Several days ago while doing my nightly walk through at Facebook I came across the following image… but knowing what I know regarding the War of Northern Aggression (be patient here you poor under educated children) I knew that there was more to all of it, but as I expected there WAS more – much more, and so I went on an expedition. The image at right, is accurate, but heavily edited to make a point – and a very accurate one at that, but I wanted it all and Lo and behold my students, the archives are there – in full.

Of course, one must continue to wonder, why both sides always seem to want to pick and choose how they present their respective ‘side‘ of an issue, but understand – the basis of the image – is spot on, but let us review the entire column – back when the New York Times was a respectable publication. We’ll have a few comments at the close of today’s class. – J.B.
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The Treaty With the Delawares, signed in 1778, has arrived at the National Museum of the American Indian

Treaty With the Delawares, 1778: Agreements like the Treaty With the Delawares (1778) are powerful reminders of American Indian nations’ legal right to territorial sovereignty. (Paul Morigi)

The narrative of the American Revolutionary War is often presented as a story of tidy alliances: Britons and Germans on one side, Americans and French on the other. But what of those over whose ancestral lands the conflict was waged—Native Americans? Continue reading →

Thomas Jefferson

… I am quickly approaching sixty years of age; June 28th to be exact. As someone who is soon to become an official senior citizen, I have seen 11 Presidents come and go. I don’t remember Eisenhower; I was too young at the time, I do remember Kennedy, or at least the Cuban Missile Crisis and his assassination and how the nation mourned his passing.

One thing about him I did not know, until later that is, is that in 1962 he hosted a dinner at the White House for 49 winners of the Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize winners are supposed to be leaders in their respective fields who have made great breakthroughs in areas such as world peace, science, or literature. So I can imagine that having 49 Nobel Prize winners in your presence at one time would be pretty awe inspiring; even for a President of the United States.

Yet did you know that President Kennedy, in an address to these Nobel Prize winners, stated the following, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” I don’t know about you, but as it pertains to intellect and accomplishments I think that is probably the highest praise a person could ever get. Continue reading →

It’s now pushing twenty years since I began to ‘surf’ the Net, but amongst the first writers with whom I became familiar with was the author of the following post, Joseph R. Stromberg, whose work was published by Lew Rockwell, the Independent Institute, The Imaginative Conservative, the Mises Institute and other noted publications. His writings still draw me to this day – but that is part of the problem… what day? Other than one link, which holds his archives from a single publication – I had lost track of Stromberg – until tonight. What we post here this day, is from his 2003 archives – but well worth the read. And yes – as one would conclude – I have chosen to post the column in Mr. Adair’s Classroom. Truth IS Truth and history IS History. One can tear down the statues, dig up bodies and destroy Federal (Confederate) cemeteries – but as long as searchers and students of TRUTH live – History will live.

We post the following as a challenge to readers, teachers and those who choose to study and learn Truth.

Thank you Mr. Stromberg and thank you Dr. Wilson. ~ Jeffrey Bennett, Editor Continue reading →

~ Overview ~
President Adams fully supported The Tariff of Abominations; designed to provide protection for New England manufacturers. The tariff was opposed, however, by supporters of Jackson. The Tariff of 1828, which included very high duties on raw materials, raised the average tariff to 45 percent. The Mid-Atlantic states were the biggest supporters of the new tariff. Southerners, on the other hand, who imported all of their industrial products, strongly opposed this tariff. They named the tariff “The Black Tariff” or “Tariff of Abominations.” They blamed this tariff for their worsening economic conditions. Continue reading →

Freedom is not free, nor is it easy. The alternative to freedom is tyranny.

Frederick Douglas ~ American

President Trump has signed into law bipartisan legislation establishing the Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission to celebrate Douglass’ life and work. I have been honored to be appointed, along with Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and others, to this commission.

Born into slavery 200 years ago, Douglass taught himself to read and write, escaped to freedom and became an anti-slavery and human rights activist, newspaper publisher and advisor to presidents. Continue reading →

Out of the mouth of Abe…

One of the only photo’s in existence of Lincoln at Gettysburg before delivering his address

I don’t know what the name Gettysburg conjures up in your mind, if anything, but in my mind I get an overwhelming sense of sadness at the loss suffered by the Confederacy; for Gettysburg, along with the fall of Vicksburg probably turned the tide, which had been decidedly in favor of the Confederate Army, and eventually led to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

But it is not the town of Gettysburg, nor the battle which saw over 50,000 men die that I wish to talk about; it is the speech given by Abraham Lincoln after the battle that I wish to discuss. I can’t speak for most of the younger generations, whose history teachers have eliminated, or distorted much of our nation’s history, but anyone over 40 probably could tell you where the words, ‘Four score and seven years ago…‘ come from; Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Continue reading →

The mark of an advanced civilization is the rule of law, with the highest being the rule of law that protects life, liberty and property. Based upon this standard, the Confederate States of America embodied an advanced Christian civilization.

