The Confederacy Is Dead: Long Live the Radical Republicans!

In years past, the Political Right in America has defended the Confederacy’s reputation and statues, arguing that if those statues were taken down, then others would follow. This year’s iconoclasm has proven these arguments accurate beyond any doubt. However, now that the statues are gone, it is time for the Political right to abandon its pro-Confederacy neutralism, and embrace the Radical Republicans instead. There is no benefit to clinging to the rotting corpse of the Confederacy, and it is the wrong solution to today’s problems. In this essay, we will describe why.

Part 1: The Civil War

The first problem in embracing the Confederacy is that the Confederacy was established as a rejection of America, while the Political Right is pro-America. Secessionists and rebels are by definition not patriots. We should instead be pointing to West Virginia as our model, as its inhabitants remained loyal to the Union, and were real-life mountain men who broke away from an anti-American coastal elite. Nor were they alone: many regions of the South (particularly in the mountains) opposed secession, and one-quarter of the Union Armies’ manpower were Southern-born. The Secessionist South was not the isolationist, libertarian/miniarchist society it is often imagined to be, but rather one that enforced conformity through lynchings, trampled on Northern states’ rights through the Fugitive Slave Law, imposed a universal draft that mobilized 75% of its white male population from day one, and had its own Manifest Destiny centered around the Caribbean. None of these correlate to modern-day Right-wing ideas.

The second, more central, issue is that the Civil War was a war to determine the fate of slavery. While other issues did contribute, the keystone that held the secessionist arch together was always slavery. Numerous declarations of secession mentioned slavery as the deciding issue, and the Vice President of the Confederacy (Alexander Stephens) declared in his 1861 Cornerstone Speech, to thunderous applause:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [from the Constitution]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

As mentioned previously, sizeable swaths of the South opposed secession and fought for the Union. They follow a distinct pattern: the regions where slavery was less prevalent tended to be more Unionist, while the Confederate Armies were populated by slaveowners and would-be slaveowners.

So why bring this up? Simple: Communism is a system built on slave labor, and differs only from the Confederacy’s model in that it is intimately wedded to the cult of the machine rather than outdated racial theories. So why should we glorify one slave society that waged war against our nation while attempting to save that same nation from another, alternative slave system? The American Maoists’ economic ideas are every bit as inefficient, stagnant, and unproductive as the Confederacy’s slave economy. As pointed out in Hinton Helper’s 1857 classic “The Impending Crisis of the South,” it was demonstrable before the war that the Southern slave states had, within a generation, fallen behind the North in every field (including agriculture), and were suffering a terrible brain drain as their best and brightest moved north or west. Southern slavery not only oppressed the blacks, but also depressed wages for white non-slaveowners, much like illegal immigration does today. The Midwest was a land of yeomanry, whereas the Old South was a land of sharecroppers; hardly the American ideal. If we on the right pride ourselves on hard work, efficiency, economic independence, and innovation then the Confederate economy is our polar opposite.

Lastly, the Confederacy was the primary aggressor of the Civil War, much like the Maoists will be after November 4th. It was only after the Confederacy lost that apologists began referring to it as the “War of Northern Aggression.” In reality, the South fought in a manner virtually identical to Japan in 1941: they began the war by attacking a US military installation, made some initial gains, utilized hyper-aggressive tactics until they suffered irrecoverable losses (the South lost 180,000 men in the first 27 months), then switched to stubbornly defending fortifications in a vain attempt to “morally outlast” the other side. Both the Confederates and Japanese believed that their racial purity gave them a moral advantage over their “mongrel” opponents, and both had ambitions for a tropical empire. Unlike the Japanese, however, the Confederacy lost because of a lack of strategy. Without any defined geopolitical end-goals, the Confederate commanders frittered away their strength in costly, uncoordinated campaigns while the Union executed the Anaconda Plan and beat the South with a mere 2-to-1 advantage in numbers. The Right would do well to avoid such recklessness.

Part 2: The True Legacy of the Confederacy

The Civil war was a traumatic affair for both North and South. Six hundred fifty-five thousand men had died, plus over ten thousand civilians, out of a total population of 31 million. Ten percent of the North’s fighting-age population had been killed, while the South lost 30%. It was, in many ways, comparable to Europe’s experience of the First and Second World Wars, to the North and South respectively. But the worst was still to come.

The legacy of the Confederacy first manifested itself in the South with the attitude of a bitter loser. The South, puffed up with pride and fed endless stories about victory after victory in a war of their choosing, was hit square in the face with reality. They had lost, and had sacrificed everything in the process. Their strength was broken, and any attempt to continue the fight would only lead to more of their sons needlessly dying. But this did not lead to any soul-searching or self-criticism. Instead, like the Arabs after losing every war with Israel, they blamed everybody except themselves. The losing side furthermore made demands on the victors, arrogantly demanding that nothing be changed or done about the slaves without the former’s permission. This tradition continues today whenever the Democratic Party loses an election and then demands that the Republicans give them everything, as if they had won anyway.

The second manifestation was over the issue of the newly-freed slaves. The Southern population had feared slave revolts for many years, and was convinced that the newly-freed slaves would massacre their former masters as had happened in Haiti. This did not happen, but the South at the time had three viable choices to prevent such an uprising:

  1. Support sending the former slaves en masse to Liberia. This was highly popular among many abolitionists, including President Lincoln, and would have faced little opposition in the North.
  2. Encourage blacks to leave the south and migrate north. This would effectively tell the North: “You destroyed us on behalf of the slaves, now they’re your problem.” Such a move would be unpopular in the North, but they couldn’t do much about it and such a migration would ultimately occur from 1930-1950.
  3. Racial integration. This would be the least popular solution at the time, but it did have supporters.

Naturally, the South did none of these reasonable ideas. They instead insisted that the blacks couldn’t leave and had to stay working for their former masters, be treated the same way as during slavery, and now also serve as on-call punching bags. Pride and bitterness led the ex-Confederates to lash out against everybody, and they demanded the right to assault and murder whoever they liked, whenever they liked. In this regard, the slaves were worse off now than before the war: before the war, slaves had to deal primarily with verbal abuse and humiliation, but now their petulant former masters used castration and murder as a first resort.

Because the Confederacy had been established as a rejection of the Constitution’s declaration that all men are created equal, the ex-Confederates strongly desired a new system that would continue to favor them over the former slaves. They at first tried to reword the slave laws, but this façade didn’t last long. So they instead developed what would ultimately be known as Jim Crow laws. These laws bear a striking resemblance to Shariah Law, in that they divide society in two, rig the legal system in favor of one group, and are not designed for true justice, but to provide legal cover for the use of casual violence against the underclass. I am certain most of my readers appreciate the evils of Shariah Law, and would not desire such a system today.

Jim Crow was all about rigging the courts and legal system in favor of the ex-Confederates, not only against blacks and Indians, but also against Unionist southerners. Since the state governments couldn’t use state-sanctioned violence against their enemies, they instead relied on non-state proxies such as the Red Shirts and Ku Klux Klan. The proxies gave the ex-confederate judges and legislators plausible deniability, and if any of the proxies were actually brought to trial, he knew he could count on the state letting him go without even a wrist slap. In other instances, these laws and lawmakers allowed and encouraged Democrat ex-Confederates to vote multiple times in elections, unofficially of course. It was an early form of anarcho-tyranny, backed by lynchings and terror campaigns.

Segregation is another issue that is unfavorable to the ex-Confederates’ reputation. When segregation was first introduced, it was allowed by the Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), on one condition: Separate but Equal. The Supreme Court gave the Southern States a chance to prove that they were willing to honor the spirit of the 14th Amendment, and it ended about as well as one would expect the Democratic Party today to behave. The Southern states ruthlessly enforced separation, and then went out of their way to ensure the blacks were not equal. The North was equally racist as the South at that time, but whereas the North ignored and neglected the blacks, the South put the maximum amount of effort into being assholes. It is not dissimilar to how the Islamic population in Europe (and several European Governments) behaves today, and the South’s version of Taqiyya would make any Mohammedan proud. It was a lie from the beginning, and the liars waged a Maoist-style guerrilla campaign against those who committed the crime of noticing. Does the modern Right want to be a part of that, or have any doubt that the Maoists’ endless stream of blood libel is part of that tradition?

