Writing in the Ashes by Douglas Southall Freeman

Writing in the Ashes

by Douglas Southall Freeman

Chapter II of his book,

The South to Posterity
An Introduction to the Writing of
Confederate History

(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939. The spelling
and citation are Douglas Southall Freeman's.)

The South to Posterity by Douglas Southall Freeman - Title Page.

Sherman marched to the sea; the forts of Mobile fell one by one after a defense worthy of Troy; and, on Palm Sunday, 1865, when the first touch of green was coming to the forests of Midland Virginia, Lee surrendered. It is impossible fully to realize now what the death of the Confederacy meant to the South. For four years the two had been synonymous. A common cause never had unified the South completely, even when it was the Confederacy; but the blows delivered on the anvil of war from Sabine Pass to Harpers Ferry had brought the Southern States nearer a welding than ever they had been. Then, suddenly, the South found itself eleven conquered States---each one of which felt itself in a strange manner the guardian of a disembodied Confederacy and the defender of its history. Neither the Poland for which Sienkiewicz wrote nor the Czecho-Slovakia of our own time affords more than a crude analogy. Even while the ashes still smoldered, Southerners began to write in them "vindications of Southern rights," memorials of the fallen, personal narratives and military and political apologia.

Some of the first works on the constitutional basis of secession were written during the five years when the proudest of American individualists were under military rule. Many of their own newspapers fell into the hands of those who usually are grouped together as "carpet-baggers and scallywags." From the lips of bitter radicals in Congress, all Confederates received like denunciation as "rebels." They were disfranchised. None of them had larger security than was represented by military paroles, and some had not even that. Their former servants were their political masters and were incited against them. Around them were all the evidence of what war costs in widows' tears and orphans' woe, in death and in poverty. Leaders in every State felt that where the war had taken so hideous a toll, they should prove to posterity that the struggle was one for constitutional right. So, from many pens, there began to flow defences of the South.

The longest of these is Alexander H. Stephens' Constitutional View of the Late War between the States issued in two volumes in 1867.1 This surely is one of the most unusual books ever written in the United States by a man of high intelligence. Vice President Stephens had a feeble, deformed figure, and was more boy than man in appearance, but he was blessed with a keen mind and impressive eloquence. After the war he received at his Georgia home, Liberty Hall, a number of old-time Northern friends. With them he argued for days on the constitutional issues of the struggle, and ere long he decided that he would present the Southern case in dialogue. He introduced three fictitious individuals to debate with him---Judge Bynum from Massachusetts, who represented the radical Republican viewpoint, Professor Norton, of Connecticut, who spoke for conservative Republicans, and Major Heister, a Pennsylvanian and a Northern War Democrat. With these personages, Mr. Stephens discoursed on the constitution for some 1200 printed pages. In this day the reading not less than the method of presentation has its associations with Job, but every argument on every phase of the right of secession is set forth.

Douglas Southall Freeman, c. 1916, approx. age 30, as the new editor of the Richmond News Leader.
Douglas Southall Freeman, c. 1916, approx. age 30, as the new editor of the Richmond News Leader.

In sharpest contrast to Mr. Stephens' maximum opus stands that brief classic of American political argument---Is Davis a Traitor?2 This little book, written at white heat and published in 1866, is probably the most dazzling product of the near-genius of Alfred T. Bledsoe, Kentucky born, a graduate of West Point, lawyer in Illinois, professor of French and later of Mathematics in the University of Mississippi and the University of Virginia. War Clerk Jones, who presently will appear, gives an unhappy picture of Doctor Bledsoe while assistant Secretary of War, as a groaning mountain of flesh much averse to the routine work he had to do; but when one reads Bledsoe's argument on secession or follows him through the pages of the Southern Review, one gets an entirely different picture. Doctor Bledsoe was counsel for the defence, to be sure, but he was a great advocate and a most discerning analyst. If any Americans are either curious or dubious concerning the issues raised in 1861, Bledsoe is the supreme Southern authority.

Following Bledsoe and Stephens, so many Southerners devoted themselves to the presentation of the constitutional argument that a convinced audience quickly grew tired. Even the Reverend J. William Jones---a man who never heard any story of the Confederacy otherwise than with reverence---had to admit at a later time in the Southern Historical Society Papers that he could not attempt to publish all the Confederate memorial addresses. His reason doubtless was that these speeches usually were a mere restatement of the argument on the right of secession.

Two later incidents may serve to illustrate how far the South went. Twenty years ago a young Southerner was asked to go into the Northern Neck of Virginia as one of two speakers at a Confederate reunion. His senior and principal was a State official born early enough to have some memory of the war. As they made their way on a little yacht to the place of meeting, the younger man made bold to ask the orator of the evening what his subject would be, in order that duplication might be avoided. The elderly politician spread himself in the amplitude of his deck-chair and answered: "Well, I shall relate briefly the outstanding events of the period during which the constitution of the United States was drafted; then I shall trace the pernicious development and expose the fallacy of John Marshall's theory of nationalism, and I shall vindicate beyond all cavil the right of secession; from that I shall pass to the events of the war and shall pay tribute to General Lee, to General Jackson and to the private soldier; and I shall conclude, of course, with a tribute to Southern womanhood." He essayed all for which he contracted, though nodding heads were not lifted at the last to his lofty flight in praise of Southern women---as if they needed praise.

The other instance concerned a Southern staff-officer who wrote one most useful book in the eighteen-seventies and, after almost thirty years, decided to write a second. He prefaced a valuable historical narrative with a long discourse on secession and sent the whole to a Northern publishing house. The editor-in-chief praised the manuscript but said that, in his opinion, the case for secession had been stated so often that the book would lose its effectiveness if preceded by a detailed argument on the subject. After some exchanges, the author had to choose between the excision of the essay on secession and the rejection of the manuscript by a firm that would have printed it expansively and would have circulated it widely. The old Confederate did not hesitate. He demanded the return of the manuscript and issued his book through a local printing house---with every word of the paper on secession in proper place. That was wholly characteristic of the mind of the Southern survivors of the war. Always their cry was, "Hear me for my cause. . . . "

An older Douglas Southall Freeman, still hard at work.
An older Douglas Southall Freeman, still hard at work.

Next to the men who wrote in the ashes the vindication of the South were those authors who memorialized the dead. These writers had begun their labors ere the battles ended. Their children have continued it. Every year witnesses the publication of volumes that are primarily memorials to Confederates who may have been dead this half century. Some of these books represent little more than ancestor-worship and have scant historical value. Others include letters of war-date or early reminiscences that occasionally illuminate some of the many dark passages of Confederate history. Several memoirs of known importance still are in manuscript.

Perhaps the most distinguished of the memorialists was Robert Lewis Dabney. This able, conservative divine was forty years of age and was teaching in the Union Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian church in Virginia when, in 1860, he was asked informally if he would accept the pastorate of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City. The same year he was offered a professorship at Princeton. He declined both proposals because he felt the South needed him.3 By the spring of 1862, he was a major on the staff of "Stonewall" Jackson and was following the bloody course of the Army of the Valley from Front Royal to Winchester and back again to Cross Keys and to Port Republic. In Jackson he found his idol, and to the service of that amazing man he devoted his whole heart.

After Jackson was killed, Major Dabney was asked by the general's widow to prepare a Life of the fallen leader. Doctor Dabney proceeded to write more than a biography. It shaped itself as a memorial, succession of moral lessons, a review of the Southern cause and an expose of the misdeeds of the North. This labor Dabney was completing when the Confederacy perished. An English edition was issued in 1865, but this was revised slightly for American publication and was not in final form until April 1, 1866. Mrs. Jackson was most anxious that General Lee read the biography before it appeared in this country and, on a visit to Lexington, she brought the manuscript with her. General Lee read it, as he said, for the delight of the narrative---it was one of the few books on the war that ever he read---and to his embarrassment he found several instances where Major Dabney manifestly had asserted more for Jackson in respect to the strategy of the Army than the records justified or "Old Jack" ever would have dreamed of crediting to himself.

