Confederate names removed from the Ranger Memorial

Fort Benning’s Col. Colin Mahle proceeded with recommendations from the Congressionally-mandated Naming Commission to cover or remove certain names on the Ranger Memorial associated with the Confederacy, even though they served the United States honorably, retired Brig. Gen. Joseph Stringham, Chairman of the National Ranger Memorial Foundation, wrote in a letter on April 28. Not only did the [naming] commission dishonor the Rangers commemorated, but hiding the names denies free expression of those who contributed to the memorial . . .

Confederate names removed from the Ranger Memorial
Elizabeth Warren's renaming legislation has shredded the fabric of our country
Destroying the 109 year old Confederate Memorial in Arlington is next
Over 44% of our military has traditionally been recruited in the South
But to serve today, Southerners have to accept Warren's LIE that they have traitor blood flowing through their veins
The full color tab is 2⅜ inches (6.03 cm) long, 11/16 inch (1.75 cm) wide, with a ⅛ inch (0.32 cm) yellow border and the word "RANGER" inscribed in yellow letters 5/16 inch (0.79 cm) high.
The full color tab is 2⅜ inches (6.03 cm) long, 11/16 inch (1.75 cm) wide, with a ⅛ inch (0.32 cm) yellow border and the word "RANGER" inscribed in yellow letters 5/16 inch (0.79 cm) high.
Ranger Memorial, Fort Benning, Georgia.
Black marble slab at the Ranger Memorial, Fort Benning, Georgia.
Ranger Creed, courtesy Jay France.
Ranger Creed, courtesy Jay France.
CPT Adam Snyder was a member of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's 2004 graduating class. CPT Snyder died Dec. 5, 2007, in Balad, Iraq.
CPT Adam Snyder was a member of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's 2004 graduating class. CPT Snyder died Dec. 5, 2007, in Balad, Iraq.
Arlington National Cemetery, 109 year old Confederate Memorial to the Reconciliation and Reunification of our great nation after our bloodiest war. It was the brainchild of Union soldier and president, William McKinley, who said "every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor." The sculptor, internationally renowned Jewish artist Moses Jacob Ezekiel, was a VMI Confederate soldier. Art critic Michael Robert Patterson states that "no sculptor, as far as known, has ever, in any one memorial told as much history as has Ezekiel in his monument at Arlington; and every human figure in it, as well as every symbol, is in and of itself a work of art." In a barbaric crime against art and history, the naming commission and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin want the monument demolished.
Arlington National Cemetery, 109 year old Confederate Memorial to the Reconciliation and Reunification of our great nation after our bloodiest war. It was the brainchild of Union soldier and president, William McKinley, who said "every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor." The sculptor, internationally renowned Jewish artist Moses Jacob Ezekiel, was a VMI Confederate soldier. Art critic Michael Robert Patterson states that "no sculptor, as far as known, has ever, in any one memorial told as much history as has Ezekiel in his monument at Arlington; and every human figure in it, as well as every symbol, is in and of itself a work of art." In a barbaric crime against art and history, the naming commission and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin want the monument demolished.

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. - In 'Covers Up History': Retired Army Rangers Hammer The Pentagon For Purging Confederates From The Ranger Memorial,i Micaela Burrow of the Daily Caller News Foundation writes:

    The U.S. Army’s order to scrub names on the Ranger Memorial thought to be associated with the Confederacy is an affront to the legacy of the Rangers and free speech, retired U.S. Rangers told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Fort Benning’s commander proceeded with recommendations from a Pentagon commission to cover or remove certain names, even though they were wrongly identified as offensive, according to National Ranger Memorial Foundation chairman Brig. Gen. Joseph Stringham.

    “I’ve paid for my right to free speech in blood and agony. Others paid a lot more,” retired Ranger 1st Lt. Richard Fincher told the DCNF.

Free speech does not matter to Elizabeth Warren and her Woke naming commission with its erasure of history and false report to Congress.

