Southern leaders had few complaints with the old Constitution under which they had lived. The heart of the conflict, they felt, was that the intent of the written law had been subverted by Northern sectionalists.

Three major areas of conflict were over protective tariffs, the settlement of common territories, and the right to be secure in one’s property. Although tariffs enacted to foster industry had received initial approval from the South, Southerners came to be opposed to these measures as overly beneficial to Northern manufacturers and injurious to the agricultural South. The question of settlement and territorial administration was a particularly abrasive issue, as Northern states sought to stop the expansion of slavery into the territories and Southerners insisted on the right of persons to migrate into the territories with their property, including bound laborers. This was related to the third issue—security in property. Specifically, the properties in question were slaves, and Northern Abolitionists had already demonstrated their view on this matter in the halls of Congress, the prairies of Kansas, and Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

Various compromises and appeasements had held the Union together through past crises, but Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 was the solvent that destroyed the glue. Seeking to form a new coalition of states, Southern representatives met as a provisional Congress in early February 1861 and a “Committee of Twelve” was appointed to draft a plan of government. Their work resulted in a provisional Constitution, and on March 11 a permanent Constitution was adopted. Continue reading →

I haven’t the education nor the inclination to write so many words.

But to the point and I pray these words will reach the Governor and all political representatives.

An Open Letter to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe

I was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Ohio. I have taught Political Science at the collegiate level in Cincinnati, been published in The Wall Street Journal and am in my 12th year of research for a forthcoming book on Columbine.

For the past seven years I have made Rockbridge County, Virginia my home. That was a dream planted in my heart as a 14-year-old boy decades ago on my first visit to the Commonwealth. I have loved this commonwealth since then and when offered a change of life, there was never a moment’s indecision where to move. Virginia first, Virginia only, Virginia last and Virginia always.

I chose Lexington for just one reason. I had no family in Virginia. I had no prospects for employment lined up in Virginia. I owned no property here. None of the factors that ordinarily move men to uproot after a lifetime in one state and move to a place where he has no ties motivated me. The one and only reason I live in Lexington, Virginia is because it is the final resting place of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson. Their lives, character, faith, integrity, honor and testimony shone so brightly a century and a half after their decease that there is no other place on the Earth I want to be but where they lived and served. Continue reading →

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, an awful lot of awful things have been said about Republicans and race relations – BUT you might wish to reconsider what you have heard.

The Democratic Party was responsible for passing Jim Crow laws, in addition to Black Civil Codes that forced Americans to utilize separate drinking fountains, swimming pools, and other facilities in the 20th century. (Wikipedia Commons)

However, the Left’s accusations of racism couldn’t be further from the truth that has played out in the halls of Congress over the last 150 years.

It is shocking that as talk of statues and historical racism is being bandied about, no one has mentioned the Democrats’ utterly shameful treatment of African Americans throughout history.

Over the last 100 years, Republicans have stood up for African Americans while Democrats not only stood on the sidelines, but in fact served as obstructionists to civil liberties.

Here are at least 12 examples in which Democrats voted against African Americans, and Republicans voted to free them: Continue reading →

When I read Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s article, the question that lept to mind was, “How come the South is said to have fought for slavery when the North wasn’t fighting against slavery?”

Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery. Continue reading →

The Confederate First Sergeant…

photo Courtesy of Brandon Anderson Collection

The Union cavalry surrounded a lone Confederate soldier who had no horse and whose clothes were dirty and tattered. A Union officer said to him that it was obvious that he had no wealth and not the means to own slaves. The officer asked: “Why are you fighting this war?”  Continue reading →

In this essay, Miss Sayers suggests that we presently teach our children everything but how to learn. She proposes that we adopt a suitably modified version of the medieval scholastic curriculum for methodological reasons.

Dorothy Leigh Sayers

That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain point, and provided the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another, been taught. Even if we learnt nothing – perhaps in particular if we learnt nothing – our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value. Continue reading →

Part I ~ The Road to Secession: Antebellum Society and Politics

President Abraham Lincoln

Introduction
North Carolina waited longer than any other state except Tennessee to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. This is not to say that the Old North State had no secessionists. Rather, North Carolinians had conflicting ideas about leaving the Union. Although staunch supporters of slavery, many North Carolinians hesitated when it came to taking such a significant step as secession. Some felt it better to stay in the Union and enjoy the Constitutional protections offered there, rather than give up those protections to embark on a new journey. However, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter and President Abraham Lincoln asked for troops from North Carolina to put down the rebellion, the state acted swiftly and decisively. North Carolina seceded from the Union on May 20, 1861, and the state’s involvement in the Civil War began. The following narrative details North Carolina’s antebellum political, economic, and social circumstances that led up to this decision. Continue reading →

I have a way of getting into arguments about the character of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States of America, and the causes of the War of Northern Aggression, A.K.A. the “Civil” War. This happens because they tell me that Lincoln was an honest man, that he was a “great American.” They tell me that he “freed the slaves” and that he believed in racial equality. They tell me that the War was fought to end slavery. They tell me, also, that States’ rights were not the issue, because the States were not, in and of themselves, Sovereign Entities, that in point of fact, it was the Union that held Sovereignty over the individual States. I say that these are lies perpetuated by the real traitors to the United States, and taught as fact to generations of schoolchildren after the War ended.
Continue reading →

What happened to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence?