Lee had the difficult task of telling this to Mrs. Jackson and, in so doing, he pursued the familiar masculine method of obscuring what he did not think it tactful to say in plain terms. One point, among several, involved a sharp difference of opinion concerning the unhappy affair at Falling Waters, Sept. 19, 1862, when Gen. W. N. Pendleton, chief of artillery, rode to Army headquarters at midnight and reported that he feared all the reserve artillery of the Army had been captured. Jackson went back to the Potomac the next morning, quickly drove the enemy into the river and secured the position with slight loss of men or equipment. Gen. D. H. Hill, who worshipped Jackson almost as profoundly as did Dabney, was satisfied that the manuscript was correct in its account of the episode and in its emphasis on the importance of the service Jackson rendered. General Lee, who had Doctor Pendleton as his rector as as one of his chaplains at Washington College, felt that the artillerist's blunder had been exaggerated.

What was Doctor Dabney to do? He would not accept Lee's account as accurate; but neither he nor Mrs. Jackson would have thought for a moment of writing what the General disapproved. The conclusion was to pursue a strange course: Doctor Dabney struck out his own version of the incident and substituted that of General Lee without a word of explanation concerning the authorship, and in order that he might not assume responsibility for the general's statement, he put it in quotation marks. There it stands today on pages 577-78 of Dabney's Life and Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson.4

This, of course, throws light on Dabney's own convinced opinion as well as on the esteem in which General Lee was held; but it was not more than an incident in its relation to a book which is remarkable despite the pitfalls that Doctor Dabney set for himself by his inclusive and moralizing treatment. His bitterness offends; his constant assumption that the Almighty was a Southern partisan shocks the present-day reader. The essential accuracy of his book, written in a time of misery and confusion, is a tribute to his memory, his diligence and his mental capacity. Seldom is it studied nowadays, because it has been superseded by Henderson's dazzling Stonewall Jackson, but the fact is Henderson leaned so heavily on Dabney as to accept even his mistakes. As further evidence of the vigor of the mind of Dabney, it may be noted that if he had not been cited here as the first distinguished Confederate biographer, he would have deserved a place amongh those who expounded the principle of States' rights. His Defence of Virginia and the South is a powerful paper.

While Dabney's memorial to Jackson was in the press, General Lee was planning a memorial to his soldiers. In a letter of July 31, 1865, to most of his general officers, he said: "I am desirous that the bravery and devotion of the Army of Northern Virginia be correctly transmitted to posterity. This is the only tribute that can now be paid to the worth of its noble officers and soldiers." To one of his comrades he was more specific: "I shall write this history," he said, "not to vindicate myself, or to promote my own reputation. I want that the world shall know what my poor boys, with their small numbers and scant resources, succeeded in accomplishing."5 In the autumn of 1866, to fiery old Jubal Early, who was preparing his own narrative of operations, Lee wrote: "I would recommend . . . that, while giving facts which you think necessary for your own vindication, you omit all epithets or remarks calculated to excite bitterness or animosity between different sections of the country."6 What Lee desired, most of all, were official reports, returns of the Army, and similar documents that had been lost or destroyed when his records had been burned by panicky teamsters on the retreat from Petersburg.

It developed that his own letter books, which contained all except his most confidential communications to the President, had escaped the flames. General Longstreet's papers for the last months of the war were placed at his disposal. Several other officers sent in duplicates of their reports. The most valuable of these, from the standpoint of the historical investigator, were those of Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox, to whose thoughtfulness we owe one of the few adequate reports on the siege of Petersburg. These documents General Lee supplemented with many newspaper clippings, but he must have discovered early that adequate materials for the last year of the war could not be assembled until access could be had to the Confederate archives, which had been captured and carried to Washington. Permission to use those records was denied at the time to Confederate historians. Amid his many labors at Washington College, General Lee found scant leisure to pursue the collection of papers from other sources, and, apparently, he never wrote any part of his intended narrative. He may have decided that passion still deafened the ears of the nation; he may have realized the truth could not be told without damaging the reputation of men he respected. In his fine sensitiveness of soul, he may have been deterred by the tactless suggestion that the book would be very profitable. Nothing could have been more repulsive to him than the thought of gaining in purse by relating the tragedy that had been enacted in the blood of the South's best.

Perhaps it is well that General Lee did not write his memorial of his Army. His letters how him not without skill in that type of composition. The revision he gave his military reports, which Col. Charles Marshall compiled, always added to their clarity. For sustained historical narrative, Lee had no aptitude. His introduction to his edition of his father's Revolutionary memoirs demonstrates that. More fundamentally, his character was such that he never could have brought himself to place blame where it was due. Any detailed military work from his pen would have been written in the reserved spirit of his letter to Mrs. Jackson, a propos of Dabney's mistakes, and would have raised more questions than it settled.7

Very different from anything that Lee might have written about his Army was the first conspicuous personal narrative, which, ironically enough, was not the work of a combatant but of a clerk. John Beauchamp Jones was a Baltimorean, born in 1810, who spent some of his boyhood in Kentucky and Missouri and came back to his native city in time for Poe to commend him as one who was editing the Saturday Visitor "with much judgment and general ability."8 Jones married Frances Custis, from the Eastern Shore of Virginia and doubtless a member of the same fine stock as the first husband of Mrs. George Washington. Because magazine editing was not a profitable occupation, Jones supplemented it by much writing on his own account. The list of his novels is formidable, but only his Wild Western Scenes attracted a large audience. This sold to 100,000 copies prior to the war and had the added distinction of a Confederate edition.

From Baltimore, Jones went to the vicinity of Philadelphia, where, from 1857 to the outbreak of the war, he edited the weekly Southern Monitor. He started South on April 9, 1861, journeyed to Richmond, went on to Montgomery, and came back to Richmond when the capital was moved. He had begun a diary the day before he left home. On April 29, he made this entry: "At fifty-one I can hardly follow the pursuit of arms; but I will write and preserve a diary of the revolution . . . To make my diary full and complete as possible, is now my business."9 It did not remain his exclusive business, but the diary was given authority of a sort by Jones's access to confidential records after he was made a clerk in the War Department. Through months dark or hopeful, he wrote almost daily, long entries or short, until April 19, 1865. On that date his diary ends abruptly. Apparently he went back to the Eastern Short and subsequently returned to Philadelphia to negotiate for the publication of his Rebel War Clerk's Diary.10 It was in press when, on Feb. 4, 1866, Jones breathed his last.

Gamaliel Bradford overshot the mark when he spoke of Jones as the Confederate Pepys.11 Little that was Pepysian appears in Jones's diary except for his insatiable curiosity; but much that was no less illuminating than the gossip of the Secretary of the Admiralty was recorded by the War Department Clerk. Full of absurd prejudices---even extending them to so great a man as Gen. Josiah Gorgas---Jones had a singularly large number of military incompetents among his favorites. The special, the well-nigh unique value of his diary is that it holds up a mirror to the hopes and fears of the city in which he labored. Whether Jones had this in mind when he began, it is impossible to say. Neither may one be sure that he realized the certain fame that would come to a man who set down what generals never saw and newspapers thought unworthy or report. In any event, he did this service while McClellan threatened and Grant thundered outside Richmond, and he has his reward. If not in the text, at least in the footnotes, he is more often quoted by historians than any contemporary writer on the Confederacy. He is a model for the emulation of any author who may not hope to write formal history. Reputation and the gratitude of posterity await any observant person in a center of population who will register accurately the daily comments of a few persons daily on the trend of events. The diary of such a citizen of Rome wold be prized above the lost books of Livy.