The dishonoring of the Ranger Memorial is the most recent outrage but the coveted goal of naming commission vice chair Ty Seidule is the demolition of the 109 year old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

It is hard to imagine what's in the heart of a person that could demolish a magnificent 109 year old monument surrounded by 500 graves in concentric circles symbolizing the reunification of our country after a war in which 750,000 died and over a million were maimed, but here is what Seidule wrote on page 162 of his hate screed Robert E. Lee and Me:

Of the thousands of monuments around the country to the Confederacy, the one in Arlington National Cemetery angers me the most. Every year, the commander in chief sends a wreath, ensuring the Confederate monument receives all the prestige of the U.S. government. That's why it riles me so much. . . .

Seidule then admits that the Confederate Memorial stands for reconciliation but he leaves that critical fact out of the naming commission's report to Congress, thus he made the report false by the omission of critical facts he knew well. He continues on page 162 of Robert E. Lee and Me:

I know both political parties and white citizens in the North and South brought the country back together after the tremendous bloodletting and destruction of the Civil War. The posts named for Confederate officers during World War I also served to knit white America back together as it fought a common foe. And it worked, but we must recognize that reconciliation came at a steep and horrifying cost. African Americans paid the price with lynching, Jim Crow segregation, and the loss of the franchise. The price for white reconciliation remains far too high. (Bold emphasis added.)

In the past, military service was revered in the South where 44.1% of the U.S. Military was recruited but Seidule's clear message is: Southerners you are not welcome in the military today unless you agree to a LIE, that your blood is the blood of traitors.

Warren's legislation, which could have been stopped by then Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe, is the epitome of what Orwell warned about in 1984 when he wrote:

Who controls the past controls the future: Who controls the present controls the past.

But Inhofe lied to President Trump when he promised to stop Warren. I am a Republican but the national Republican Party, except for President Trump and a few others, is the most worthless cowardly stupid party in American history that NEVER stands up for its voters.

Where is Tom Cotton? Josh Hawley? Nancy Mace? Joe Wilson? Do they agree with Elizabeth Warren that their voters have traitor blood in them?

The Southern states with their Confederate history are mostly Red States, and the Northern (Union) states of Elizabeth Warren and naming commission historian, Connor Williams, are mostly Blue States.

This is 100% politics and not history.

Warren, Williams and Seidule don't want you to know, or they don't know themselves, that the Blue States brought all the slaves here shackled on their backs in vomit and feces for months through the Middle Passage for Yankee money.

Do you think virtue signaling Elizabeth Warren cares that New York and her Boston were the largest slave trading ports on the planet during the War Between the States, some 54 years after the slave trade was outlawed by the U.S. Constitution?

Elizabeth Warren's New Englanders brought ALL the slaves here. They built their economies on the slave trade before the Revolution then continued selling black people illegally for Yankee profit the entire antebellum period, until well after the War Between the States, because slavery was still legal in Brazil and Cuba.

The founder of Brown University, John Brown, not the infamous John Brown of Harpers Ferry but John Brown, American patriot, of Providence, Rhode Island, famously said:

[T]here was no more crime in bringing off a cargo of slaves than in bringing off a cargo of jackasses.ii

W. E. B. Du Bois in his famous book, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870, writes that Boston, New York and Portland, Maine were the largest slave trading ports on earth in 1862, a year into the War Between the States:

The number of persons engaged in the slave-trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and Boston are only second to her in that distinction. Slave dealers added largely to the wealth of our commercial metropolis; they contributed liberally to the treasuries of political organizations, and their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

Those places were not fighting to end slavery. They were fighting for political power, money and control, just like Elizabeth Warren is today. Power, money and control are why all wars are fought.

Do you think that Elizabeth Warren even knows that there were more slave states in the Union when the war started than in the Confederacy, and that six slave states fought for the Union the entire war? West Virginia came into the Union as a slave state warmly welcomed by Abraham Lincoln just weeks after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Do you think the political propagandists Warren, Williams, and Seidule know that New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia all reserved the right of secession before ratifying the United States Constitution? All the other states accepted the reserved right of secession of New York, Rhode Island and Virginia thus they had it too because all states are equal and entered the Union as equals with the exact same rights.