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Continue reading →

Did battle, and US future, hang on thread of fate?

Originally Published on the 150th anniversary of the Battle at Antietam Creek.

SHARPSBURG, Md. ­ – From as far away as Minnesota, Colorado and Ohio they came, more than 30 members of the Bloss and Mitchell families who converged on the hallowed Civil War fighting grounds of rural Maryland.

John McKnight Bloss, now 81, had just parked his RV at a campground when he tried to sum up what this gathering of his clan was about. He’s been researching his namesake great-grandfather, who was wounded four times during Civil War battles, including the epic fight along meandering Antietam Creek 150 years ago – and he wanted the younger generation to “understand the sacrifices that were made.”

Robert Mitchell Menuet spoke proudly of Barton Mitchell, his ancestor who served alongside John Bloss in the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry and suffered a life-shortening wound at Antietam – one of the 23,000 casualties that made the battle on Sept. 17, 1862, the single bloodiest day in U.S. history.

But something more particular drew the descendants to Maryland. Continue reading →

Sometimes not fighting the system, but rather, keeping a low profile and having a good cover story works out better for some…

The following story was told to me many years ago by my downstairs neighbor John Moon. I was a young child then. Johnny’s principles of survival and success have always stayed with me and formed a vital part of my own personality. I would like to share them with you. Hopefully you can use these ideas to prosper.

As a little kid, around the time of World War Two, I lived with my grandma in an apartment building inhabited by many entertainers. There was the family headed by a gypsy violinist, a famous magician, and a whole bunch of radio script writers. Everyone in our building what we then called ‘show business personalities.’ There were Vaudeville act families who used to do one night stands on stages throughout the English speaking world, radio announcers, and some strip tease “artists.” Continue reading →

In an age where the accounts of history are no longer taught or the chronicles of past generations are lost to the consciousness of the current culture; all that is left is a fairy tale of deception designed to confuse, indoctrinate and eliminate critical thinking. Astute students of the War of Northern Aggression understand that the cessation of hostilities set into motion the forces of imperialism and the perversion of a Constitution with the addition of harmful amendments. Liberty was the primary causality of all the bloodshed and the institution of a totalitarian statist regime became the permanent outcome of the conflict. Continue reading →

The conservative and noble Christian civilization of the South described below has all but vanished as the New South of industrial capitalism, materialism and commercial vulgarity supplanted it. ~ Bernhard Thuersam, April 16, 2017

Benjamin H. Hill Statue, Atlanta, Georgia

Remarks of J.C.C. Black, at the Unveiling of the Benjamin H. Hill Statue, Atlanta, Georgia, May 1, 1886 (excerpt):

“As to us, [secession] was not prompted by hatred of the Union resting upon the consent of the people, and governed by the Constitution of our fathers. It was not intended to subvert the vital principles of the government they founded, but to perpetuate them. The government of the new did not differ in its form or any of its essential principles from the old Confederacy. The Constitutions were the same, except such changes as the wisdom of experience suggested.

The Southern Confederacy contemplated no invasion or conquest. Its chief corner-stone was not African slavery. Its foundations were laid in the doctrines of the Fathers of the Republic, and the chief corner-stone was the essential fundamental principle of free government; that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Continue reading →

Publisher’s NOTE: The original day of publication of this column on the author’s blog, was the 152nd anniversary of the ‘surrender’ of the Confederacy to the ‘Union’ at Appomattox Court House in 1865. ~ J.B.

The South Was Right

~ Forewords ~
It is said that the tariff was the most contentious issue in the United States between 1808 and 1832, and this exploded with South Carolina threatening tariff nullification in that latter year. This was settled with Congress steadily lowering tariffs. Economist Frank Taussig wrote in 1931 that by 1857 the maximum duty on imports had been reduced to twenty-four percent and a relative free trade ideal was reached, due to Southern pressure. He also noted that the new Republican-controlled Congress increased duties in December 1861 and that by 1862 the average tariff rates had crept up to 47.06%. ~ Bernhard Thuersam

“South Carolina had opposed the tariff from the earliest days of the republic. The very first Congress, in 1789, had included a group of Carolina representatives known as “anti-tariff men.” When the Washington administration sponsored a mild import measure, Senator Pierce Butler of the Palmetto State brought the charge that Congress was oppressing South Carolina and threatened a “dissolution of the Union, with regard to that State, as sure as God was in his firmament.”
Continue reading →

This equestrian statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee will be removed from downtown Charlottesville, Va. following a vote by the City Council on Feb. 6, 2017.