At this point, some on the Alt-Left like Identity Dixie will protest, “But that was a hundred years ago. The modern-day Maoists may use similar tactics, but their goals are utterly opposite to the Confederacy’s. Therefore, they are not part of the same continuum.” Two words will disprove this counterargument: Woodrow Wilson. President Wilson is the hinge linking the Confederacy to today’s Maoist faction. Wilson had grown up in the South and sympathized with the Confederacy, but he did more than anybody to convert an 1860s issue into a 20th-Century one. He had been president of Princeton University long enough to give his ideas and philosophy the appearance of being the product of a brilliant mind. In truth, his academic work was low-quality even by standards of the day, but that didn’t stop him from popularizing his ideas by virtue of his oratory skill. Wilson was a paradox: on the one hand, he was a promoter of the Lost Cause mythos, segregating the federal government, and the main reason why the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in the 1910s, marketing itself as the “true American” patriotic movement. Yet he was also a progressive, and advanced Liberalism from its Libertarian-esque origins into its modern socialist form. Both the Confederacy and Marxism share a philosophy of the “smartest” ruling over the “less intelligent,” with no other moral authority to act as a check or balance, and so the transition was surprisingly smooth. The “Solid South” would remain solidly Democratic until the 1980s, even as the Democratic Party lurched into interventionism, the managerial state, and open borders. These massive differences in opinion were trifles compared to maintaining Sharia Law Jim Crow, and the Southern Agrarian movement was never large or influential enough to counterbalance The Party. Many in the Old South would go on to accuse anybody before 1980 who challenged their ideas as being a “communist,” but fail to realize the irony.

The final issue with Jim Crow and the Confederacy was that it didn’t just screw non-Southerners, but also the South itself. By adopting an Islamic/Arabic legal code and highly-romanticized recollection of their history, the South became more Arab-like, enslaving itself mentally and morally to the past. They taught themselves for two generations that they were perfect by virtue of being born in a racially-pure Southern family, and that they came from a long line of perfect men. This may seem like normal national pride, but it was actually closer to a form of masturbation. By defining themselves solely by who their daddies were, they had to deify their ancestors and treat any suggestion that they were flawed human beings as a taint upon their “superiority.” Their obsession with their “perfect” ancestry also meant that they had little incentive to challenge or improve themselves, individually or collectively. This combined with the nature of Jim Crow Laws to produce a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle wherein the Old South became more and more slavishly dependent on sugar daddy state government to protect them from the consequences of their actions. Thus, when President Eisenhower presented them with a real challenge and took away their sugar daddy government protections, they were utterly unprepared mentally for it. During the entirety of the Eisenhower administration the Old South, which for years had told itself and anyone who’d listen how great and how tough they were, reacted to every challenge the same way: they ran away. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that they were somehow in the right, what sort of man spends his life telling everyone how great he is, yet runs away the moment anybody points a gun at him? The Right has no need of such unmanly men. When Richard Nixon came into office in 1968, he desegregated virtually the entire country with barely a whimper. Even with an 8-year break during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (which were high on theatrics but low on substance), the Solid South was defeated with comical ease.

The final problem with clinging to the Confederacy’s corpse is that it affirms the Marxist lie that men are predetermined to be winners or losers by virtue of their parentage/existing. The theory, shared by racial theorists and Marxists alike, is that men have no free will, but are swallowed up by the sheer mass of their race, class, or “oppressed group.” For the Right, we represent the opposite: that individuals always have a choice, and are not predetermined by the hive. In today’s terms, this means that we should stop pretending the modern day South is the same as the Old South. The South, starting in the 1980s, underwent a massive transformation socially, economically, and culturally: Florida and Texas would not be the powerhouses they are today if the South had not changed. In one generation, the South went from being a stagnant backwater to becoming the powerhouse it could have been in 1857. The South has much to be proud of, and doesn’t need the Confederacy to feel pride in itself.

Part 3: The Radical Republicans

So if the Confederacy is more like today’s Maoists, but less effective and more pathetic, then who is their opposite? The Radical Republicans. This is a massive missing piece from our history textbooks, and once the Maoists are defeated, the Radical Republicans should be given their rightful prominent role in Reconstruction History. They, like Joseph McCarthy, Korean and Vietnam War Vets, and Richard Nixon, deserve to have their reputations restored.

The Radical Republicans emerged in 1854 as a faction within the newly-minted Republican Party. The Republican Party officially did not run on the promise of abolishing slavery, but rather preventing it from spreading to new territories. Due to the inherent flaws of slave labor, this containment would have effectively abolished slavery without firing a shot as the system strangled itself. The need to spread slavery was so dire, that Jefferson Davis offered Lincoln a compromise which would stand down the rebellion in exchange for conquering Cuba as a slave state. Lincoln and the Republicans refused this offer, and thus the Civil War began.

Since the Republican Party was founded as an anti-slavery party after the Whigs chose neutralism on the issue, it was only obvious that the most radical of abolitionists would form the core of the Radical Republicans. They themselves chose this name, as radical comes from the Latin word for “root.” Their goal was simple: to rip slavery out by the roots via complete and total abolition, without compromise. Lincoln was a moderate Republican who favored a more lenient policy, but successfully built a coalition that included Radical Republicans in his government. The movement did not truly come into power until 1866, after Lincoln had been assassinated and President Johnson’s leniency towards the Confederacy failed to stem the violence. They were in power for only 8 years, most of it during President Grant’s term, but successfully passed numerous Civil Rights bills, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and suppressed the Ku Klux Klan as long as they could.

A key component of the Radical Republicans’ agenda was to strip ex-Confederates of their rights to vote or hold office, as well as to use martial law to protect black voters. This was hardly an overreaction, as ex-Confederates were rampaging throughout the South, even in majority-Unionist southern states, murdering and intimidating political opponents while ex-Confederate judges and lawmakers refused to punish them. The recent riots in Portland are less destructive than what the Klan was doing, and the local authorities were even more in bed with the insurgents than ours today. The Radical Republicans successfully barred ex-Confederates from voting or holding office from 1867-1872, which was crucial for passing the 14th Amendment and giving blacks and Unionist Southerners power. When we defeat the Maoists, a similar policy of disenfranchising the defeated would be advisable.

On the topic of the Ku Klux Klan and other ex-Confederate insurgencies, the Radical Republicans had a mixed record of success. Most of their failures came from political compromises which fell apart when the moderates no longer feared another attempt at secession, or from not stationing enough troops to prevent riots and paramilitary activity. Their greatest triumphs came when they took the gloves off and ruthlessly hunted the Klan to destruction. Many ex-Confederate insurgents were wholly unrepentant for secession, as penned by Major Innes Randolph (a member of J.E.B. Stuart’s staff) in his song “Unreconstructed Rebel:”

“Oh, I’m a good old Rebel, now that’s just what I am;

For this “fair land of Freedom” I do not care a damn.

I’m glad I fit against it- I only wish we’d won.

And I don’t want no pardon for anything I’ve done.

I hates the Constitution, this great Republic too;

I hates the Freedmen’s Buro, in uniforms of blue.

I hates the nasty eagle, with all his brag and fuss;

But the lyin’, thievin’ Yankees I hates’ em wuss and wuss.”

The proportional response came from Daniel Phillips Upham, an ex-Union soldier from Massachusetts who faced one of the strongest Klan insurgencies in the South, and inflicted a string of humiliating defeats upon them:

“[W]e will whale hell out of the last one of them, and never allow one of them to return and live here. There is no other way … nothing but good, healthy, square, honest killing would ever do them any good.”