Our country was born from the secession of 13 colonies from the British empire. Secession was in the DNA of everybody, North and South.

You can't have freedom if there is no way you can divorce yourself from a government that becomes tyrannical.

The evidence is overwhelming of the right of secession, which is why New England threatened to do it so many times.

That Warren, Williams and Seidule do not know this, or reject it, proves they do not understand or care about American history.

They are pushing leftist political hate to the Blue States' base. Tearing down the monuments and dishonoring the patriotic history of the Red States gives them power, which is exactly why rioters in the streets destroyed monuments after George Floyd's death. They want the power that comes with being able to destroy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower explained our history well when he defended Robert E. Lee to a dentist who had excoriated him for having a picture of Lee on his wall in the White House. Gen. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, towers over Ty Seidule in understanding American history but then Eisenhower's history is based on truth, and Seidule's is based on Woke leftist politics.

Eisenhower wrote the dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, August 9, 1960:

Dear Dr. Scott:

Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.

General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.

From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.

Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.

Sincerely,

Dwight D. Eisenhoweriii

After the Southern names were erased from the Ranger Memorial, "retired Rangers told the Daily Caller News Foundation the move undermines the memorial's intent to honor the contributions of Rangers throughout U.S. history."

Burrow goes on:

“It’s disgraceful. I think it’s foolish because it covers up history,” Retired Ranger 1st Lt. Richard Fincher, who served in the 101st Airborne Division and has a target stone in the memorial, told the DCNF. “Recognizing the valor and leadership of a foe does not constitute the endorsement of their cause.”

What kind of country would we be if we allow names to be taken off sacred war memorials; and we allow monuments in cemeteries to be destroyed so the Elizabeth Warrens of the world can feel virtuous?

One of the inscriptions on the Confederate Monument comes from the Bible, Isaiah 2:4: "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks."

The bigger question is, can our country survive the lies of omission of Ty Seidule and Connor Willams, and the deliberate shredding of the very fabric of our nation by Elizabeth Warren and the Republican cowards like Jim Inhofe who went along with her in the 2021 NDAA against President Trump's wishes?

If you think antebellum Americans did not believe in the right of secession then you CAN NOT KNOW American history yet Seidule and Connor Williams both state frequently that Confederates are traitors.

Apparently, neither of them know that there were no trials for treason after the war because the U.S. Government knew it would lose.

Around one-third of our country are descended from Confederate soldiers whose bravery and valor when they were invaded by the North (think about THAT!) are the very definition of those words.

Union veterans knew this and warmly welcomed Southerners back into our country. They knew our late war was over legitimate differences such as the North's desire for a powerful central government they could control with their larger population. They could then tax the rest of the country for their own benefit as Alexis de Tocqueville said would happen if one region got control of the government, and that is exactly what did happened.

One region with its larger population controlling the central government is exactly the "tyranny of the majority" the Founding Fathers warned about.

Jeffersonian Southerners were the opposite. They believe in the sovereignty of their states and they put that in the Confederate Constitution.

Southerners accepted the outcome of the war and rejoined our nation with enthusiasm, encouraged by real heroes of American history like Robert E. Lee. They had stood up and fought well for their God-given right to self-government and they were deservedly proud of it.

No people in the history of the world ever displayed more valor than Southerners despite being outnumbered four to one and outgunned 200 to one.

Yankees were well fed, well clothed, and well armed while the Confederates that Warren, Williams and Seidule all hate, were often barefoot, hungry and carrying muskets.

Southerners sacrificed everything for independence. Historian James McPherson writes:

[T]he overall mortality rate for the South exceeded that of any country in World War I and that of all but the region between the Rhine and the Volga in World War II.1

Compare the 750,000 dead of the War Between the States out of a national population of 31.4 million, with the 419,400 dead of World War II out of a national population of 132,164,569.