Accepting this truism goes a long way in understanding why the Confederacy has been demonized to the point of eradicating it from historical memory, as the current campaign against Confederate monuments and memorials make clear. However, it should be understood that the attacks against the Confederacy are battles in the larger war against liberty, property, and, if need be, the lives of individuals. It goes without saying that the above mentioned rule of law is disdained by those preferring the rule of men; a rule designed to curtail the liberty and expropriate property of individuals to the benefit of the ruling class. Continue reading →

A few years after General Lee accepted the presidency of the then Washington College, I was sent to be entered in the preparatory department, along with an older brother who was to enter college. The morning after we reached Lexington we repaired to the office of General Lee, situated in the college building, for the purpose of matriculation and receiving instructions as to the duties devolving upon us as students. I entered the office with reverential awe, expecting to see the great warrior, whose fame then encircled the civilized globe, as I had pictured him in my own imagination. General Lee was alone, looking over a paper. He arose as we entered, and received us with a quiet, gentlemanly dignity that was so natural and easy and kind that the feeling of awe left me at the threshold of his door. General Lee had but one manner in his intercourse with men. It was the same to the peasant as to the prince, and the student was received with the easy courtliness that would have been bestowed on the greatest imperial dignitary of Europe. Continue reading →

One of the problems we have today is we don’t teach about our government much at all and virtually nothing about the Constitution and the Bill of rights.

These courses, what little that is taught, are taught usually in high school. After the Revolutionary War we began teaching the history of our nation in early elementary school. Noah Webster stated: “Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.” We were teaching catacisims out of the Constitution in 1828 to elemenatary students that Justices on the Supreme Court today couldn’t answer.
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George Mason considered a bill of rights so important that he refused to sign the Constitution and led the opposition to its ratification without one.

George Mason, “the father of the Bill of Rights.”

Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Clinton Rossiter called “among the world’s most memorable triumphs in applied political theory,” which The Declaration of Independence echoed a few weeks later. Charles Maynes wrote that,

Mason’s revolutionary step was…reversing, in writing and in a supreme governmental document, the traditional relationship between citizen and state. Throughout history it had been the citizen who owed duties to the state, which in turn might bestow certain rights on the citizen…Mason argued that the state had to observe certain citizens’ rights that could not be violated under any circumstances. Mason thus set the United States apart from past constitutional practices. Continue reading →

Grainy 1843 image of America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams was expected to fetch up to $250,000 at auction after it was discovered by descendant of Vermont representative.

A March 1843 image of John Quincy Adams sitting is to be sold at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York, potentially going for $150,000 to $250,000

The photo has even had Emily Bierman, head of the auction house’s photographs department, call it ‘without a doubt the most important historical photo portrait to be offered at auction in the last 20 years.’ Continue reading →

“Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom . . . are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him . . . with rare exceptions, you can’t believe what any major Lincoln scholar tells you about Abraham Lincoln and race.” ~ Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory, p. 114.

President Abraham Lincoln

The author of the above quotation, Lerone Bennett, Jr., was the executive editor of Ebony magazine for several decades, beginning in 1958. He is a distinguished African-American author of numerous books, including a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. He spent twenty years researching and writing his book, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, from which he drew the above conclusion about the so-called Lincoln scholars and how they have lied about Lincoln for generations. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bennett is incensed over how so many lies have been told about Lincoln and race. Continue reading →

On April 13, 1743 a young child was born into the world that would change the course of American history. This child was the third of ten eventual siblings. His father was born in the Colonies and his mother was born in England and migrated to the Colonies where she met her future husband.

At the age of 5 this child was enrolled in school and at age 9 he began studying Latin and Greek; which led him to also learn French. At the age of 17 this young man began attending college at William and Mary, where he studied mathematics, natural philosophy, and political philosophy. It was at this time this young man was introduced to the writings of those responsible for the Age of Enlightenment. By the time this young man finished his formal education he would read and write in Latin, Greek and French, and had become more than proficient with the violin. Continue reading →

Cecil John Rhodes 1853-1902

“The Rhodes Scholarships, established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes’s seventh will, are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society was created by Rhodes and his principal trustee, Lord Milner, and continues to exist to this day.

To be sure, this secret society is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords. It does not need any of these, since its members know each other intimately. It probably has no oaths of secrecy nor any formal procedure of initiation. It does, however, exist and holds secret meetings, over which the senior member present presides. At various times since 1891, these meetings have been presided over by Rhodes, Lord Milner, Lord Selborne, Sir Patrick Duncan, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Lord Lothian, and Lord Brand. They have been held in all the British Dominions, starting in South Africa about 1903; in various places in London, chiefly Piccadilly; at various colleges at Oxford, chiefly All Souls; and at many English country houses such as Tring Park, Blickling Hall, Cliveden, and others. Continue reading →