Does not this sentiment describe exactly how the perfidious Maoists ought to be treated? Should we, on the right, adopt anything less than a demand for a total, unconditional, and one-sided surrender from our foe? Or do anything except relentlessly kill them at every opportunity until they give up? Curtis Lemay’s words on deliberately using too much force apply in spades, and if they don’t surrender annihilating them will save us a lot of trouble. This is why the Radical Republicans are far superior to the Confederacy: they were patriotic, they recognized slavery as the root of the problems concerning the South, and when confronted with a stiff-necked adversary, they chose to break the neck. In our own time, we must also see that our deepest problems are not systemic, but moral, and unapologetically demand that they be ripped out by the roots, without compromise. Ultimately the Radical Republicans failed; but even in failure they gave us so much. How much more benefit will come when we win!

Conclusion

Once the Maoists are utterly defeated, and unable to resist any peace deal we demand, our peace treaty must be as follows:

  1. A total ban on Marxist theory in schools or government. Any government employee in violation of this law can only be executed if found guilty. All Marxists outside of government are barred from holding office and totally disenfranchised in perpetuity.
  2. Official Black Lives Matter and Antifa members to be expelled from the country for life.
  3. A ban on Islam, with repatriation of all who do not apostatize.
  4. A downsizing of the managerial state by no less than 40%, and the remainder to be passed directly to the state governments. All public-sector unions will be dissolved.
  5. Repeal of the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution- all taxation will be the responsibility of state governments, and the federal government will be funded entirely by state treasuries. The only tax the federal government can pass is a war tax.
  6. A total ban on abortion and divorce, and a reclassification of sodomy as a mental illness. Transgenderism will be classified as obscenity, and the pornography industry will be treated like human traffickers. Planned Parenthood will be shut down and its personnel charged.
  7. Drug pushers and manufacturers will be required to eat their entire stock of narcotics, to die of overdose.
  8. A ten-year moratorium on immigration, with the possibility of extension. Once it expires, immigration will be achieved solely through marriage of American citizens to foreigners.
  9. Public schools are to be placed directly under the control of their respective school boards, to guarantee that parents, not teachers’ unions, have the final say.
  10. Firearms Ed to be introduced in public schools like Driver’s Ed, taught by local sheriffs and supported by Project Appleseed volunteers.
  11. Vigorous application of antitrust laws against big businesses who supported the Maoist insurgency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEVOIO4TbZs


Michael Gladius is the pseudonym for a budding commentator in the fields of military history and theory. His goal is to blend the lessons of history, principles of human behavior, and practical wisdom in order to draw upon a wide array of factors for optimized solutions and problem-solving. He is currently studying in Europe. Some examples of his work include Small Wars Journal and RealClear Defense.

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47 Comments

  1. Anonymous November 2, 2020 at 08:52

    5

  2. Expat November 2, 2020 at 09:10

    Long time reader of this site but first time replying. I love this post because it is true, the Confederacy was the antithesis to what a true believer should hold dear regarding the DoI and Constitution. The South sought to destroy the Experiment of our Founding Fathers and that was treason.

    • Mark November 2, 2020 at 19:46

      Expat: Jefferson Davis was imprisoned after the war and accused of treason. In response Davis demanded to be tried for treason but no trial was forth coming. Davis was released after two years without charges. One wonders why? Could it be that his accusers realized that they had no case?

      • Bret November 3, 2020 at 21:06

        Well said

  3. Michael November 2, 2020 at 09:12

    Wow, don’t hold back, tell us how you REALLY Feel :-)

    It’s been said that “Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to Go to Hell and they THANK you and ask for directions”.

    No Diplomacy here. In fact I think you’ve angered about 30+ some percent of the readers who are NOT Ashamed to be Southerners.

    Paul the Apostle of Christ went to Greece to speak to them about the living God, he didn’t start by tearing apart all they built.

    Trigger Warning Bible Scripture follows: Acts Chapter 17 full text would be best but here is a nugget:

    Acts 17: Paul in Athens
    15Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then returned with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. 16While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply disturbed in his spirit to see that the city was full of idols. 17So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, and in the marketplace with those he met each day.…

    Paul Reasoned with them. He didn’t kick them in the teeth about the error of their ways. He sought out those ABLE to listen and perhaps convert and Reasoned with them.

    Our founding fathers accepted differing opinions and faiths. They were however INTENT that their would NOT be a State Religion.

    So we reform or staggering failing Republic under the rules of a strong man? I guess it worked for the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and Weimar Germany.

    Praying for our Republic that we don’t stagger into a Strong Man rule.

  4. Razorback Trapper November 2, 2020 at 10:59

    I agree with some of what you say, but also believe that history is not this simple.There are appropriate reasons to dissolve a political union. It is easy for us to come to such black and white conclusions about history when we are 155 years removed from the event. Were this article written in the same spirit about WW2 Germany, many Germans could accurately make the case that all German soldiers were not Jew burning Aryan Supremacists. War, and its many reasons for fighting is complicated. For all its good and bad qualities, the southern rebellion happened and is deeply rooted in Southern culture and pride. Asking a people to dismiss their history and cultural identity because a mob of marxist cannon fodder tore down their statues and not all of their history looks good through modern revisionist glasses is at best naive. I only see this article serving to divide the side serving as resistance to the communist take over of this country on the eve of the event that will more than likely set things in motion.

    • Michael Gladius November 2, 2020 at 21:06

      The present-day South’s strength is inversely proportional to its obsession with the Confederacy. The Old South, with its masturbatory obsession with how flawless the Confederacy was supposed to be, weakened and emasculated themselves without realizing it. The minute anybody, black or white, pointed guns back at them they ran away. Also, this narrative ignores the pro-Unionist Southerners. They were disowned by their families, called Scalliwags during Reconstruction, and targeted for murder by the ex-Confederates. Those Southerners should be the ones being praised, not the ones who wrote songs about how they hated the Constitution. Several Unionist Southerners were major players in the Unionist victory, and formed the backbone of anti-Klan militias. They are the forgotten sons of the South, and frankly better role models.

      As for the German argument, the Germans got off easy because Albrecht Speer, Hitler’s prized architect, claimed he had no knowledge of the concentration camps. This court victory allowed the Germans to artificially separate the SS from the Whermacht at large, even though the latter was equally as guilty of war crimes. After the trial, photos of Speer at a concentration camp were discovered, but he had died by then and couldn’t be tried for perjury. If the Germans had been held accountable in this manner, then there might not have been any revival of interest in non-racial socialism.

  5. Bret November 2, 2020 at 11:20

    Never have I read a post about the confederacy that had less actual facts. You would have made an excellent carpetbagger or looter fir Sherman

    • Nate November 2, 2020 at 11:34

      Well said! Couldn’t agree more!

  6. Nate November 2, 2020 at 11:31

    To simplify the civil war down into a “confederacy bad – Republican Party good” approach is seriously mistaken. Though slavery was undoubtedly a large factor at play, it was not the only, and arguably not even the chief factor behind the secession of the southern states. One must also remember that they seceded. They were there own sovereign nation under attack from the northern forces. Abolition of slavery is a wonderful thing and slavery (which still exists) should be abolished everywhere, but nearly every other western nation abolished slavery without a long bloody war. To try and condense the complexities of the American civil war into some binary ‘good and bad’ is ignorant. The confederacy was not some reversal of the founding father’s vision. It was a continuation of the pursuit of representative self government. Many of the founding father’s sons and grandsons fought for the confederacy, believing it to be the rightful cause. We may all disagree with their stance on slavery (which was unjust and wicked), but to leap from that to the idea that they had no right to rule themselves and secede is a wrong leap indeed. It’s unfortunate that history has to be so confused and interpreted through the lens of modern political ideology. A little more research and understanding would do the author good.

    • Michael Gladius November 11, 2020 at 22:06

      The Founding Fathers wanted a unified country, and Washington led an army to suppress insurrection. The Founding Fathers also overwhelmingly opposed slavery and hoped it would be abolished someday. They realized, however, that addressing slavery would split the country apart, so they prioritized unity over their anti-slavery hopes.