Basil Gildersleeve, still known today as the greatest American classical scholar of all time, was a Confederate soldier from Charleston, South Carolina. He sums it up nicely in The Creed of the Old South, published 27 years after the war:

All that I vouch for is the feeling;  . . . there was no lurking suspicion of any moral weakness in our cause. Nothing could be holier than the cause, nothing more imperative that the duty of upholding it. There were those in the South who, when they saw the issue of the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause.iv

The reconciliation theme of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington is irrefutable and established by Arlington National Cemetery itself in its application for its Historic District to be on the National Register of Historic Places.

This is an undeniable fact and can not be questioned.

Ty Seidule knew it too and wrote about it in Robert E. Lee and Me yet he left it out of the naming commission's report to Congress. Why?

Because he knew that if he told the truth - that the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery surrounded by over 500 Southern graves stands 100% for reconciliation and the reunification of our country - it would not be in the naming commission's remit and he would not be able to destroy the monument to satisfy his personal hatred, and build up his Woke leftist credentials since he is now in academia.

Seidule lied and misled Congress by leaving out critical facts he knew to be true.

Elizabeth Warren's legislation has ripped the fabric of our country apart and you can not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Micaela Burrow writes about the naming commission's report:

The final report called for the removal of the Col. John S. Mosby from display on the Ranger Memorial, as well as “the names of all Confederates from paver stones on the Ranger Memorial Walk leading to the Ranger Memorial (including but not limited to William Quantrill, George Bowman, and Jackson Bowman).”

But, two of the Rangers noted — Mosby and Morgan — do not deserve to have their names scrubbed, Stringham said in the letter notifying Rangers of the changes.

“Implementation of dramatic/radical edicts and shifts in policy at issue here are frequently accompanied by inaccuracies, (stupid) interpretations, injustices to survivors and a strong political slant offensive to substantial sectors of society,” Stringham wrote.

For example, Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan was wrongly identified with the Confederacy as Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan, according to Stringham. Daniel Morgan served on the side of the colonies during the Revolutionary War and was a hero in the Battle of the CowPens.

And while Col. Mosby made his name as a Ranger on the Confederate side, he claimed to oppose slavery and went on to support Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s presidential bid and serve as consul in China, according to the National Museum of American History.

“I specifically remember being taught about the leadership and strategy of Col. Mosby, whose courage and innovation was the envy of both allies and adversaries alike. The senior Ranger [non-commissioned officer] who taught me about Mosby, and who praised his prowess as a Ranger and officer, was an African American who was raised in the deep south during segregation and who had fought in a Ranger Company in Vietnam,” Mike Simpson, who served under Stringham in the 1st Ranger Battalion from 1984 to 1988, told the DCNF.

Removing names from the Ranger Memorial and the ongoing attempt to destroy the 109 year old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery smack of what the Nazis did to the Jews in the 1930s.

It is beneath the dignity of the United States of America but quite OK with the Woke trying to destroy our country.

Micaela Burrow ends with:

The Ranger Handbook contains a history section documenting major contributions of Rangers since before the Revolutionary War. Tactical innovations of both Morgan and Mosby led to the elevated position of Rangers within the Army today, the handbook says.

“Rangers throughout the force lead their formations, set the example for fellow Soldiers, and remain ready to defend the United States against its enemies,” the handbook states.

“As a young Ranger, I was taught that our Ranger history was one of the most important things about our identity as a Regiment,” Simpson told the DCNF.

But, Fort Benning leadership chose to overlook those contributions to gain notice from their superiors, according to William Thibeau, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.

“Until this egregious whitewash of history, Rangers of the modern era stood on the shoulders of this legacy, not to blindly affirm everything, but to fulfill the Ranger Creed and the Charter to which every Army Ranger pledges his life. But now, it’s also about politics and the woke mission to erase history,” Thibeau, also an Army Ranger veteran, told the DCNF.

Please get every veteran and patriotic American you know to write Congress and their governors and attorneys general and tell them you are OUTRAGED that Elizabeth Warren and the Woke naming commission has caused names to be removed from the Ranger Memorial. Those names must be restored IMMEDIATELY.

Tell Congress and governors to get involved and STOP the ongoing efforts to demolish the 109 year old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which would desecrate Arlington National Cemetery for all time.

Stand up and fight!