Jones serves the historian, also, on two other matters concerning which information is scant---prices and weather. He studied prices with the most intensive care, because he scarcely earned enough to keep his family alive and he tried always to be forehanded in maintaining a small reserve of provisions. From his pathetic accounts of his triumphant purchase of a peck of peas and his tragic relation of the failure of a scheme of co-operative buying in North Carolina, one has a glimpse of what the war meant in hunger and anxiety. A student of domestic science could reconstruct a surprising story of family economy from Jones's pages. It might not be Orchids on Your Budget, but it would demonstrate that thrift in the sixties was an art advanced beyond anything the domestic guides of our day have had the temerity to pronounce attainable. As for the weather, Jones frequently recorded rains or hot waves when the historians of campaigns never mentioned them.

Aside from his discountable bias and the display of occasional credulity, Jones had only one serious fault as a chronicler of life in the Confederate capital: he could not resist the temptation of posing as a prophet---after the event. A reader scarcely can blame the poor war clerk for desiring to say "I told you so," but occasionally one is provoked to discover that Jones wrote into his diary facts he could not possibly have known at the time he professes to have recorded them. In short, one has to deal with a glossed text; and, if it were worth while, one probably could identify most of the glosses and restore the original.

One this score it may be interesting to not that while there are occasional glosses in other documents and some instances of the suppression of records, Confederate historical literature is relatively free of deliberate frauds. Doctor Charles A. Graves years ago proved forgery of the letter in which General Lee is made to tell his son Custis that "duty is the sublimest word in the English language."12 The language is almost a direct steal from Kant, but the clumsy and obvious forgery may have been executed solely for his own amusement by some idle young officer who came across Lee letters in the loot of Arlington. Of course one finds endless instances where the imagination has soared with time and distance. In the case of only one writer is there reasonable suspicion of extensive forgery.

While Jones's diary was having its first reading---and not a friendly reading by Southern politicians---a number of men in different parts of the country were seeking to establish magazines that would be a depository of historical as well as of general literature. The aim seemed reasonable, but, unfortunately, all plans overlooked the poverty of the people. Gen. D. H. Hill made one of the bravest struggles with his monthly entitled The Land We love, which was published in Charlotte. The first issue bears date of May, 1866, and the last issue was for March, 1869. It is, perhaps, more important for General Hill's views on education than for the historical articles it published; but first and last it included much of Jackson from Hill's pen, and a series of articles, all too brief, by Wade Hampton. Its miscellaneous historical anecdotes were diverting if unimportant.

More remarkable in every way was the Southern Review, a quarterly which Doctor Bledsoe began soon after he completed Is Davis a Traitor? General Lee had said after the war to Bledsoe, "Doctor, you must take care of yourself; you have a great work to do; we all look to you for our vindication." Bledsoe took this perhaps more seriously than it was meant, and to his magazine he devoted immense effort. Doctor Edwin Mims states that in the average issue Doctor Bledsoe had from three to five articles, and that for one number he write all but one article, or a quarterly of about 250 pages.13 They were not superficial articles, either. Bledsoe put into nearly all of them the rich resources of his powerful mind. His was the voice of conservatism but never was it apologetic. Like a valiant rearguard his face always was to the foe. After he died in 1877, his Review expired within two years, but it had become a distinct monument to his peculiar abilities. Much of it is deadly memorial now; but occasionally, when one turns to a subject of special sacredness to Bledsoe, one feels precisely as if one were talking in the Round Church of the Templars, and a knight suddenly rose from the floor and brandished his blade.

Like Bledsoe, John Esten Cooke wrote in the ashes but not with slowly diminishing heat. He did not write for bread alone. In his devotion to Stuart and the cavalry corps he determined that the Beau Sabreur of the Confederacy should not lack his literary monument and, in 1867, he published Wearing of the Gray.14 This was a series of personal sketches of the most renowned cavalrymen of the Army of Northern Virginia. Judged photographically, some of the pictures were out of focus, but Cooke "caught" Stuart precisely as a fortunate artist now and again gets a sitter in characteristic and revelatory pose. Nothing that has been written since Cooke's day has changed a line in the laughing face of Stuart.

Cooke gave in his book an interesting example of the manner in which myths develop quickly through the uncritical acceptance of stories which recount feats on the border line of the attainable. Perhaps the three Southern generals concerning whom the most extreme stories were told during their fighting years were "Stonewall" Jackson, Bedford Forrest, and Turner Ashby. The last-named of these three, a romantic, fearless figure, with a long beard and complexion almost as dark as a Moor's, commanded Jackson's cavalry through the winter of 1861-62 and during the following spring. Ashby was not accounted a good army administrator and he insisted upon maintaining the independence of his command; but in every retreat and in all the advances of the Army of the Valley, he was closest to the enemy. His troopers regarded him as invincible, much as their companions of the "foot cavalry" thought Jackson invulnerable. In the bivouacs, a tale that credited Ashby with some superhuman feat had only to be told to be believed. After a few months there was no appeal to the modest Ashby for the verification or denial of any of his alleged exploits, because he was killed in action near Harrisonburg, June 6, 1862. Cooke must have heard from some of Ashby's troopers many a tale of the fallen officer's prowess and, in his Wearing of the Gray, he wrote down this one:

Jackson slowly retired from Winchester [in March, 1862], the cavalry under Ashby bringing up the rear, with the enemy closely pressing them. The long column defiled through the town, and Ashby remained the last, sitting his horse in the middle of Loudoun street as the Federal forces poured in. The solidary horseman,15 gazing at them with so much nonchalance, was plainly seen by the Federal officers and two mounted men were detached to make a circuit by the back streets, and cut off his retreat. Ashby either did not see this maneuver, or paid no attention to it. He waited until the Federal column was nearly upon him, and had poured a hot fire; then he turned his horse, waved his hate above his head, and uttering a cheer to defiance, galloped off. All at once, as he galloped down the street, he saw before him the two cavalrymen sent to cut off and capture him. To a man like Ashby, inwardly chafing at being compelled to retreat, no sight could be more agreeable. Here was an opportunity to vent his spleen; and charging the two mounted men he was soon upon them. One fell with a bullet through his breast; and, coming opposite the other, Ashby seized him by the throat, dragged him from the saddle, and putting spurs to his horse, bore him off. This scene, which some readers may set down for romance, was witnessed by hundreds both of the Confederates and Federal army.

To reaffirm his faith in this story, the devoted Cooke made it the subject of one of the woodcuts of his book. Ashby is seen in the act of gripping the second Federal trooper by the throat  at the instant a Union column, in most orderly array, is two doors down the street.

Actually, as recorded by Ashby's chaplain, Reverend J. B. Avirett, in a book16 which appeared the same year as Cooke's, here is what happened:

Fighting and falling back slowly, Ashby retarded the advance of the enemy until Jackson effected the evacuation of Winchester, which was completed on the night of the 11th of March. On the morning of the 12th, as the enemy continued to advance, the Confederate infantry retired by the turnpike leading up the Valley to Staunton. Skirmishing almost to the limits of the town, Ashby, as quiet as if on dress parade, followed his men down the street, and though followed closely by the enemy, coolly stopped to take a biscuit offered him by a noble-hearted lady.17

Perhaps the difference between history and myth could not be better illustrated than by the difference between a momentary pause for a biscuit and the bloody affray that Cooke had been assured hundreds of men in two armies had seen.