      Contrast this with the Confederacy, which spoke openly about their pro-slavery leanings, and their desire to spread it into new territories. Lincoln did not campaign as an abolitionist where slavery existed, but rather promised that he would only prevent its spread. The inability to spread slavery was the reason the first 7 states seceded. So states breaking up national unity to spread a system the Founding Fathers abhorred is a repudiation.

      It was only after the fact that the ex-Confederates pretended they did it for “freedom.” Every primary source from the beginning of the war says the opposite.

  7. Anonymous November 2, 2020 at 13:26

    0.5

  8. Tim November 2, 2020 at 13:40

    The evidence in the article and comments is apparent of those having a knowledge of history limited to that taught in government schools and those having a broader education of what actually happened. IMHO at the point of imminent conflict, (where we are presently) it serves no good purpose to agree with your communist enemy. This article alienated a fair portion of our southern allies by over simplifying the cause of the war between the states.

    • Jesse James November 2, 2020 at 20:32

      In this southerner’s opinion, people capable of being alienated by a single academic argument that challenges their preconceptions are not my allies…or peers. This was published precisely to do that. YMMV

  9. Michael Gladius November 2, 2020 at 20:29

    Everything I wrote is backed up by primary sources. Please do tell me which are (supposedly) false.

    • Mark. November 11, 2020 at 14:33

      I might agree with your comparisons of Pearl Harbor and Ft. Sumter if a South Carolinian carrier battle group had attacked Manhattan or something to that effect, but that is not what happened. Instead, they attacked a fort that the union very likely would have used to blockade Charleston Harbor, a blockade that would have itself been an act of war. The secession of SC in 1860 was no different than the secession of SC in 1776 nor was it different from the secession planned by the New England states at the Hartford Convention during the war of 1812. There is no prohibition against secession in the US Constitution. If the document’s authors would have inserted such a prohibition the constitution would not have been ratified.

      • Michael Gladius November 11, 2020 at 21:58

        How about the fact that Japan struck Pearl Harbor to eliminate a potential threat to their plans to occupy the Philippines (i.e., the Pacific Fleet)? Or the fact that the Confederacy launched three major offensives into slave states which had not seceded (Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) in 1862?

        No government allows its territories to just walk away- if they do, then they typically don’t last long. Yugoslavia didn’t resist the breakaway of Slovenia, and less than a year later the entire affair collapsed. The Constitution doesn’t explicitly forbid secession, but the authors deliberately avoided tackling slavery from day 1 in order to preserve… national unity. The Federalist Papers (which were a major factor in adoption) also do not talk about secession/separation in favorable terms. So our Founding Fathers didn’t support a breakup, and most of them opposed slavery and hoped it would someday be abolished.The Confederacy was a repudiation of both sentiments.

        • Mark. November 13, 2020 at 17:22

          I know that with Maryland, Lincoln sent in Federal troops to occupy the state in 1861, and used them to prevent the legislature from voting on secession. Lincoln imposed martial law in the state. I’m not aware of a Confederate invasion of Kentucky or Missouri, but I know that both states were invaded by federals. I wonder who invaded first? And with the founders, you are forgetting the Anti-Federalist papers authored by those who felt the federal government was given too much power, a situation that would become readily apparent with passage of the Alien and Seditions Acts. Jefferson and others who were fearful of federal power responded with the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, and although these didn’t immediately advocate secession they did codify the principle of nullification, which helped to reinforce the very important but much forgot about point, that the states created the federal government and not the other way around. I should point out also that Patrick Henry, a noted Anti-Federalist opined that the constitution would in time create an empire little different from the one they had just exited, a prediction that has come to fruition. If you are not convinced just wait until Biden and Kamela take over. I just read that the Lincoln Project is trying to sabotage Trump’s efforts in getting to the bottom of the voting situation in Pa. I think that the Lincolnists and many others in what passes for the modern conservative movement are in reality little different from the Tories of 1770s America. They advance the same arguments.

          In regards Japan, what were we doing in the Philipines? Why are we in Iraq and Afghanistan or why were we in Vietnam? It is the empire building that Henry spoke of. Does any of it make me freer? I don’t think so; I think these wars and occupations and the expansion of government power that these things begets make me less free, and poorer with the onerous taxation. The empire building is something else very negative to come from the so called Civil War.

          Another issue with the whole debate over the Civil War, that is much forgotten, is that the so-called great heroes of the union armies who were responsible for freeing the negro, and ending slavery, and finally making us all equal as promised in the constitution are also, in many cases, the same generals who attacked and destroyed the plains indian tribes. Sherman went so far as to advocate for the annihilation of the Sioux, calling his program a “final solution”.

  10. Michael Gladius November 2, 2020 at 20:35

    If slavery wasn’t the chief factor, then why do the declaration of secession and speeches like the “cornerstone speech” keep talking about it? Why did Jefferson Davis offer to stand down in exchange for another slave state (Cuba)? Why did Southern recruiting posters refer to Unionists as “abolitionists?”

    It is easy today to discount how deeply ingrained slavery was to the South, and how much it affected what side a Southerner would fight for. But it cannot be downplayed without falsifying history. And this was the purpose of the Lost Cause Mythos: to pretend slavery wasn’t the main reason they went to war, or why they kept murdering blacks after the war. It is no different than how the Left today pretends that their unprovoked violence is because of “Violence from the right.” Today’s leftists are copying the Confederacy before it lost, almost to a T.

    • Nate November 2, 2020 at 22:53

      Slavery was definitely an issue, and a big one, but the question of slavery was, in large part, an issue of states rights and self government. The tipping point for secession was the election of Lincoln, who was not even on most ballots in the South. To have an executive that nearly half the country didn’t even have on the ballot and was also mentored by politicians who were not friendly to the southern cause, is an understandable point of alarm for the south. Having primary source documents that display the South’s dedication to slavery is not evidence that there were not a multitude of other factors. Much of those factors, including slavery, were part and parcel of older and deeper arguments about the role of the federal government. The truth is that the confederacy had a right to secede and did so per the consent of their people. Even if slavery was the only issue, which it wasn’t, that still did not give the northern states the right to invade the confederacy and impose martial law and compulsory govt upon them. Even many abolitionists, such as Lysander Spooner were opposed to the war because they realized that you couldn’t free one subset of people by making all people slaves.

      The point is, for each primary source document you can find to support your POV, I can find one to support mine, because it is a deeply complex issue that can not be stamped with a binary good/bad explanation. The confederacy did some terrible things. So did the Union. Good men, wise men, and morally upright men fought for both armies against each other in a terrible war that you can’t simplify 160 years later in an essay.

      • ConSigCor November 3, 2020 at 10:25

        100% spot on.

      • Michael Gladius November 3, 2020 at 17:04

        All of the major differences between North and South were rooted in slavery, and the spread of slavery. Jefferson Davis offered to stand down the rebellion in exchange for conquering Cuba as a slave state.
        I recommend reading the article’s embedded link to “The Impending Crisis of the South,” as it was written by a Southerner and offers a lot of concrete data. Simply put, the Slave States had such inefficient economies that they had to import livestock fodder from Northern states (despite the latter having an inferior climate) and were constantly buying from the North. This, in turn, meant that they wanted to reduce tariffs since slavery made it near-impossible to industrialize or produce anything the North would buy. Many Northerners are mentioned in the book who came to the South, found perfect places to build mills and factories, and were promptly hounded out of town by the locals who preferred poverty over giving up their slaves and the attitude that slavery bred. When the Civil War came, Confederate cavalry had to steal virtually all of the South’s industrial machinery from the North (most famously at Harper’s Ferry). Slavery was the keystone- take it away,a and the entire arch collapses.

        Also, the notion that the South was fighting for states’ rights is post-war falsification by the losers. Before the war, the Confederates made no pretense of supporting states’ rights, and happily leveraged the Federal government to trample over Northern states’ rights. It also had no issue with invading border states which opposed secession, such as Kentucky and Missouri.
        Lincoln only won 40% of the vote, but that’s because the Democratic Party chose to divide itself (much like in 1912, when the reverse happened and we got the anti-Lincoln in Wilson).

