While Thomas Jefferson got so many things right, as a human, we all have our blind-spots. Maybe at times he was just hopeful that things would work out, that the pendulum would come back from the extremes and allow the people the natural rights and freedoms that their Creator had intended for them in the best of times.
A key point of reflection is discussed in this latest blog post by Brion McClanahan, where Jefferson is challenged in his thought processes by Jon Taylor of Caroline.
It seems that in June of 1798, at the peak of the Federalist’s power move that launched atrocities like the Alien and Sedition Act that made it a crime to be critical of the government (only 20 years after all the American Colonies publicly were critical of the British government), John Taylor wrote that the union seemed to be on the verge of dissolving. It was most obvious by this point that party power had already prompted the rush to use general government for the good of one region of the united States so young in its journey.
Thomas Jefferson quickly penned back a response that admitted that the New England states were seeing the South as something that could be tapped:
… that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance. their natural friends, the three other Eastern states, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole.
However, Jefferson claimed this would soon be corrected by voting.
Brion explains:
They would only suffer so long under the heel of these petty tyrants, and he insisted that a “scission” of the Union would do little to arrest the problems of political division, what Jefferson considered to be a natural occurrence in a “deliberating” society. If New England were removed from the Union, Jefferson argued that a division between Virginia and Pennsylvania would soon rise and that would be met by another round of division until the entire Union would be torn asunder for even the Southern States would feel the sting of partisanship and division.
Jefferson continued:
I had rather keep our New-England associates for that purpose, than to see our bickerings transferred to others. they are circumscribed within such narrow limits, & their population so full, that their numbers will ever be the minority ..
Well, at this point, history has proven that John Taylor’s viewpoint was correct, and he articulated it in a rather long letter back to Jefferson. In summary Brion shares:
Taylor considered the partisanship of New England to be a byproduct of both geography and “interest,” and unlike Jefferson he did not think that party divisions were natural occurrences. He cited Connecticut as an example of a fairly unanimous electorate and thought that the rigid—almost religious—belief in “checks and balances” failed to fully arrest the sword of despotism in the United States. In other words, the Constitution was doomed from the beginning .. liberty had to be the direct end of government and if the Union failed to protect liberty, then it was a worthless bond of oppression.
John Taylor did not believe that party politics could fix the “unequally yoked” union between regions that had very different interests and principles. He also pinpointed the key part of the Constitution that resulted in a nationalist central government that is prone to pillaging:
Taxes are the subsistence of party. As the miasma of marshes contaminate the human body, those of taxes corrupt and putrify the body politic. Taxation transfers wealth from a mass to a selection. It destroys the political Equality, which alone can save liberty; and yet no constitution, whilst devising checks upon power, has devised checks sufficiently strong upon the means which create it. Government, endowed with a right to transfer, bestow, and monopolise wealth in perpetuity is in fact, unlimited. It soon becomes a feudal lord over a nation in villenage.
John Taylor, over 200 years ago predicted our situation as it stands today:
But since government is getting [sic] into the habit of peeping into private letters, and is manufacturing a law, which may even make it criminal to pray to God for better times, I shall be careful not to repeat so dangerous a liberty.—I hope it may not be criminal to add a supplication [sic] for an individual—not—for I will be cautious—as a republican, but as a man.
Edward Snowden revealed that this aspect of a dysfunctional government that is only interested in perpetuating itself at all costs makes us neither free or brave!
Voting better is something politicians and public education imprints into our brains, for they know it is week and ineffective so that their agenda as a massive tax collecting parasite can continue.
Once the states were stripped of their power to nullify and secede, nothing stood in the way of total central control by the moneyed elites in this land.
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?
While there is an effort to erase all history in this country by the government schooled ignorant masses, those that can think critically will need to research harder to find source material necessary to learn from.
Why do we need to learn? Because whenever you have culture wars, collective societies and empires in the mix you will need to know your enemy so you can effectively resist the wave, retain your freedoms and maybe even your life. Beyond this, there are others in your family or circle of friends that need to be sparked to research on their own over time. The struggle is real as one by one we give people truth in love and give them the freedom that is in our DNA from out Creator.
An article from Abbeville Institute sparked this thought in me this morning .. here is a clip:
“The Civil War was fought over slavery.” If you want verification of this “known” fact, this politically correct “given” all you have to do is ask a typical Southern politician, educator, media personality, minister or just about anyone you meet on the street.