President Davis was not a man about whom myths gather, though Pollard and others accused him during the war of every political crime short of treason. The end of hostilities found Mr. Davis probably the most unpopular man in the wrecked Confederacy, but after he was taken to Fort Monroe, Virginia, and was put in irons, the entire South was outraged. He seemed to the Southern soldiers to be suffering vicariously for them. Forgotten speedily were all the old resentments and complaints. A prisoner, he had larger affection than he had enjoyed at any time after the winter of 1861-62.

He had this additional good fortune. The chief surgeon at Fort Monroe, and medical director of the X Army corps, was Doctor John Joseph Craven. This interesting man, born in utter poverty at Newark, N. J., in 1822, had schooled himself while working in a chemical establishment. When the magnetic telegraph was invented, Craven quit the factory and joined the crew that was constructing the first line from New York to Philadelphia. He made some of the pioneer discoveries in electrical insulation but failed to procure a patent. Turning to new adventures, he joined a party of Forty-Niners and went to California, where he had no better fortune. On his return to Newark he devoted himself to medicine and, on the outbreak of hostilities, became surgeon of a New Jersey regiment. He must have had exceptional administrative capacity, for he son was made medical director of the Department of the South and in 1864 received like appointment for a corps.

It was by the sheerest chance that this physician, simple, able, understanding and with a native antagonism to cruelty, should have been summoned to advise on the treatment of President Davis. To him Mr. Davis owed the lessened rigor of treatment and to him, no less, the South owed its first dispassionate picture of the imprisonment. Doctor Craven was mustered out of service January 27, 1866. and thereafter was free to write as he pleased. His Prison Life of Jefferson Davis appeared that year.18 Based on a diary Doctor Craven kept while at Fort Monroe and supplemented with reports of many conversations, it was an honest book. Had Doctor Craven been a Confederate himself, instead of an avowed Republican enemy of slavery, he could not have been more candid, nor could he have presented more clearly the courage, the character and the high intelligence of President Davis. He wrote while Mr. Davis still was a prisoner, but in the last paragraphs of his little volume he asked a question that may have had some influence on public opinion. These were his final words: "For the crime of treason, not one of these---not the humblest official under the late rebellion---was one whit more or less guilty than the man whom they elected their titular President; and if any other crimes can be alleged against him, in the name of justice, and for the honor of our whole country, both now and in the hereafter, are not his friends and suffering family entitled to demand that he may have an early and impartial trial as provided by the laws of our country?"19 It is pleasant to record that his fine-spirited man continued a life of generous usefulness to his death past three score and ten. No less is it pleasant to note that in the summer of 1939 the United Daughters of the Confederacy unveiled a tablet in his honor at Fort Monroe.

Mr. Davis found another early defender in Frank H. Alfriend, last editor of the famous Southern Literary Messenger.20 In 1868 Alfriend answered through his Life of Jefferson Davis the allegations of Pollard.21 It has to be admitted that Alfriend was as partial to Mr. Davis as Pollard was hostile, and that he started as many fires of controversy as he extinguished. For twenty years, Alfriend's early attempt to portray the life of the Confederate President, market as it inevitably was by errors and omissions, was considered by the critics of Mr. Davis as virtually his own apologia,22 though in actual fact the book apparently was written without the President's authorization. Only one letter from Mr. Alfriend to Mr. Davis appears in Rowland's collection23 and that bears a date long after a mournful event had changed the spirit of Confederate historical writing.

NOTES:

1 Philadelphia (National Publishing Co.).

2 Baltimore (Innes).

3 Cf. T. C. Johnson, Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney; Richmond (The Pres. Comm. of Publication), 1903; p. 198 ff.

4 Edition of 1866, New York (Blelock).

5 J. William Jones, Personal Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee; New York (Appleton), 1874; p. 180.

6 Ibid., p. 221.

7 A letter from Lee to Doctor A. T. Bledsoe, somewhat similar in content to that addressed Mrs. Jackson, led Gamaliel Bradford to remark: "This letter, like many others, goes far to reconcile me to the loss of the memoirs Lee did not write. I feel sure that with the best intentions in the world he would have left untold a great deal that we desire to know." Lee the American; New York (Houghton Mifflin), 1912; p. 151.

8 10 D. A. B., p. 182.

9 I J. B. Jones, Swiggett edition, New York (Old Hickory Bookshop), 1935; p. 29.

10 Philadelphia (J. B. Lippincott and Co.), 1866.

11 American Mercury, December, 1925.

12 Reports Virginia Bar Asso., 1914, pp. 176-215; 1915, pp. 299-315; 1917-18, pp. 288-291.

13 Edwin Mims, "Southern Magazines" in 7 The South in the Building of the Nation; Richmond (The Southern Publication Society), 1909-13; pp. 464-65.

14 New York (E. B. Treat & Co.).

15 Op. cit., p. 74.

16 The Memoirs of General Turner Ashby and His Compeers; Baltimore (Selby & Dulany), 1867.

17 Op. cit., pp. 155-156.

18 New York (Carleton).

19 Op. cit., 1st ed., p. 377.

20 Cf. J. W. Davidson, Living Writers of the South; New York (Carleton), 1869; p. 18.

21 Chicago (Caxton).

22 Cf. J. H. Reagan to Jefferson Davis, 7 Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, Jackson, Miss (Miss. Dept. Archives and History), 1923, p. 563.

23 Ibid., p. 528.

Bogus Conclusions of “False Cause” Book: Guest Post by Historian Philip Leigh

Bogus Conclusions of “False Cause” Book:
Guest Post by Historian Philip Leigh

Published on his blog, Civil War Chat,
November 6, 2020

 

“No man is so blind as one who will not see.”

I am delighted to publish this outstanding guest post with video links by historian and author Philip Leigh, critiquing an interview given by College of Charleston professor Adam Domby about Domby's book, The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory.

From 2012 to 2015, Phil Leigh contributed 24 articles to The New York Times Disunion Series, which commemorated the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. He was one of Disunion's most frequent contributors. He is the author of seven books on the Civil War and Reconstruction including his latest, Causes of the Civil War. Visit his Civil War Chat Blog, which includes almost a decade of in-depth articles on history, and history in today's silly woke world, as well as videos he has produced to go along with his written articles. Also visit his Amazon Author Page.

1. Link to Domby’s interview with the Avery Research Center June 16, 2020.

2. Link to Phil Leigh's YouTube video November 5, 2020 entitled False Conclusions of Adam Domby's *False Cause* Book.

From Phil Leigh

While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of “extralegal” conduct by anti-statue mobs. The False Cause focuses on Civil War and Reconstruction memory, particularly involving Confederate memorials.

First, and foremost, Domby erroneously proclaims that the signature Confederate statues erected in Southern courthouse squares between 1900 and 1920 were chiefly installed to celebrate white supremacy. In truth, they were erected because the old soldiers were fading away. The typical surviving Confederate veteran was aged 60 in 1900 and 80 in 1920. Moreover, memorials for both Federal and Confederate soldiers surged during the war’s semicentennial from 1911 to 1915. Additionally, prior to 1900 the postbellum South was too poor to fund many memorials. Even in 1900 the region’s per capita income was only half the national average. Finally, after the sons of Confederate veterans eagerly joined the military to help win the 1898 Spanish-American War, Union veterans realized that their former rivals were also Americans who deserved their own memorials.

Second, Domby wrongly singles-out Southerners as racist without mentioning Northern racism. Consider, for example, the widespread obsession with defeating black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson.