        Finally, there is no right to secede in the Constitution, which all of the states had/still have signed. None of the articles or amendments grant that right, and laws are not just words on paper. Did CHAZ in Portland have the right to secede this past summer? No, and the government had every right of defending its territory from insurgents. Every government has that right, or else they’re not governments at all. The Confederate cause of rebellion had more in common with the French Revolution than the American one, as it was arbitrary and did not declare all men are endowed with equal rights by God.

        It is also false to accuse the north of martial law and compulsory government, as if that occurred in a vacuum. The ex-Confederates were murdering ex-slaves, non-Confederate Southerners (apparently their lives,property, and beliefs don’t matter), and refusing to face the reality that they had lost. Attempts to do things peacefully were rewarded with violence and terror campaigns (like the French/Bolshevik Revolutions), and to do nothing would be morally wrong. The government has the right to suppress insurgencies, particularly ones that threaten the lives of those the government is legally obligated to protect. Today, the same thing is happening: an insurgency of anti-Americans is trying to create chaos and seize power, and it is a moral responsibility to resist and defeat them.

        • Nate November 3, 2020 at 20:26

          Nobody is arguing that slavery isn’t wrong, that the confederacy wasn’t wrong for holding onto it, or that it wasn’t a failing system in the south. History does a pretty good job of showing us that stupidity and wickedness always result in failure. Being that slavery was a failing economic engine in the south, it would have been all the more reason to stand back and let the confederacy implode, or reform its ways. That would have resulted in far less bloodshed and probably better race relations in the century to follow.

          As far as states rights are concerned, they were considered at the time. Hard to imagine they invented the idea after losing, but somehow mysteriously discussed them pre-secession and even cite them as a reason for secession. However, even had they not specifically mentioned them, which they did, the fact stands that slavery was a state’s rights issue. States we’re slave or free depending upon the will of the state, not the federal government. States jealousy guarded those rights and had been arguing over those same things since before the ratification of the constitution.

          Speaking of the constitution, it is pretty absurd to argue that any one generation of citizens can bind their progeny into an unbreakable, eternal contract. That’s what you are implying. That no state can ever secede because the initial contract didn’t say so. Many of the states base their claim to secession upon the Declaration of Independence, which was always considered by the Founders to be the primary charter of American government. It doesn’t merely claim that all men are created equal, but also that ‘Governmoments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed”. When the states and people no longer consent to being governed, it is their right and duty to throw off such govt and provide new guards for their future security. The confederacy however did not war for power or control. They simply seceded and formed their own government and nation. To argue that they couldn’t because the constitution makes no amends for it is foolish. The constitution exists because the states and people consent. Secession was and is a fundamental right.

          Finally, the way the Union conducted warfare, under Sherman, with the approval of Lincoln, was total and wicked. The indiscrimate killing and destruction of civilians and their homes/cities was uncalled for and barbaric. I’m not even discussing the reconstruction, but merely the way the war was conducted on confederate soil. But I guess that is acceptable because it was inspired and lauded by your radical republicans.

          Which brings me to the idea you seem to hold that the parties are some consistent body of ideals held for 170 years now. That’s far from true. The parties have changed ideals and principles enough to be parties in name only.

          • NC Scout November 3, 2020 at 21:06

            This.

          • Michael Gladius November 3, 2020 at 23:57

            The Confederacy was given a chance to let slavery implode from its own flaws. They chose war and fired the first shots at Fort Sumter.

            The Southern States’ concept of States’ rights is different from yours. They demanded that their slave laws be enforced in non-slave/Southern states, and that their citizens be allowed to invade other countries in the Caribbean to create new slave states- this was constant in the 1850s, and was called “filibustering.” They were neither miniarchists nor isolationists- that comes in decades later.

            The notion that the Constitution can be terminated at will because a bunch of slave lobbyists don’t consent to it would make the government a fake government. Should we have let CHAZ secede because a bunch of sniveling commies “dodn’t consent?” The Southern states signed on to the Constitution and treacherously broke their side of the agreement. They split away to form an anti-constitution; one in which all men are NOT created equal and NOT endowed with unalienable rights. This is the French Revolution’s logic, not the American Revolution’s. After becoming independent, they had ambitions for a Caribbean Empire but had to call them off when a president with a spine refused to slink off. The nation is supposed to be like a family: you don’t get to secede from your family. The Civil War was a clash of morality systems, not of legal definitions.

            The Union’s “wicked conduct” during the war is grossly exaggerated. Union soldiers did not indiscriminately kill civilians, and their targets for destruction were actively contributing to the Confederate war effort. Farms that fed Lee’s Army were burned. Factories & workshops producing munitions and supplies for Lee’s army were demolished. The Confederacy was in a state of total mobilization, and they were thus legitimate targets. Sherman merely took it a step further and beat the Confederate civilians over the head with the 2×4 of Reality. For years, they had read story after story of victories against the Abolitionists (even as their armies in the west were obliterated), and then they looked up to see Union soldiers marching through the countryside with near-impunity. Sherman had in fact written to his Southern friends before the war warning them that their romantic ideas of war were fantasies, and that the country would be soaked in blood if they started the war. After months of campaigning, he wanted to make it unambiguously clear to the southern civilians that they were losing. Newly-freed slaves welcomed the Union troops and pointed them to where the worst slaveowners lived to burn their homes and flog them. It’d be like the citizens of Portland leading Federal troops to the homes of Antifa and beating them in the streets with their own nightsticks.

            As for the heavy-handedness, it’s no different from how we had to fight Japan. The Confederates and Japanese fought in virtually the same manner, and the only way to end the war was to utterly crush them and destroy their ability to fight. Both responded to setbacks by fighting more desperately, and preferred to keep dying than to see the writing on the wall. Fight like a Jap, die like a Jap. Same with Reconstruction: the North was sick of the killing, but the ex-Confederates were too busy lynching blacks and Unionist southerners for the North to ignore. The South wanted to fight like sniveling Arabs, so the proportional response was to kill them like sniveling Arabs. They started out with lenient treatment, but took advantage of it. Then when they suffered the consequences they whined. The Maoists are exactly the same, and the response is exactly the same: crush the head of the serpent, and put a stop to their BS. No half-measures.

            The parties have retained much of their original legacy. The Republicans had to shoot democrats to pass the 14th Amendment, and threaten to shoot them at Little Rock. The Democrats used to lynch blacks, then they later moved on to destroying their families and killing their children through abortion. The moderates fit your description, the true believers do not.

          • ohengineer November 4, 2020 at 16:22

            Michael, Lincoln chose war. He acted to resupply the forts at southern ports that were used to enforce the tariff. No country can tolerate such an act on its soil.

            Much of what you wrote is simply ignorant propaganda.

          • NC Scout November 4, 2020 at 16:29

            Lincoln was named explicitly in Das Capital as the model for Marxist Liberation in America.

    • Mark. November 3, 2020 at 01:48

      Slavery may have played a role in the decisions of the states in voting for secession, but Lincoln’s invasion of Virginia started the war. The south was happy to go in peace.

      • Michael Gladius November 3, 2020 at 16:38

        So the firing on Fort Sumter was… what? Peacefully attacking a Federal Garrison?

        • Nate November 4, 2020 at 09:52

          Fort Sumter was a federal installation on foreign soil. The state of SC had seceded 3 months before and the feds refused to leave. Also, the “confederates” didn’t fire on the fort, SC militiamen did.

          Slavery wasn’t given a chance to fail in the confederacy. Sumter was a mere two months after the founding of the confederacy.