PLEASE CONTRIBUTE MONEY to Defend Arlington's litigation in defense of the Confederate Memorial. It would already be gone if it wasn't for Defend Arlington and their many allies who care about our country and its history.

The Army will file a motion to dismiss our law suit any day now so time is of the essence so we can continue paying our crack legal team.

Kirk Lyons of the Southern Legal Resource Center writes:

Check here for your State Historic Preservation Office - https://ncshpo.org/directory/. Contact Kirk D. Lyons at 828-712-2115 for a sample letter/ and or game-plan for calling them to get them involved. All these SHPOs should have been contacted by the Army regarding the removal or demolition of the Confederate Reconciliation Monument. We need to goad the SHPOs to actively get their Governor/Attorney General involved in putting pressure on the Army to include filing a lawsuit to stop removal, demolition.

See also:

"After Pentagon Erases Names from Ranger Memorial – America’s Heroes Take a Powerful Stand" by Ben Dutka, May 13, 2023:

https://pjnewsletter.com/pentagon-ranger-memorial-heroes/

AND

"160-Plus Retired Military Brass Urge Congress To Root Out DOD’s Poisonous ‘Diversity’ And ‘Equity’ Programs" by Samuel Boehlke, May 24, 2023:

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/24/160-plus-retired-military-brass-urge-congress-to-root-out-dods-poisonous-diversity-and-equity-programs

Scroll down to contribute and for other valuable information, and God Bless America!]

Links to Important Resources

Defend Arlington Fundraising Site where you can help save Moses Ezekiel's MAGNIFICENT 109 year old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery by Buying Outstanding Merchandise featuring BEAUTIFUL images from the monument. Art critics have said that every image on the monument is a work of art by itself. There are all kind of things like shirts, hats, hoodies, clocks, art prints, tote bags, note cards, stickers, ipad skins and cases, cell phone cases and skins, wall art, coasters, mugs, pins, throw pillows, water bottles, journals, magnets, etc.! ALL PROCEEDS GO TO THE DEFENSE FUND! Go spend some time on this site! You will love it!

Shop Now

 

Defend Arlington's recording of the 35 or so speakers on behalf of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery that took place Wednesday, March 15, 2023 in a virtual meeting of the Remember and Explore Subcommittee of Arlington National Cemetery.

View testimony which starts at 1:38:59.

 

Here is a link to Defend Arlington's donation page that states:

CHIP IN FOR THE ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY MEMORIAL LITIGATION DEFENSE FUND. You can also pay with Zelle. Send to

[email protected].

Please Donate Now -- THANK YOU!

Click Here to Donate AND Share on Facebook, et al.

 

Defend Arlington update with link to February 28, 2023 Tucker Carlson interview with Christopher Bedford on the Confederate Reconciliation Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Defend Arlington update, Tucker Carlson segment on YouTube

 

Hot off the press! Here is a link to the new 385 page PDF from Defend Arlington that flips pages as you read. It contains all the great scholarly white papers gathered up by Defend Arlington to make sure that Woke ignorance DIES at Arlington National Cemetery.

Defend Arlington's 385 Page Book of White Papers

 

Here is a link to an informative nine minute video, "The Arlington Confederate Monument," produced by the Abbeville Institute.

The Arlington Confederate Monument

 

Here is a link to the outstanding scholarly PDF white papers written for Defend Arlington. You can download them all with one click. Please share them far and wide, especially the letter from Defend Arlington's attorney, Karen C. Bennett, to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

PDF White Papers from Defend Arlington

 

Here is link to an excellent video refuting point by point a historically false Prager University video by Ty Seidule, who is naming commission vice chair. This one is produced by Bode Lang and entitled "The Civil War Was Not for Slavery."

Click Here for Bode Lang's excellent video

 

Here is a link to an excellent video of a Georgia lady calling out Elizabeth Warren and her Massachusetts hypocrisy.

Click Here for Georgia Lady Teaching Elizabeth Warren a Lesson

 

Here are important Southern Legal Resource Center links. SLRC mailing address is: Southern Legal Resource Center, 90 Church St., Black Mountain, NC 28711-3365.