Johnson became the first black to hold the title in 1908. Since most white boxing fans were outraged that a black had become champion, promoters searched for a white boxer to beat Johnson. In 1910 they matched him against previous champion Jim Jeffries who had earlier retired undefeated. San Francisco novelist Jack London had summoned The Great White Hope, “Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his Alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”

The bout attracted unprecedented attention. Led by The New York Times, the mainstream press was hostile toward blacks: “If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors.” After Johnson won the fight, race riots erupted in New York, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Omaha, Columbus, St. Louis and Wilmington, Delaware.

It took boxing promoters another five years to find a white fighter, Jess Willard, to beat the aging Johnson in 1915. When his victory was displayed on a bulletin board updated by telegraph in New York’s financial district the roar from the streets “would have done credit to a Presidential victory,” according to the New York Tribune. “For a moment the air was filled with hats and newspapers. Respectable businessmen pounded their unknown neighbors on the back” and acted like gleeful children.

Third, Domby sarcastically disparages the fighting qualities of the Confederate soldier. He suggests that the Civil War would have lasted far longer than four years if Southern warriors were any good. He’s merely repeating a common but flawed analysis taught by academics. America’s Revolutionary War, they argue, lasted eight years, which was twice as long as the Civil War. But that remark overlooks the relative casualties.

Soldier deaths during the Revolutionary War totaled 25,000, which was 1% of the population. In contrast, at least 300,000 Confederate soldiers died during the Civil War, which was about 5% of the available white population. (Assuming a larger 400,000 Northern soldiers died during the Civil War their loss ratio would have been only 1.8%.) Thus, the Confederate death ratio was five times the rate of the Revolutionary War in half the time. Such casualties were unsustainable. If America were to engage in a war today and endure the same proportional losses, the number of dead soldiers would total nearly 17 million.

Fourth, to support his assertion that Confederate statues are “all about” white supremacy Domby referred to businessman Julian Carr’s speech at the 1913 Silent Sam statue dedication at North Carolina University. Carr notoriously boasted of whipping a black woman shortly after the War as punishment for insulting a white woman. In the telling of the story Domby makes a number of ommissions and misrepresentations.

First, his claim that Carr was the most prominent speaker is dubious. There were five others including the state’s governor and the university’s president. None made racist remarks, nor are there any such words engraved into the statue.

Second, although the nineteen-year-old Carr’s racist incident is indefensible, Domby fails to explain that he later became a major benefactor to blacks. His was among the first Southern textile mills to employ blacks in production work as opposed to maintenance. His donations to black education included the North Carolina College for Negroes, presently known as North Carolina Central University (NCCU). The school’s black founder praised Carr:

I have never known the first time for him to fail to give to any enterprise which he thought would benefit the colored people or to lend his influence in their behalf. . . I have known scores and scores of colored people who were the recipients of his kindness and generosity. . . I have never known a colored person too poor or ignorant who went to General Carr for assistance who did not receive the same.

Third, Carr also helped black educator William Gaston Pearson who was born a slave in 1858 and worked as a youth at the Carr Factory. Carr recognized his potential and financed his education at Shaw University where Pearson graduated in 1886 at age 28. Thereafter, Pearson began teaching in Durham. In 1922 he became principal of Durham’s Hillside Park High School. In 1931, Hillside was accredited by the Southern Association of Secondary School and Colleges, a major achievement for a black high school during the Great Depression. Pearson also made other business, religious, and educational contributions to the Durham community.

Even if, for purposes of argument, it is assumed that Southerners seceded for slavery, it is not the reason they fought. The North could have let the first seven cotton states secede in peace but instead chose to coerce them back into the Union. Thus, they fought to protect their homeland from invasion. As historian William C. Davis put it,

The widespread Northern myth that Confederates went to the battlefield to perpetuate slavery is just that, a myth. Their letters and diaries, in the tens of thousands, reveal again and again that they fought because their Southern homeland was invaded. . .

Fifth, Domby excuses such present acts as mob destruction of Confederate memorials by explaining that any laws protecting them justify that opponents use so-called extra-legal means to demolish them. Since “extra-legal” is merely a euphemism for illegal, Domby’s argument is the same as the one the Ku Klux Klan used. The Klan argued their extra-legal conduct was necessitated by the ironclad control of the voting apparatus of Carpetbag regimes. Even though he condemned the KKK, South Carolina’s last Carpetbag governor (Daniel Chamberlain) considered it a predictable result:

No excuse can be framed for its outrages, but its causes were plain . . . It flourished where corruption . . . had climbed into power and withered where the reverse was the case. What is certain is that a people of force, pride, and intelligence [when] driven to choose between [temporary] violence and lawlessness and [permanent] misrule will infallibly choose the former.

In his farewell address to the Massachusetts legislature in January 1866, Republican Governor John Andrew warned that Reconstruction should require no humiliation in the South and that it should ally with “the natural leaders” of the region. He prophetically explained that if such men were not taken in as friends, they would resume their leadership as enemies. Republican Reconstruction architects Thaddeus Stevens and Oliver Morton ignored Andrew’s advice.

Chamberlain ultimately concluded that Radical Reconstruction was born of sinister motives, cruelly exploited Southern blacks and was destined to die of its own inadequacies. In retrospect he was certain "there was no possibility of securing good government in South Carolina through Republican influences. . . The vast preponderance of ignorance . . . in that party, aside from downright dishonesty, made it impossible.” The blacks, he felt, were egregiously abused. “Race was used as the tool of heartless partisan leaders.” Blacks were “mercilessly exploited for the benefit of a political [Republican] party, and heartlessly abandoned when the scheme had failed.”

Sixth, Domby makes the common mistake of citing the Declaration of Causes for secession of such states as Mississippi and South Carolina as so-called proof that the Civil War was all about slavery. Yet he ignores the sectional conflicts that are revealed by comparing the constitutions of the CSA and USA.

Unlike the Federal Constitution, the Confederacy’s did not permit protective tariffs. Southerners were ahead of their time in recognizing the benefits of Worldwide free trade. They also outlawed public works spending, which were instead to be financed by the states themselves. Since Southerners disliked crony capitalism their constitution prohibited subsidies for private industry, which were arguably allowed under the “general welfare” clause of the Federal Constitution.

The Confederate Constitution only permitted spending for military defense, repayment of national debt, and the operating costs of the Central Government, not pork barrel spending. In order to further discourage pork spending the President was given a line item veto and bills were normally introduced to Congress by the executive branch. If Congress originated a bill it would need a two-thirds majority to pass as opposed to a simple majority for one proposed by the President. Although her constitution authorized one, the Confederacy never formed a Supreme Court. As a creature of the Federal Government, Confederate leaders, their parents and ancestors had observed that the U. S. Supreme Court tended to make rulings that increasingly concentrated power in the Central Government, which was contrary to the South’s tradition favoring states’ rights.

Seventh, even though Domby states, “Anytime you have someone trying to prevent a topic from being debated, it is a sign they are on the losing side” he never responded to my request to be interviewed on this YouTube channel.

In sum, Domby’s interview by the Avery Research Center suggests that his research merely follows the predetermined conclusion of cloistered academics regarding the reasons for Confederate memorials. Presumably his only purpose was to find evidence that the statues were erected to celebrate and enforce white supremacy, particularly up to 1920. But given the wartime loss ratios noted earlier, only a cynic could reach such a conclusion. To repeat for emphasis, if America were to fight a war today with the same loss ratio as the Confederates, our soldier deaths would total about 17 million. Nobody can doubt that 30 years later the families would badly want to build memorials to both the dead and survivors before they faded away.

Outstanding!
Thank You Phil Leigh!

The Massive Election Fraud of 2020 Can Not Stand

The Massive Election Fraud of 2020
Can Not Stand

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

No Republican will ever win another election if things stay as they are now.