All over the United States, memorials and statues of the great men of the Confederacy–along with the flags of the Confederacy–have either already been taken down or efforts are underway to take them down. I’m talking about places such as Biloxi, Mississippi; Charlottesville, Virginia; Austin, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; Charleston, South Carolina; St. Louis, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; Orlando, Florida; and Memphis, Tennessee. The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, has taken down the statues of President Jefferson Davis and General P.G.T. Beauregard. The Jefferson Davis statue had stood since 1911. General Beauregard’s statue had stood since 1915.

In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He said if the South lost, “It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken. Continue reading →

At the very deepest level there is a central truth about the War Between the States which is now, even by the best of Southerners, almost never mentioned, although their forefathers had once spoken of its importance continuously. Indeed, they put emphasis upon it long after the War was over. From 1850 until 1912, this explanatory assumption was a commonplace component of one understanding of the meaning of that great conflict. And to most Southerners, it seemed almost as self-evident as did the equivalent formulations to their Northern counterparts—especially in the years of Antebellum dispute over the morality of slaveholding and other distinctions of “character” separating the two original versions of American civilization. When Confederate Southerners stood ready to face death in the place where the battle was joined or when they came to write apologia for their conduct, they saw themselves as part of a struggle between “powers and principalities,” alternative conceptions of the human enterprise—not merely as adjuncts to competing schemes for gathering political power. Southerners, of course, fought to defend themselves and their view of the Constitution. They fought out of a loyalty to “hearth and rooftree,” and to what had been achieved by Americans in general between 1774 and 1791. Further, they were animated by a sense of personal honor and were therefore unwilling to continue association with their detractors within the federal bond once condemned by their erstwhile countrymen to live under the insufferable burden of high-handedness and effrontery. But that is not all of the story concerning their reasons for secession—not even the most interesting part. Continue reading →

President Lincoln has been all but deified in America, with a god-like giant statue at a Parthenon-like memorial in Washington. Generations of school children have been indoctrinated with the story that “Honest Abe” Lincoln is a national hero who saved the Union and fought a noble war to end slavery, and that the “evil” Southern states seceded from the Union to protect slavery. This is the Yankee myth of history, written and promulgated by Northerners, and it is a complete falsity. It was produced and entrenched in the culture in large part to gloss over the terrible war crimes committed by Union soldiers in the War Between the States, as well as Lincoln’s violations of the law, his shredding of the Constitution, and other reprehensible acts. It has been very effective in keeping the average American ignorant of the real causes of the war, and the real nature, character and record of Lincoln. Let us look at some unpleasant facts. Continue reading →

“It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.” ~ Woodrow Wilson, History of the American People, 1902

Adopted as the first flag of the Confederate States of America by the provisional congress on March 4, 1861, and despite its official use for over two years, this flag was never formally adopted by law because it was to be used in a flag-raising ceremony within two hours of being adopted and the congress neglected to enact a flag law. It was the original “Stars and Bars” and eventually grew to 13 stars.

How many of you remember back in grade school when they would give you a sentence with a blank in it, then provide you with choices to fill in the blank correctly? I want to try something similar, except I’ll never know how you answer. So fill in the following sentence with either “federal” or “national”: In the United States the __________ government is located in Washington, D.C.

I’m sure there were a few of you who thought to yourselves that this was a stupid exercise as they both mean the same thing. Well, that’s the entire point of this exercise, because they don’t mean the same thing.

Federalism refers to a system in which distinct sovereign entities form together in a confederation with power shared by the federal and State/local governments. Each has their own distinct spheres of operation in which they exercise jurisdiction and sovereignty.

In Federalist 45 James Madison declares our system to of a federal nature as follows, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
Continue reading →

Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties. ~ Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864

Sometime early in the morning on April 2, 1865, near Irwinville, Georgia, a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry, under the command of General James Wilson, captured and arrested the former Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis was taken to Savannah, were he was put on a steamship and then later transferred to the warship Tuscarora, upon which he was transported to Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Davis was then imprisoned in a casemate, (a fortified gun emplacement), where shackles were riveted to his ankles under orders of General Nelson Miles, who was in charge of the Fort. Davis was allowed no visitors or books, other than a Bible, and his health quickly deteriorated to the point an attending physician warned that his life was in danger.

Sometime in late Autumn Davis was transferred to officer’s quarters, and after Miles was transferred out of Fort Monroe his treatment continued to improve and his wife and family were allowed to join him. Continue reading →