          And the constitution wasn’t terminated when the southern states seceded – they just withdrew from it. It was still the law of the land for the union. But methinks you do not understand secession. Chaz was not secession. It was a hostile occupation, not the legal and lawful voted will of the people. The very idea of secession is a “state’s right” issue that you clearly deny. The southern states chose as states and people to remove consent for the federal govt. That is nothing like Chaz, but it is lawful secession. And nations are not like families. They are based on consent (per the declaration, and all of the western political theory that the declaration was based on), not bloodline or clan. And besides, adults can leave a family – they can move, change their name, the whole shebang.

          And Sherman writing letters to southern friends declaring his intentions does not absolve him of war crimes. They were not ‘greatly exaggerated’ to the swaths of southern life that were obliterated. And the confederates were not like the japs. They were on home turf. (Of course you’d have to understand secession to understand that).

          The broad brush you’re using has to smudge a lot of lines to paint history the way you want it.

          • Michael Gladius November 8, 2020 at 16:47

            Fort Sumter was a Federal installation on land claimed by the US Government. They had no obligation to withdraw from their own soil. If it was owned by the government of SC, then you could make that argument. But it wasn’t. And do you think the SC militia were unionists or Confederates?

            The Confederate government made it abundantly clear in the beginning that they weren’t going to abolish slavery. The ex-Confederates only started saying that when they lost. Before they started losing, nobody in the secessionist camp said that they wanted abolition.

            The secessionists wanted to break away from the Union, but had no legal way of doing so. Thus, they resorted to force. And they lost the war that they started. CHAZ also was an attempt to break away and form a new country by force. Nor was the decision to secede unanimous. So they are exactly the same.

            Nations are the next level up from tribes. The nation-state is something else. And no,you can’t change who your biological parents are, even if you leave the family. So secession was not motivated by a desire for liberty, but by a desire to spread and permanently preserve slavery. It was a repudiation of our founding fathers’ declaration that all men are equal, and their private hopes that slavery would one day be erased. It was, frankly, the first attempt at a French/Bolshevik Revolution in this country. Without a legal or moral justification, the Confederates resorted to force, and it was only after they lost that they began to claim they were the victims.

            Sherman did not commit war crimes, even by the standards of the day. The devastation of Georgia would not have been all that different from the destruction caused by the Napoleonic wars. It wasn’t until much later that the Lost Cause Myth began to claim it was a “war crime.”
            Even the numbers alone don’t back up your claim: 650,000 soldiers dead vs 10,000 civilians. That’s 65 soldiers killed for every civilian on both sides. And don’t claim that the North didn’t suffer civilian casualties: Confederate cavalry raided the north throughout the war and looted supplies. Most civilian deaths occurred in the west as partisans on both sides raided each other in Kansas and Missouri.
            The Japanese are a perfect analogy to the Confederacy: they claimed to “liberate” the Philippines from the USA (and SE Asia from Europeans), and their home turf included the Marianas, Micronesia, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa- all of which were invaded by the Allies. When the war was over, their home islands were occupied, as was Korea. So the Confederacy and Japan aren’t that different in this regard.

        • Mark. November 7, 2020 at 14:41

          Ft. Sumter belonged to the State of South Carolina and the federals were asked to leave as South Carolina no longer was part of the United States. Even so, the only casualty was a horse, hardly an excuse to launch a war that would kill 700,000 Americans.

          What SC did in regards to secession from the US was no different than what it had done 80 years or so earlier when it had seceded from Great Britain. The colonies then had also made similar demands that British Troops vacate American soil.

          • Michael Gladius November 8, 2020 at 16:58

            So when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and didn’t occupy it, should America have just rolled over and let them take the Philippines? Neither Hawaii or the Philippines were states, so why go to war over them? The Answer: when someone declares war on your country, you fight. The federal government refused to be cowed into giving up its land and claims by a bunch of slave lobbyists, so the slavers had two choices: back down and let slavery die peacefully, or fight. They chose to fight, and the government did its duty to wage war. The only justification of secession was by force, and the slavers lost that fight.

            Lincoln just letting the slavers walk away with American land is like Trump conceding the election: an unnecessary, unilateral surrender. It is not moral to retreat before evil men when it is possible to defeat them. The left today is the heir to Confederate secessionism, and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with turning pieces of our country into socialist pits.

            And no, the American Revolutionaries didn’t fire first at Lexington, the British did. Nor did they set out to establish a slave empire- all of our founding fathers said they wanted slavery to go away, but didn’t do it immediately because they prioritized national unity. The Confederacy is a repudiation of both national unity and abolishing slavery.

  11. Michael Gladius November 2, 2020 at 20:45

    Alternative: President Andrew Johnson didn’t want to pursue charges of treason because he was pro-South and didn’t want to aggravate them. Congress voted 105-19 in favor of the trial, but the president didn’t want to do it.

  12. Curious Passerby November 2, 2020 at 21:34

    Nothing personal to the author, but this article seems way out of touch.
    First- what Radical Republicans? Nobody remembers them. And talking about Radical Republicans seems woefully backward when the Republicans of today are hardly any better than the Democrats. We live in a one party system with two radical wings who agree on nearly everything, except for a few social issues they fight over from 9-5 and forget when they’re schmoozing together at the Capitol Grill after hours.

    Other than Trump, there’s nothing remarkable about the Repubes. They’re hardly better than the dummycrats and they’re just as eager to dump Trump. Unless Trump can find and nurture a new generation of Trump-type patriotic system-over-party Repubes in his brash asshole image and get them into politics at all levels tout suite, the Repubes are doomed to flee back to their country club wussy Standard Operating Procedure and return to being the Controlled Opposition for the dummycrats, who will run circles around them while they babble about the rules. They got no fire in the belly to win and they hate Trump for showing them you can get your hands dirty and win, rather than sucking up to the dummycrats in the hopes they’ll be nice. Because of this, we have 4 years to turn it around, or the dummycrats will run the US forever. Demographically, this is our last gasp. Even if Trump wins tomorrow, this is our last hurrah if we don’t make some very, very radical changes.

    Essentially, this fight has to happen if we are going to stop communism, end demographic replacement, halt the insurgency, and stop our yutes from being corrupted. (When it comes to this fight, maybe the symbols of the CSA are apt?)

    ——–

    As a Southerner, I proudly call it the War of Northern Aggression, because it was. It was not a Civil War, that being the winners’ propaganda term for their invasion of a nation that declared independence from them. Civil War is a war between one people in one country. The CSA was a legitimately independent foreign country, complete with constitution, borders, military to protect said borders, currency, diplomats, flag, etc. If the US had a right to declare independence from England, what right did the US have to compel the South’s continued attendance 85 years later? I’ll accept my ignorance if someone can show me where it’s stated nobody can secede from the US. It seems to be more of a Might Makes Right kind of issue than an actual legal principle. If the Western idea that govt relies on the consent of the governed holds true, secession seems A-OK to me.

    I don’t know if the author has ever been to West Virginia, but they sure do fly a lot of Confederate battle flags there for some reason. The CSA seems to have become a symbol of rebellion against power, even for people who would never want to own slaves. I think they’ve adopted the symbols of the South for their valiant stand for their liberty, not a defense of slavery. I’ve even seen Confederate battle flags in Germany and Prague. I personally don’t like to fly the CSA battle flag, because it seems like the ignorant man’s symbol of the CSA. It’s the one even stupid people know, even if they don’t actually know what it is. I prefer the Stars and Bars and the Bonnie Blue Flag because they represent the patriotic aspirations without carrying the “ya’llrayciss!” connotations that have grown up around the battle flag. I could hang a Stars and Bars up and very few would know what it was and might even assume it’s a patriotic American flag.

    The South seceded as a rejection of America, but remember-it was after years of political manipulation of the govt by the Northern states to keep the slave states in a weaker position and prevent them from gaining additional votes in Congress. (I think the North’s Big Money Interests wanted to keep the South in a Colonial economy where they were free to produce raw materials for Northern factories and buy their finished products, but never free to stand on their own as an independent economic power.) I don’t necessarily agree with how they did it-It seems like hot heads in SC pretty much dragged them into it, but it seems like it was obvious and unavoidable in retrospect. At the same time, the war didn’t have to happen. Lincoln forced the issue when he refused to permit diplomatic talks with the South. They tried to find a peaceful solution multiple times and Lincoln refused. He also created the conditions for conflict when he dared them to attack his resupply of Fort Sumter. He wanted a cases belli and he got it. Then, he invaded the South. Sounds like a lot of America’s overseas interventions, if you think about it.