Democrats have discovered the perfect way to "win" every election from now on.

They don't need to pack the Supreme Court.

They don't need to make Puerto Rico and DC states.

They don't need to open the southern border.

They don't even need Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the street.

All they have to do is what they are doing right this minute: Continue with massive mail-in voting. Then make it permanent.

Send ballots to everybody even if they didn't request one, so whoever gets it can vote, regardless of whether they are the registered voter.

Never allow voter rolls to be cleaned up so dead people, and people who have moved, can keep voting.

Get rid of the signature-match and postmark requirements so you can submit as many ballots as you need.

Enable counting for days after election day so you can add votes where necessary, and do not, under any circumstances, let the other party observe anything even though they have a legal right to do so.

There is strong direct evidence documented by hundreds of affidavits and overwhelming circumstantial evidence that voter fraud is occurring. If Democrats were not cheating in places like Philadelphia and Detroit, they would want the other party to observe.

Instead, they cover up windows in counting places and ignore the law and court orders that require them to allow Republicans to observe the counting.

It only takes a few corrupt places to win an election through vote fraud. Philly, Detroit, Atlanta, Milwaukee. There's four right there. Philadelphia is renowned for it's election fraud.

There is no doubt that massive election fraud has taken place and it has been coordinated. These are the same ruthless, corrupt people who gave us two coups d'etat that resulted in the Russia Hoax that President Trump had to deal with for three years, and a political impeachment based on a perfect phone call about Biden's influence peddling, which we now know was true thanks to Hunter Biden's laptop.

Think about how compromised Joe Biden is in dealing with China, thanks to his and Hunter's influence pedding, and Iran, with the nuclear deal in which Joe Biden and Obama guaranteed the world's largest exporter of terrorism a nuclear bomb and billions of dollars in cash to spread their terrorism all over the world.

Attorney General Barr should appoint a special counsel right now to look into Biden's well-documented influence peddling. Investigations are underway but this requires a special council like Mueller with an unlimited budget.

However, one won't be appointed because Republicans never play to win the way Democrats do. That's why Durham didn't announce anything, before the election, about his investigation of the first coup d'etat; and now, he will be shut down.

Obama and Biden, with their blessings, gave ISIS a caliphate.

Trump destroyed all that, but it will now be revived.

Think about Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation and Diane Feinstein holding Blasey Ford's false accusations until just before the vote, which is a popular Democrat technique. These people are the sleaziest but they play to win, and usually do, like now.

Feinstein's husband, Richard C. Blum, is a part owner of the voting machine company, Dominion Voting Systems, used widely across the country and in all the battleground states. It was developed with money from the Clinton Global Initiative. James Howard Kunstler observes:

Then there are the janky numbers in all those other states where the Dominion vote tabulation software was used: 130,000 here… 27,000 there… et cetera. By the way, the company that puts out this Dominion product is partly owned by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum; one of its top executives is Nancy Pelosi’s former chief-of-staff; and the software’s development was funded by the Clinton Global Initiative in 2014. I guess they know a good thing when it jumps up and bites them on the lips.1

Software glitches in systems using Dominion Voting Systems software shifted thousands of votes from Trump to Biden in Georgia and Pennsylvania. In Georgia, software updates were done the night before the election, which is unheard of.

The errors were supposedly corrected but how many hundreds of other places around the country did not catch them and correct them? There should be a full scale investigation of voting machine fraud and specifically Dominion Voting Systems, which starts out suspect due to its ties to Diane Feinstein, Pelosi, and the Clinton Global Initiative.

Kunstler also notes the method used by the CIA to interfere in elections of other countries. He writes:

I supposed you've also seen rumors about the Intelligence Community's election-meddling software programs, HAMR ("Hammer") and Scorecard allegedly being employed in last week's election, but that is only a rumor so far. Sidney Powell, lawyer to General Michael Flynn, dropped it on the airwaves, and recall that General Flynn was the Director of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), so there's a chance that he knows about these programs in excruciating detail. There's also reason to believe that General Flynn retains connections to many loyal intel techies who worked under him, and are capable of sussing out the situation. Also, by the way: do you suppose that any of this election-medding software was used to ensure Joe Biden's mysterious out-of-nowhere victory in the Super-Tuesday primary? Hmmm. . . .? 2

Trump was on a fast track to reelection with a booming economy and foreign policy wins all over the world.

Then COVID-19 hit and gave Democrats their chance with mail-in ballot fraud, which enabled them to manufacture thousands of ballots, whatever they needed.

They knew they had one chance to negate everything Trump has done to Make America Great Again and they were not going to lose it. They were going for it, like they did with Obama's corruption of the FBI and CIA, the spying on Trump's campaign, the Russia Hoax and three-year Mueller investigation.

Now, if this election stands, there is no limit on Democrat deep state corruption and power.

The worst thing is the end of all the investigations such as John Durham's, so now Democrats and a corrupt FBI will get clean away with a coup d'etat to spy on and remove a duly elected American president.

There's a good chance Eric Holder will be back in charge of the Justice Department and he will take care of Jim Comey and his other Democrat allies.

Donald Trump, Jr. has been encouraging his father to declassify everything related to the ongoing investigations to get it all out there, and that definitely should be done.

Another horrible thing for America is that Big Tech - Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. - will get away completely with destroying free speech for half the country. We will now be 100% under Big Tech's control. Everything we say or think now has to be approved by Google, Facebook and Twitter, and that will get worse.

With their monopoly power they are more like public utilities who should not be allowed to censor and discriminate against anybody but they do brazenly. Imagine other public utilities discriminating against citizens. What if the power company decided to cut off your power because you are a MAGA supporter to teach you a lesson and make an example out of you to scare others.

No public utility should be able to discriminate like Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. discriminate.

Big Tech and the corrupt mainstream news media have total control of America now.

If Republicans are truly out of power, then there will be no way to break up those monopolies and restore our freedom of speech and thought.

Think about Twitter censoring the president of the United States who was tweeting the legitimate New York Post story of Tony Bobulinski's credible testimony against Hunter and Joe Biden in order to defend his personal honor.

Republicans let us down like they always do.

That is the refreshing thing about President Trump. He fights, and fights hard, and wants to pay back people who wrong him. There is something so honest and gratifying about that.

Republicans like Mitt Romey, a/k/a Pierre Dilecto, never fight hard. They are the first to buckle because they want to be liked by the corrupt news media, but President Trump called out the media over and over. That's why they hate him. That, and the fact that he has been effective in spite of their constant attempts to destroy him.

President Trump is not the enemy of democracy but the mainstream news media is. They and Big Tech hide information Americans need because it helps the Democrat Party, information like the Bobulinski interview of October 22, 2020 shown at https://www.c-span.org/video/?477307-1/tony-bobulinski-statement-hunter-biden3 and Hunter Biden's laptop reports from the New York Post, which show clearly Joe Biden's illegal influence peddling, and the money he and Hunter made with the Chinese Communists, the Ukrainians, and others.

Sidney Powell, former federal prosecutor and current lawyer for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said on Nov. 8th that top Democrats are using the aforementioned Dominion Voting Systems to commit election fraud:

They have invested in it for their own reasons and are using it to commit this fraud to steal votes. I think they've even stolen them from other Democrats in their own party who should be outraged about this also.4

She said Dominion has about a third of the voting machine market with customers in 28 states and Puerto Rico "including all of the battleground states."

In a Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo Sunday, November 8, Powell said:

There has been a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from We The People of the United States of America to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump. To manufacture votes for Joe Biden. They've done it in every way imaginable, from having dead people vote in record numbers, to absolutely fraudulently creating ballots that exist only for voting for Biden.

