on a portion of this ‘American Revolutionary War’ conflict, as I was able to do in reviewing John Oller’s book ‘Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Won the American Revolution‘, was that I could get my head around how South Carolina became ripe for revolution, how principled was the conflict and how South Carolina dealt with their freedom from empire.

The disadvantage is that nothing happens in a vacuum or in isolation, and so in reality one needs to back up to the macro (Thirteen Colony Federation view) and even to a global view to understand more holistically how all this came down. This last disadvantage I was able to partially overcome with the assistance of a book Captain1776, Malibu and myself first ran across at the Camden, SC RevWar historical site bookstore called ‘South Carolina and the American Revolution – A Battlefield History‘ by John W. Gordon.

This book helped me to understand the rather complex web of issues, real or imaginary, physical or psychological that helped evolve the love of family, love of community and even into a love of a colony/region towards violence-based actions that risked these very things (family, community and colony/region and even culture).

The writer is a former US Marine officer and professor at the Citadel in South Carolina who is now involved with national security affairs in Quantico, VA. What was refreshing in John W. Gordon’s approach was the eye towards tactics and strategies that either helped or detracted from the efforts of either the rebel-patriots-Whigs or the loyalists-Brit-Tories in the very real civil war that raged in South Carolina from approximately 1775 until 1783.

One aspect realized, was the early attempt on the part of the British to utilize the Cherokee and Creek to their advantage in the southern theater of this war the British brought to regain control of the colonies actually led to ‘blowback’, where unintended consequences would rule as a result of decisions made. This in conjunction with the assumption that Loyalists would rise to greatly assist the British efforts showed how much out of touch London, England was with the thoughts on the minds of those in the low country, midland and rolling hills leading up to the Blue Ridge felt in 1775, 1778 and 1780.

Another aspect that came to light when reading this book was the pivotal moment the French aligned with the colonies which caused this conflict to spread to English colonies around the globe as this became a very real world war that involved Spain and the Dutch as well as the French.

Primary to all of this was the effect this effort to extract the South Carolina people from British Empire control in how this region unified to a degree during the conflict, that pitted father against son and cousin against cousin. The effect was specifically where, during and and especially after the war, the upstate areas obtained more say in the government. The fact that civil government by the people themselves for three years in absence of the British royals, that was then forced into exile in North Carolina for a time after Cornwallis occupied Charlestown and much of the region and then back in late 1781 showed that South Carolinians could rule themselves!

Decades later, praise for this effort across micro-cultures inside this state would emerge from the pen of George Bancroft in 1857 in “History of the United States”:

Left mainly to her own resources, it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons were to bring her back to her place in the republic ..  having suffered more, and dared more, and achieved more than the men of any other state.

This struggle matured a generation of men and women towards principles that will be again used eighty years later when another “empire” would be threatening South Carolina in coercive and violent ways once more.

Hats off to South Carolina’s Revolutionary War generation in their fight for their love of future generations and their way of life.

-SF1

NOTE: Future posts are forthcoming towards a more in-depth review of this new book, South Carolina and the American Revolution – A Battlefield History , in our library

06OCT1780: After Marion’s 3rd Major Militia Victory in a Row, Now What?

I have to admit, I probably told a fib, a lie. You see, part of American history has been dramatized if you will. There was a certain author of “history” that came along later in the early 1800s that put his own spin on American History which subsequently went into many of the textbooks we had in our schooling over the years. You too have probably been impacted. Have you ever heard that George Washington cut down a cherry tree? Enough said.

So too in my rendering of the Black Mingo Creek Battle around midnight back on 29/30SEP1780 when I said:

As his militia crossed the Willtown Bridge only a mile or so from Col. John Coming Ball’s camp the noise from the bridge’s planks alerted the Loyalist militia.