Click Here to donate to the Southern Legal Resource Center

Click Here to follow on Facebook

Click Here to go to their website

Take action TODAY!

NOTES:


1 Faust, This Republic of Suffering, xii. She cites James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) pp. 3, 177, n. 56.


i Micaela Burrow, 'Covers Up History'" Retired Army Rangers Hammer The Pentagon For PUrging Confederates From The Ranger Memorial, May 5, 2023, https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/05/retired-rangers-warn-of-whitewashing-history-after-pentagon-scrubs-confederate-names-from-memorial, accessed 5-18-23.

ii Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery (New York: Ballantine Books, Copyright 2005 by The Hartford Courant Company), 110.

iii Dwight D. Eisenhower letter, August 9, 1960, to Leon W. Scott, in "Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee," August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

iv Basil L. Gildersleeve, The Creed of the Old South, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1915; reprint: BiblioLife, Penrose Library, University of Denver (no date given), 26-27.

Naming commission epitomizes the degradation of American history

Naming commission epitomizes the degradation of American history
Its lead historian, Conner Williams of Yale, calls Confederates traitors
King George III called the American Colonists traitors too, so Confederates are in good company
Two articles below obliterate the Confederates as traitors fraud
550-78K

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. - In the secession debate in the South in the year leading up to states seceding, the most widely quoted phrase came from the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The "Form of Government" destructive of the ends of self-government in the South was the federal government dominated by the Northern majority that had sent terrorists like John Brown into the South to murder, rape and rob Southerners. Ohio and Iowa protected Brown's terrorist sons from extradition to Virginia to stand trial then Northerners celebrated Brown as a hero when brought to justice.

Before that it was Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis that called for the throats of Southerners to be cut in the night. The Republican Party - the party of the North pledged against the South - as Wendell Phillips proudly proclaimed, printed hundreds of thousands and distributed them coast to coast as a campaign document in 1860.

There was also massive taxation that caused Southerners to pay three-fourths of the country's taxes while three-fourth of the tax money was being spent in the North. Henry L. Benning, for whom Fort Benning, Georgia used to be named, said "Eighty-five millions is the amount of the drains from the South to the North in one year, - drains in return for which the South receives nothing." 1

Benning then predicted the bloody war with precision:

The North cut off from Southern cotton, rice, tobacco, and other Southern products would lose three fourths of her commerce, and a very large proportion of her manufactures. And thus those great fountains of finance would sink very low. . . . Would the North in such a condition as that declare war against the South? 2

That's not something Connor Williams would understand because he is a politicized historian working for a political commission established by the most historically ignorant, virtue signaling, characterless politician in American history, Elizabeth Warren, his fellow New Englander, who claimed she was an Indian for years to game the Affirmation Action system at Harvard when she is as white as the pure driven snow.

The real traitors are traitors to truth and falsifiers of history as exemplified by the naming commission, which knew the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery symbolized the reconciliation of North and South, but deliberately left that out of their report to Congress.

The reconciliation theme is not a "my interpretation of history versus theirs." It is indisputable and was established by Arlington National Cemetery itself - in numerous places and in great detail - in their application for ANC's Historic District to be on the National Register of Historic Places. That application was approved in 2014.

How could reconciliation not be the theme when four presidents - William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson - with veterans North and South, blessed it and enthusiastically participated in its construction and dedication. Another president, Warren G. Harding, sent a message of condolence to the Arlington funeral of the Confederate Monument's famous sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, himself a VMI Confederate soldier.

The year before the Confederate Memorial was dedicated, 1913, was the  fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg with its famous handshakes across the wall by the old Union and Confederate veterans.

The Confederate Memorial was the brainchild of former Union soldier and later president, William McKinley, who said:

. . . every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers . . . The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in this year just passed by the sons and grandsons of those heroic dead.

But this is what naming commission vice chair Ty Seidule said in his hate screed, Robert E. Lee and Me, on page 162:

Of the thousands of monuments around the country to the Confederacy, the one in Arlington National Cemetery angers me the most. Every year, the commander in chief sends a wreath, ensuring the Confederate monument receives all the prestige of the U.S. government. That's why it riles me so much. . . .