    I don’t believe the North has any business lecturing the South about slaves, either, considering they were the first to import them and they sold them to the South. It was only after they realized their profit on the deal they had second thoughts. I believe, had they been left alone to follow their own course, the South would have ended slavery eventually. It was not a profitable enterprise and it was becoming unfavorable globally. The average person had little chance of owning one. I liken it to fighting for the right to own a Lexus. Most Southerners today will never be able to own a Lexus and would not fight for others’ rights to own one, but to defend their homes? I think that’s an easy sell. As for the conscription comment- both sides conscripted.

    Worse, talking about the 1860s Republicans as if they’re some good example is kind of funny. Lincoln was a tyrant during the war. He imprisoned 40,000 of his own countrymen for disagreeing with him. He banished a congressman who opposed the war to the South. He’s the one who forced the Federal government on the rest of us, replacing the states as the primary seat of power in the US, and laid the stage for the oversized, overpowerful FedGov we suffer under and labor to pay as debt slaves today. The system he birthed has turned out no better than the one he attacked. And, if you look at the hordes of illegals his party and the dummycrats are trying to legalize today, slavery is still alive in well, just some different window dressing.

    I think it’s offensive to compare the Southerners to Marxists. It’s a big reach to hang that all on the slavery issue. And for most of us who grew up in the South, we don’t want to own slaves when we remember with respect our ancestors who fought and died for their homeland in the War of Northern Aggression. If the symbols of the CSA and its Valiant Lost Cause resonate today with conservative patriots in America and around the world, it says more about the reality of the systems they suffer under now, not the one they venerate from the past.

    BTW-if your cause is to win, and the persecution of the Communists you listed is to be followed, you’re going to have to destroy Radical Republicans’ govt you championed in your article. They’re on the same side as the Communists and their ranks are full of them and have been for nearly 100 years. If it boils down to a real fight with Communists, I’ll happily fight for this Valiant Cause under the old symbols of that Valiant Lost Cause.

    • Michael Gladius November 3, 2020 at 17:53

      So the solution to a Maoist revolution (which is anti-American, wants an economy built on slave labor, and respects no moral except brute force) is to glorify an anti-American group of revolutionaries who wanted an economy built on slave labor, and respected no moral except brute force? And whose descendants enabled the present-day Maoists to achieve these goals in the 1960s and 1970s by voting for their party of choice thanks to Woodrow Wilson? Interesting concept.

      You are correct that the Radical Republicans aren’t well-known, for the same reason that Joe McCarthy (who mobilized the working class against Communism in the 1950s) is remembered as being on a witch-hunt, and Richard Nixon (who kept them out in the 1970s and enhanced the Sino-Soviet split) doesn’t get credit for desegregating 90% of America in his first term. The Communists in the press don’t like the idea of patriots quashing an anti-American domestic insurgency: it would create a hostile work environment for their planned revolution. Instead, they only recall the moderate Republicans, who are as weak as you have written. The Republicans who play hardball are a mortal threat to the left. The Confederacy? Not even a player.

      Not one article in the Constitution gives the right to secede. Nor the Bill of Rights. Thus, the US government was still legally the government of the South, and the Confederacy had no constitutional basis for secession. Their entire experiment was a repudiation of the Constitution, anyways, much like the French Revolution: tear the old down by force, build something entirely new! As for why we could break away from England but not the South, it’s simple: our nation was founded on the principle that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights by God. The Confederacy was the opposite: it declared that the black was not equal to the white, and slavery was an unalienable law of nature. This is a war of morals, in which one system of morality must crush the other. You cannot serve two masters.

      I have been through West Virginia many times, and I promise you they weren’t flying the Stars and Bars when they had their original meaning. The “fight the power!” attitude they have today is the same as the Marxists of the 1960s, just more muted. When the Hard Hat Rioters beat up the Commie students in NYC after Kent State, they raised the Stars and Stripes in defiance, not the Stars and Bars. Its meaning has changed, but that cannot be projected backwards onto the 1860s.

      Your assertion that the political system was rigged in favor of Northern banks is the reverse of reality: most judicial seats were based on the 18th-Century balance of power, when the South had more population and economic/political power than the North. Within a generation, however, the North had become more populous, more productive, and more culturally dominant. They had fewer resources, but made better use of them, and didn’t need any of the South’s resources. The South blew every opportunity to keep pace with, much less surpass, the North during this period. The best resource on why and how this happened (with plenty of hard data) is the embedded link to “The Impending Crisis of the South.” The Slave states hated this modern-day Prophet Jeremiah so much that they banned the book in several states and lynched anyone found with a copy in his possession.

      President Lincoln did offer political compromises, but the one condition upon which he would not budge was slavery. He was determined to prevent slavery from spreading one county more, and this was his only absolute. The South rejected that condition, and declared war.

      The North abolished slavery, and wasn’t interested in abolition for most of the period.They shared a similar racial disdain as the South, but they wanted to compensate slaveowners and ship the blacks to Liberia rather than keep slavery. The South could have abolished slavery peacefully, but the only method to do this would be if the institution didn’t spread further. Southern states and slave lobbyists spent the entire 1850s trying to conquer Caribbean nations to annex as new slave states (using Texas as their model), and the initial 7 states to secede did so after Lincoln won on the promise of ending the spread of slavery, not his call for volunteers. This, combined with the aforementioned treatment of “The Impending Crisis of the South,” which demonstrated the economic/political/cultural deficiencies of slavery compared to free labor, it should be evident that the Old South had no intention of ending slavery without a fight, particularly when independence would allow them to conquer more Caribbean nations and expand slavery to Brazil. See “The Southern Dram of a Caribbean Empire” for an extensive history on that subject.

      The South instituted conscription at the start of hostilities- the North did so two years later, after the Emancipation Proclamation was made. Many union soldiers weren’t abolitionists until they saw slavery in front of them.

      Lincoln and Jefferson both suspended habeus corpus and imprisoned antiwar opponents during the war. Literally every serious government does this in wartime. And to blame Lincoln for the bloated government of today is to project Woodrow Wilson’s (supported by Southern Democrats), Franklin Roosevelt’s (supported by Southern Democrats), and Lyndon Johnson’s (supported by Southern Democrats) vast expansions onto the past. The Republicans in the 1870s-1950s opposed all of these expansions and ran their governments much leaner. The last president to pay off national debt was Calvin Coolidge: a republican. Lincoln was not Woodrow Wilson, and neither were his successors.

      I do not compare all Southerners to the Marxists, but the Confederacy. Many thousands of Southerners opposed the Confederacy and fought for the Union. When the Old South was uber-obsessed with the Confederacy (pre-1980) it stagnated and became more Arab-like. When it toned that down in the 1980s, it rocketed past the North. The Modern South doesn’t need the Confederacy any more than it needs meth labs. The modern South has plenty to be proud of without falsifying history to make the Confederates into the good guys. Every nation has its villains and evil rulers, but that doesn’t mean that their descendants are automatically evil. It’s ALWAYS a choice.

      So no, the Radical Republicans, not the Confederates, are the way to fight Communists. The descendants of the Confederates enabled the Marxists to win in the 1910s, 1930s,1960s, and 1970s, and the Radical Republican method for quashing an insurgency applies to a Maoist insurgency. The Radical Republicans were not the party of Big Government, the party of Woodrow Wilson is. Considering the Confederacy-obsessed South ran away every time somebody pointed a gun at them during the 1960s, I think that is a poor model to emulate when the Maoists start shooting.