True that you can ask this question all over the United States and get this as the 90% majority opinion. You might be surprised that those in foreign lands tend to see things a little clearer as I predict only 80% of the world that is knowledgeable of the American “Civil*” War.
* By definition, that war was NOT a “civil” war where BOTH sides want the WHOLE nation
Southerners who know the truth about the War for Southern Independence will try to correct the error of Yankee propaganda by announcing that the War was fought over states’ rights not over slavery.
So there is probably another 10% of Americans that would agree with this paragraph .. that it was all about “state’s rights”, that their state had a right to opt out of an abusive marriage when and if necessary years after it agreed to the marriage (whether it was the 1st marriage during the late 1770s with the Continental Congress or the 2nd marriage during the late 1780s with the US Constitution). While this is honorable and follows the founder’s thought processes, there is something more at the core of most of those who fought.
The author goes on to point out that your typical southern dirt farmer in 1861 was not all that political and really saw the imminent invasion as a threat to his way of life, and that of his family and his land! In fact, he offers a short story to segway to a way to look on the reality of 1861:
Suppose one is walking along a city street and you come upon an individual viciously beating someone. Out of a sense of honor and Christian charity you demand that the man cease beating his victim but the man looks at you and tells you to mind your own business because he has “a constitutional right to beat the victim.” Now don’t think outside of the scenario—with just the facts as given—how would you feel even if the person doing the beating did in fact have a constitutional right to beat the victim? Legal technicalities do not stand up well against an emotional appeal.
So the author suggests that the south missed the boat in the post war period by not getting to the core of the grounds for divorce in the first place. In addition to this, I contend that this political “evidence” pales in comparison to the life both southerners, northerners and westerners (Midwest today) had before that horrible war. The author goes on to lay blame at the southern politicians:
Instead of maintaining the struggle for the principle of Southern freedom; the right to be the masters in our own homes; the right of self-determination; and the right to live under a government ordered upon the free and unfettered consent of the governed—all of which was boldly proclaimed in 1776—Southern spokesmen meekly declared that the men in gray were fighting for states’ rights. Instead of challenging each successive generation of Southerners to break the chains of political and economic bondage fastened upon the people of the South by the ruling elite of the Federal Empire, our “leaders” sought to assure the Northern majority that “we the people” of the invaded, conquered and occupied Confederate States of America were once again 100% loyal Americans—meaning that we were obedient subjects of the newly created Federal Empire.
So in the North (Union) waging a war against southern culture is a particularly wicked way through wholesale burning of homes and cities, raping of women and taking anything of value from the innocent people left behind by their husbands who were fighting hundreds of miles away (i.e. total war), the north actually “kept the Union” (i.e. marriage) intact while a by-product was freeing the black slaves only to exit this war by making everyone a slave on the government plantation by force.
Now here comes the punch line …
Why did those men in gray, the majority of whom were not part of the plantation system, why did they fight for four long years against overwhelming odds with not a single friend in the community of nations to offer encouragement? Why were they willing to expend so much blood and treasure? The answer is as simple as it is eye-opening; they were fighting to be free; to prevent an aggressive and culturally dissimilar Yankee majority from making political and economic slaves of the Southern minority. They were fighting to prevent Yankees from turning Southerners, both black and white, into political and economic vassals of their newly created Federal Empire! They were fighting to drive back an aggressive and evil invader (the United States of America) and to preserve the independence and freedom of their country …
.. their land, their way of life.
Look around today in 2018 and be honest. Can you see why many people in this forced Union are now worried about a second “civil” war? Can you see why the south and its former independent spirit was targeted in the last decade to rid itself of the desire to once again desire to shake off the tyranny that runs loose in this land? Is there no refuge for those that just want to be left alone .. opting out of any government assistance and be self-reliant where they can raise their families THEIR way .. in FREEDOM?
It is critical that those who love their God-given life, family, healthy communities and land come to terms with the encroaching empire and its cultural rot and filth. One example of how a people can be free in spirit while being a serf in an empire is in the book of Acts in the Bible. These people were able to both rest in His love and hope while being proactive defenders of the ones they love on this earth. A future post will cover my own thoughts on this.
Until then, dream about freedom, research to know your enemy and be prepared for the times ahead .. teach that next generation well!