She goes on:

We've identified over 450,000 ballots that miraculously only have a vote for Joe Biden on them and no other candidate. If you look at Florida where things were done right you can see that that is how the rest of the country should have gone. But they also used an algorithm to calculate the number of votes they would need to flip. And they used computers to flip those votes from Trump to Biden and from other Republican candidates to their competitors also.5

Here's the Sidney Powell video: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/sidney-powell-tons-evidence-hundreds-thousands-ballots-going-discarded-video/.

Statistical analysis shows that Biden votes far exceed Democrat down-ticket votes making those votes statistically improbable.

In a Pamela Geller article entitled "MORE PROOF OF FRAUD: Republicans Won 28 or 29 Most Competitive House Seats, Added 3 State Legislatures, Did Not Lose a Single House Race - But Joe Biden Won!!?", Maria Bartiromo interviewed Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who told her "Republicans won 28 or 29 of the most competitive US House seats. Republicans did not lose one single House seat! The Republicans also took control of three more state [legislatures]."6

The mathematical evidence of voter fraud is overwhelming. It is convincingly laid out in an article with information from MIL-OPS, "a Defense Department site approved for discussion among military officers and military retirees with appropriate military specialities." It goes into great detail with charts and graphs and explanations of things like Benford's Law.

The article title is "Overall Multi-State Data: Mathematical Evidence"7 and it was posted by Pamela Geller November 8, 2020, and notes from The Gateway Pundit, "Voter Fraud in Wisconsin - Massive Dump of Over 100,000 Ballots for Biden All the Sudden Appear Overnight."

It also states under heading Mathematical Evidence, subheading Statistical Impossibilities in Wisconsin and Michigan, November 5, 2020:

In both Michigan and Wisconsin, several vote dumps occurred at approximately 4am on Wednesday morning, which showed that Joe Biden received almost 100 percent of the votes. President Trump was leading by hundreds of thousands of votes in both states as America went to sleep, and turnout in the state of Wisconsin seems to be particularly impossible.

The usual explanation of the corrupt media is that most of the mail-in ballots came from Biden supporters but that can not be true:

This is particularly concerning considering Republicans led in mail-in ballots requested and mail-in and in-person ballots returned leading up to and at the start of election day.

According to NBC News on election day before the polls opened, in Michigan, Republicans led 41% to 39% in Mail-in Ballots requested. Republicans also led 42% to 39% with Mail-in and in-person ballots returned.

In Wisconsin on election day before the polls opened, Republicans led Mail-in Ballots requested 43% to 35%, and Mail-in and early in-person ballots returned 43% to 35%. Almost ALL of the ballots found, while most in the country were sleeping, after the officials stated they would stop counting, were for Joe Biden.

Under subheading Former Politicians of Blue Cities Chime In, Rod Blagojevich, former corrupt governor of Illinois who was sentenced to 14 years in prison but pardoned by President Trump several years into his sentence, says there is no question what went on in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit and other cities:

In big cities where they control the political apparatus and they control the apparatus that counts the votes, and they control the polling places and the ones who count the votes, it's widespread and it's deep . . .

In "How They Stole the Election" by Vasko Kohlmayer, November 9, 2020, he writes:

It was a combination of vote harvesting and fraud that Biden has come out on top. In some areas of Wisconsin, turnout for Biden was nearly 90 percent. One analyst pointed out that this is 5.5 standard deviations above the average. Such a thing is not practically possible given that the odds against it are 1 in 52,910,052. It is like flipping a coin and getting heads twenty-five times in a row.8

It is now obvious that the presidential election of 2020 has been stolen by massive fraud and corruption by the same people who have given us two coups d'etat in the past four years, and it can not stand.

A Republican fundraiser, Bill White, has put together a reward of $1 million dollars "for evidence of voter fraud." He has already raised over $14 million dollars:

White is based in Atlanta, where the Trump campaign has dispatched dozens of lawyers for a narrowly contested vote count led by Republican Rep. Doug Collins. He said Atlanta's Trump campaign and GOP headquarters have received 'literally hundreds of calls' reporting fraud since the election.9

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also "will pay up to $1 million 'to incentivize, encourage and reward people to come forward and report voter fraud.'"10

People who have evidence that leads to an arrest and conviction will get a guaranteed payout of $25,000.11

To report election fraud, call President Trump's hotline at (888) 503-3526 or go online and report it at:

https://defendyourballot.formstack.com/forms/voter_fraud?utm_source=graphic

We have to have faith in the integrity of our elections or we don't have a country.

These charges have to be thoroughly investigated.

The only thing that will satisfy me is a manual vote count in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta and other places where fraud is highly suspected.

Republicans and Democrats together need to look at EVERY SINGLE BALLOT that was cast, and count only clearly legitimate ballots.

If that is done, and President Trump loses, I will accept that we lost a fair fight and I will continue to have faith in our wonderful country.

But if fraud is proven, then people need to go to jail jail jail. Something on the scope of what is obviously happening now is so destabilizing for our country that it should be considered treasonous and people be executed for it. That should be the law.

This kind of corruption can not stand. The gauntlet is down. The good guys have to win this fight because who the hell wants to live in a banana republic where your elections can be stolen by the lowest scum of society.

It angers me greatly that they have done this to our magnificent country.

Failure to root out this fraud and hold people accountable is not an option.

NOTES:

1 "Fore!" by James Howard Kunstler, November 9, 2020, https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/fore/, accessed 11/11/20.

2 Ibid.

3 Tony Bobulinski Statement on Hunter Biden, October 22, 2020: "Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, made a statement about business dealings in China. He said he would turn over electronic evidence of Biden family involvement." https://www.c-span.org/video/?477307-1/tony-bobulinski-statement-hunter-biden, accessed 11/11/20.

4 "Sidney Powell: People with links to powerful Democrats using Dominion voting machines to 'steal' votes", by Joseph Simonson, Political Reporter & Daniel Chaitin, Breaking News Editor, November 8, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/sidney-powell-people-with-links-to-powerful-democrats-using-dominion-voting-machines-to-steal-votes, accessed 11/11/20.

5 Ibid.

6 "MORE PROOF OF FRAUD: Republicans Won 28 or 29 Most Competitive House Seats, Added 3 State Legislatures, Did Not Lose a Single House Race - But Joe Biden Won!!?" by Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit, November 8, 2020, in The Geller Report, https://gellerreport.com/2020/11/more-proof-of-fraud-republicans-won-28-of-29-most-competitive-house-seats-added-3-state-legislatures-did-not-lose-a-single-house-race-but-joe-biden-won.html/, accessed 11/11/20.

7 "Overall Multi-State Data: Mathematical Evidence", posted by Pamela Geller November 8, 2020, https://gellerreport.com/2020/11/overall-multi-state-data-mathematical-evidence.html/, accessed 11/11/20.

8 "How They Stole the Election" by Vasko Kohlmayer, November 9, 2020, in LewRockwell.com, https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/vasko-kohlmayer/how-they-stole-the-election/, accessed 11/11/20.

9 "Top Trump bundler offers $1M reward for evidence of voter fraud" by Katherine Doyle, White House Correspondent, November 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-trump-donor-offers-1m-reward-for-evidence-of-voter-fraud, accessed 11/11/20.

10 "Texas lieutenant governor offers $1 million for reports about voter fraud in 2020 election" By Mark Moore, November 11, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/11/11/texas-lt-gov-offers-1-million-for-voter-fraud-reports/, accessed 11/11/20.