As the author of The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution John Oller points out, Francis Marion, an attentive guerrilla commander, who never wanted to expose his men to the enemy, would know that at midnight the woods are quiet enough, that horse hooves on a wooden bridge would definitely be heard by the enemy within a mile. Apparently, this particular “historical author”, Parson Weems, liked to embellish history to make a sale according to this Journal of the American Revolution article:

Mason Locke Weems, better known as Parson Weems, considered himself an historian. But, he was far more interested in pleasing people than he was with writing history. His exaggerations and fabrications of fact led one commentator to remark that Weems had “a touch of the confidence man in him.”

Weems was born in 1759 and ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1784. Ten years later he became a traveling book salesman and author. He wrote sermons and religious tracts. His claim to fame, however, are his books on famous Americans from the Revolutionary period; Washington, Franklin, and Francis Marion.

Enough about Weems, and his spin on actual historical events, let’s get back to the story about what alerted John Ball’s Loyalist Militia on that night when Francis Marion’s militia approached.

As John Oller’s research shows:

At least four separate pension applications independently submitted under oath by veterans who fought with Marion at Black Mingo state that before crossing Willtown Bridge they spread blankets on it to prevent the Tories from hearing them ..

Well there you have it. Francis Marion’s leadership, combined being conservative with taking calculated risks, to make a difference one day or one battle at a time. It is this aspect that not only caused his men to trust him and go the extra mile for their leader, endeared many especially in the southern colonies after the war who saw him as the difference maker in their effort towards independence, but also caused many places to be named after Marion all over the country after the Revolutionary War for years to come.

So what did alert the Loyalist militia that night? Intel!

… in Marion’s letter to Gates a week after the battle. “They had intelligence of our coming,” Marion explained. That would indicate that it was not loud horse hooves a few moments before the battle that tipped off the Tories but rather some earlier advance warning. Marion was not the only person who had spies working for him. Plenty of Tories in the Black Mingo area would have been eager to spoil a patriot attack. Certainly that was true of Elias Ball. “He had about a hundred and fifty slaves, and he was a mean fella,” one of his descendants recalled. Perhaps Elias Ball or another local Tory got wind of the action and told his brother John…

Intelligence activities was a crucial aspect of this war, something we probably discount. But the fact that almost 40% of the civilian population considered themselves loyalists at some point of this war sure was a factor.

The impact of Marion’s militia delivering three victories in a row caused the Loyalists and their militia in the Santee area of South Carolina to lay low and refuse to take the field fearing Marion and his men would come calling. This psychological edge was dearly needed as this actually created a break in the violence on the innocent in this regions communities and also offered many of Marion’s men to return to their homes, especially the ones in the burnt-over districts that British leader Tarleton had laid waste to weeks earlier.

Immediately after Black Mingo, Marion wanted to go after Wigfall, who, along with Ball, had been sent into the Williamsburg area to keep the Whigs in check. Wigfall was now stationed with about fifty men at the Salem Black River Presbyterian Church upriver from Kingstree and was an especially enticing target for Marion. He had served under Marion earlier in the war, and Marion pointedly excluded him by name from the thanks he gave his officers at Dorchester. John Wigfall was one of those South Carolinians who blew with the prevailing winds, siding with whoever held the advantage. Marion wanted to pursue him but, as he told Gates, could not because “so many of my followers was so desirous to see their wifes and family, which have been burnt out.”

This lull in the action also allowed whatever harvesting that could be done to happen in earnest as the crops were getting ready and winter was coming.

Stay tuned for the next October adventure in American Revolutionary War South Carolina that did NOT include Francis Marion or his militia, the Battle of King’s Mountain on 07OCT1780 over 150 miles from where Marion and his men accomplished their victory on 29SEP1780.

This battle in addition to Marion’s three victories were a major turning point in this war to be free of the British Empire. The resurgence in people’s heart for liberty represented a much needed boost in the morale of the people and soldiers alike, at least for those aligned with the principles of self-government and consent of the governed!

More on this tomorrow …

-SF1