    • Bret November 3, 2020 at 21:03

      Well said

    • ohengineer November 4, 2020 at 16:11

      The South seceded because the North had rejected America, to put it in the same terms as the author. The war was not about ending slavery, but keeping the South in the raw deal to support northeastern industrialists. A large majority of the federal budget was from tariffs paid in southern ports.

      Firing on Ft. Sumter was not the first act of war. The act of war was the resupply of the forts in southern ports which enforced the tariffs. The war was, indeed, the War of Northern Aggression.

      Funny thing about Jim Crow. 26 states had Jim Crow and there were only 11 states in the CSA. “Free Soil” was a northern movement and it didn’t mean free of slavery. It meant free of blacks.

      • Michael Gladius November 8, 2020 at 16:03

        The only port in the South that could even come close to being a cash cow for tariffs was New Orleans. Every other southern port was too small and unprofitable to qualify. The northern ports were where the tariff money flowed in. Many Confederates hoped that Charleston, SC would become more like New York post-secession. “The Impending Crisis of the South” discusses this point multiple times.

        The notion that resupplying Fort Sumter was “an act of war” is less convincing than Japan’s reasons for attacking Pearl Harbor. Was our war against Japan a war of aggression? Since secession was not legally permitted by the Constitution, and was instead based on brute force, then there is no moral or legal obligation for the federal government to bend over backwards for the secessionists. Only a snooty fool feels he is entitled to that privilege in war.

        You are correct that there were other laws similar to Jim Crow outside of the ex-Confederate states. Having read them, however, I know that 90% are focused on either schools or banning interracial marriages. The ex-Confederate states went much farther, and committed worse abuses, for longer than any of the other states.

        Your last point on the Free Soilers is a fabrication. The Free Soilers were strongest in the Midwest/Great Lakes, as it sought to abolish slavery, lower taxes,and protect small farmers. It did not take a stance on racial issues, but merely demanded an abolition of slavery. On the private level, its members were divided between assimilating the blacks or sending them to Liberia.

  13. Mark. November 3, 2020 at 13:51

    Much is made about slavery nowadays with one thing being very conveniently forgotten about, and that is that our slavery was inherited from the British Empire. The US Gov. didn’t establish it, and certainly neither did the CSA as it was only around for four years. Another thing that seems to have slipped the mind of the collective consciousness, is that slavery has existed for most of human history, and it underpins the whole of western civilization. Name a major western civilization from that past that didn’t use slavery? For that matter, name any advanced human civilization that did not employ slave labor? If such exists there are but few examples. Furthermore, who is saying we still don’t employ a form of slavery? By legal tender laws, labor is denominated in US Dollars, and then we have governments at various levels in the form of income taxes taking a portion of those dollars, and taking our labor they are, but with an intermediary, the dollar. Slavery has merely been transmuted to a different form.

    • Michael Gladius November 3, 2020 at 16:44

      Actually, our slavery was copied from the Islamic slavers in West Africa, as was the case across the new world. And yes, the Confederacy only had it for 4 years… because they lost the war and it was abolished without their permission. XD

      Western Civilization after the Roman Empire did not employ slave labor, and quickly surpassed Rome. In our own country, slave states’ economies stagnated and fell behind the free states. If you read the article-embedded link to “The Impending Crisis of the South,” the author points this out and compares several states to provide concrete evidence. When New York, a state smaller and colder than Virginia (which included west Virginia back then), outproduces Virginia in every aspect, including agriculture, then that should be an attention-getter.

      Our slavery to money is self-imposed as a result of our Protestant founding. The only viable alternative is a property-based economy, like the Middle Ages. Hilaire Belloc wrote extensively about this in the 1920s.

      • Mark. November 7, 2020 at 14:29

        The income tax uses paper money as a medium to steal our labor just as the slavers of the past used firearms, ships and bullwhips for that same purpose. Saying it is self imposed here is saying that it was self imposed in the old south (also Prostestant). Many slaves were quite happy with their situation and some of them even willingly fought for the Confederacy, but it was still slavery, and southerners were honest about it in terms of calling it slavery, unlike our politicians of today. The income tax was first imposed during the Civil War in the north, and except for a rather brief interlude of a couple decades has been with us since. It is worth noting that unlike the slavery in the south, where one could purchase one’s freedom, such is not an option with our current system of income tax slavery.

        Western Civilization after the collapse of Rome in the 5th century was non-existent for several centuries. During the Dark Ages Western Europe was ravaged with invasions, wars, disease epidemics and starvation. The pagan germanic tribes that overran Europe during that time used slave labor. It was eventually the Catholic Church that put an end to slavery for awhile until the colonial period and people needed large amounts of cheap labor.

        I have read other sources discussing the overall efficiency of slavery. Adam Smith discusses it and its problems, and although I am not strongly opinionated about the south’s version of it, I do think the current income tax based version of slavery is wrecking the current US economy.

        • Michael Gladius November 8, 2020 at 16:22

          Slaves were not happy with being slaves, and many of them ran away when Union forces came close to their plantations. That portrayal is a post-event fabrication.

          Financial shackles are a real thing, but you are wrong to portray the income tax levied during the war as comparable to the 16th Amendment, which occurred when there was no war and by a completely different administration. They are completely unrelated phenomena, despite sharing the same last name.

          After the collapse of Rome, Western Civilization went through a few troubled centuries, but by the 1100s it was flourishing. Medieval Civilization exceeded Rome well before the 1300s, and without slave labor. Once the Germanic tribes were Christianized, they stopped using slave labor. The return of slave labor occurred during a period when the Church’s influence was weakest, and the Spanish conquistadors were too far away to be punished.

          For today, property is the solution. I recommend Hilaire Belloc for the means of achieving this.

          • Mark. November 11, 2020 at 14:12

            https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-power-of-the-powerless/

            Reference number 8 in this article you should find is informative reading in that it references a speech by a former slave who willingly fought for the CSA. That is just one example but there are others. Also one must consider that part of Lincoln’s reasoning for issuing the emancipation proclamation, freeing all slaves in states in rebellion against the union, was to provoke a slave revolt against the south thereby weakening its position militarily. The fact that the strategy largely failed speaks volumes about the state of slavery in the south. As most of the military age men of the South were in the army, there would not have been much to stand in the way of a slave revolt. I’m also aware of an archeological study done in Virginia at a former plantation house, along with other accounts that would suggest that many slaves were armed. Such things would suggest that had the slaves wanted to revolt enmasse that they could have. As to claims of post event fabrications, in the history of warfare such fabricatons are almost always the doings of the victors, not the losers in any conflict.

            The income tax was initially imposed during the war, and then after the conclusion of the war was ruled as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. For several decades there was no income tax, but then it was reestablished after passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913. The income tax was and is a shackle, a real shackle in that there are many in jail because of it, and the government responsible for imposing this tax was not the confederate government, it was gone by that point, but rather the government that was supposedly fighting to end slavery. I contend that it reinvented it instead. Property taxes were yet another bain upon liberty that came out of this war, and like the income tax is also a direct assault on one’s right to own and use property. Any meaningful discussion of property, by Belloc or anyone else, must honestly address these issues in my opinion.

            The question of technological advance after Rome and in the Medieval era is an interesting one with room for much debate, but taking the Roman side of the issue a bit, a Roman would probably have been appalled at the state of Medieval European cities. No running water or sewage in these cities, no baths, inferior building materials. Roman concrete is still superior to modern concrete. The Medieval west benefitted during that era from technological advances coming from China, things like paper and gunpowder being a couple examples.

  14. Anonymous November 3, 2020 at 15:06

    4.5

  15. Randolph Scott November 3, 2020 at 18:14

    What I have noticed in the past week is an uptick of people referring to others that have an opposing view as as stupid. One man complained about his home area situation and was called stupid more than once. WTF is happening here?

    It appears that some people don’t really care about the regular ‘joes’ if they don’t agree with their point of view. This type of treatment is getting old real fast.

  16. Machine Trooper November 4, 2020 at 20:10

    I like the terms of the treaty. Only #7 seems over-the-top to me.

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