11 Ibid.

Our Confederate Ancestors: Running the Yankee Blockade: A Daring Daytime Run by the Little Hattie

A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.
Blockade-runner mail to New Orleans via Nassau, Bahamas, stamped incoming ship 10-cents postage due.
Blockade-runner mail to New Orleans via Nassau, Bahamas, stamped incoming ship 10-cents postage due.
Running the Yankee Blockade:
A Daring Daytime Run by the Little Hattie

From Confederate Veteran magazine,
Volume VI. , No. 5, May, 1898, original title
"Incidents in Blockade-Running"

Signal-Officer Daniel Shepherd Stevenson has written for the archives of the Daughters of the Confederacy at Wilmington, N. C., a sketch, from which the following is taken:

In the soft, mild days of October, 1864, while we lingered at our cottage by the sea, on Confederate Point, I witnessed the most exciting and most interesting scene of my life. It was during dark nights that blockade-runners always made their trips, and the bar was shelled whenever one was expected. The "Little Hattie," a blockade-runner, on which my nephew, D. S. Stevenson, was signal-officer, was expected, and the bar was vigorously shelled each night to keep the blockading fleet at a safe distance.

The SS Banshee. The Little Hattie probably looked like this.
The SS Banshee. The Little Hattie probably looked like this.

Capt. Lebby, a dashing young South Carolinian, commander of the "Little Hattie," had ordered the fires banked just at the dawning of the day, as they neared Cape Lookout, intending to wait until the next night, when he would run down the coast and come in through New Inlet at Fort Fisher; but before the order could be carried into effect he saw, by the movement on the Yankee fleet stationed off Cape Lookout, that his vessel had been discovered.

Immediately he rescinded the command, and, turning to Lieut. Clancey, first mate, and to Dan, said: "They see us, and I am afraid we shall be captured, but we will give them a lively race for it." Then, turning to one of the men, he said: "Tell the engineer to crowd on the steam, have the fireman to feed the furnace with Nassau bacon, and we will make this run in broad daylight."

The Captain then directed Clancey to run up the "fox and chicken" (the private flag of the "Little Hattie"), throw out the stars and bars, and fling to the breeze every inch of bunting on board, saying: "If we must die, we will die game."

Ft. Fisher & Cape Fear Riv to Wilmington Jan. 1865. The Florie & Little Hattie went this way earlier.
Ft. Fisher & Cape Fear Riv to Wilmington Jan. 1865. The Florie & Little Hattie went this way earlier.

The fires on the Yankee fleet had been banked before the "Little Hattie" was sighted, and it took some time to clear out the furnaces and raise steam. Thus the "Little Hattie" had some start of her enemies, and well she responded to her extra steam. Young Stevenson said that to his anxious mind it seemed that at every pulsation of her great iron heart her tough oaken sinews would quiver as though instinct with life, and she seemed to leap out of the water. Eight blockading steamers joined in the chase, and kept up a murderous shower of shot and shell.

The foregoing my nephew told me; what follows I witnessed.

About nine o'clock on that lovely October morning, when all nature smiled so kindly upon our war-desolated land, a courier rode up to our front door and shouted: "There is a blockade-runner coming this way and she looks like the 'Little Hattie.'" The "Little Hattie" had two smoke-stacks.

I sprang to my feet, took some powerful field-glasses belonging to Maj. James M. Stevenson, stepped out on the roof of the porch facing the ocean, and looked. Sure enough, it was the "Little Hattie," and, to my horror, I saw a figure on the paddle-box whom I knew to be Dan, with flag in hand, signaling to the fort.

Sea Face at Fort Fisher.
Sea Face at Fort Fisher.
The grounds inside Fort Fisher.
The grounds inside Fort Fisher.

The agonizing suspense of his mother could find vent only in prayer, and at a window looking toward the sea she knelt and supplicated the Throne of Mercy for her boy and his companions in danger. The shrill screeching of shot and shell was agonizing.

Onward dashed the frail little craft with eight United States steamers following close in her wake, pouring a relentless iron hail after her.

When she came near the fort the thirteen ships stationed off the mouth of the Cape Fear River joined in the fray, but He who "marks the sparrow's fall" covered her with his hand, and not one of the death-bearing messengers touched the little boat.

The guns of the fort were manned, and shot and shell, grape and canister, both hot and cold, belched forth from the iron throats of Parrot, Columbiad, Whitworth, and mortar. This was done to prevent the fleet from forming on the bar and intercepting the entrance of the "Little Hattie."

Columbiad inside Ft. Fisher with damaged muzzle, Jan. 1865.
Columbiad inside Ft. Fisher with damaged muzzle, Jan. 1865.

For nearly an hour I stood on the roof watching the exciting race, and when the "Little Hattie" came near enough to discern features, I recognized Capt. Lebby with his trumpet, Lieut. Clancey, with his spy-glass, and Dan, still standing on the paddle-box with his flag, which, having served its purpose for the time, rested idly in his hand.

Thus, at ten o'clock that cloudless October day, there was accomplished the most miraculous feat: a successful run of the blockade by daylight.

I give another incident in the blockading career of Signal-Officer Stevenson as received form him:

On the night of December 24, 1864, the same fatal year, the whole attacking fleet was lying before the fort when the "Little Hattie" came on her return trip. As they saw the congregated lights on the one side and the one lone light on the other, Capt. Lebby remarked that they had made the wrong inlet, and would have to come in on the high tide between Smithville and Bald Head, as they had passed Fort Fisher.

"No, Captain," said young Stevenson; "we have not passed Fort Fisher. The many lights you call Smithville is the Yankee fleet, and the one light you call Bald Head is Fort Fisher Mound light."

Union attack on Fort Fisher Dec., 1864. The Little Hattie ran through this fleet at night.
Union attack on Fort Fisher Dec., 1864. The Little Hattie ran through this fleet at night.

The captain and Lietu. Clancey laughed at him and pushed on, but he proved to be right. Fortunately, the night was very dark, and so many vessels were grouped together that one more was not noticed by the enemy. Before the officers of the "Little Hattie" were aware of it, they were in the midst of the fleet which bore Butler's expedition against the fort.

Consternation seized them. Escape seemed impossible. But they had a trusty and fully competent pilot on board, Capt. Bob Grissom, who took his stand at the wheel-house, and Dan, at the word of command, mounted the paddle-box with his lantern, and signaled to the fort to let up the shelling until they could get in.

J. C. Stevenson, his brother, who was also a signal-operator, and on duty that night, reported that the "Little Hattie" was at the bar and asked that the shelling be stopped to let her in.

A test question was flashed to the boy on board, which, of course, he answered correctly, and the shelling ceased.

In and out the little craft wound among the vessels of the Yankee fleet so close at times that young Stevenson, as he stood on the paddle-box, could hear the officers as they gave commands, and see the men executing them; but again they were shielded "in the hollow of His hand," and again made an almost miraculous escape. The next morning, December 25, as the fleet was shelling the fort, the "Little Hattie" steamed up to Wilmington and Dan walked in and gave us his perilous experience of the night before.

All know that the first expedition against Fort Fisher was unsuccessful, and when the siege was raised, the "Little Hattie" left this port, never to return.

How well I remember the last time I saw Capt. Lebby! I had been down the street, and had met and walked a few yards with him, bidding him good-by, for he was to sail in a few hours.

I crossed the street, and he called to me, and when I turned, he stood with hat in hand, making one of his most courtly bows, and said: "You and your sister must not forget the 'Little Hattie' at night and morning."

We never did, until we knew that the dainty little craft and her perilous trips were ended.

The beautiful, tranquil beach at Fort Fisher today.
The beautiful, tranquil beach at Fort Fisher today.

Publisher's Note: Some paragraphs were broken up to make reading online easier but, otherwise, the article is verbatim. No words were changed.