Seidule admits that the Confederate Memorial stands for reconciliation, but if he had put that in the naming commission's report to Congress, it would be obvious that the Confederate Memorial is not in the naming commission's remit, therefore they could not have it destroyed and satiate Seidule's personal hatred.

In Robert E. Lee and Me, Seidule continues on page 162:

I know both political parties and white citizens in the North and South brought the country back together after the tremendous bloodletting and destruction of the Civil War. The posts named for Confederate officers during World War I also served to knit white America back together as it fought a common foe. And it worked, but we must recognize that reconciliation came at a steep and horrifying cost. African Americans paid the price with lynching, Jim Crow segregation, and the loss of the franchise. The price for white reconciliation remains far too high. (Bold emphasis added.)

It is clear, by the public admission of the naming commission's vice chair, that the Confederate Memorial and all the Army bases named for Confederates came about because of the reconciliation of our great country and therefore NONE of them are in the naming commission's remit as is required for the naming commission to have any say about their future.

In other words, the naming commission, based on lies caused by the deliberate omission of historical facts, arguably illegally, stated that the Army bases named for Confederates are in their remit and should be changed, and Moses Ezekiel's world-class 109 year old monument in Arlington National Cemetery should be destroyed.

A law suit should be filed immediately on these grounds.

The Army bases and the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery are not in the naming commission's remit. They do not commemorate the Confederacy. They commemorate the reconciliation of our country and to everybody except Ty Seidule, that is a good thing.

We should make this a fight to remove the horribly damaging Wokeness now in our military that has caused the United States Navy to use a drag queen for recruiting, and blesses men in women's barracks and showers. How out of touch with reality can you get.

Below are two articles annihilating the historical fraud that Confederates are traitors. Confederates are the heroes of American history, heirs to the Founding Fathers, who fought a good fight on constitutional principle then rejoined our country with enthusiasm. That's why 44% of the United States military has historically been recruited in the South.

One of the articles I wrote as a letter-to-the-editor of the Charleston Post and Courier responding to a person who had called the crew of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, traitors. The Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship in combat.

The second is from Lloyd Garnett, recently published on the Abbeville Institute blog as "The 'Confederates Were Traitors' Argument Is Ahistorical."

Following Garnett's piece are several important links to Defend Arlington and the fight to prevent the degradation of Arlington National Cemetery, which would occur if the 109 year old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial is destroyed, leaving over 500 graves in concentric circles around a mangled shaft in our nation's most sacred burial ground.

This will tear the fabric of our nation in such a way that it can never be repaired.]

Obliterate the Sophism that Confederates Were Traitors

Posted on June 30, 2019 by Gene Kizer, Jr. | 7 Comments

Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, December 6, 1863, on dry land in Charleston for repairs, famous painting by Conrad Wise Chapman.
Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, December 6, 1863, on dry land in Charleston for repairs, famous painting by Conrad Wise Chapman.

The following is a letter-to-the-editor of the Charleston, SC Post and Courier September 15, 2018 by Gene Kizer, Jr. defending the crew of the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley against a letter-writer's accusation that they were traitors. It applies to all Confederates. This letter was not published by the Post and Courier but has been published in the Abbeville Institute Blog ("Confederate Soldiers Were Not Traitors," October 3, 2018) and other places.

Dear Editor of the Post and Courier,

A letter writer on September 12, 2018 is adamant that the proposed museum for the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley should not be incorporated into Patriot's Point because Patriot's Point honors the U.S. Navy and those "who defended the U.S. and its Constitution" whereas the CSS Hunley crew were traitors.

He is correct that the Hunley's sinking of the USS Housatonic to become the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship in combat was an historic event, but he errs grievously when he says the Hunley should also be remembered "for their pardons for treason." That is fake history.

The Hunley crew gave their lives for their country. They were not charged with treason and nobody associated with the Hunley sought a pardon.

The writer is confused about our country's founding because nowhere in the U.S. Constitution in 1861 did it say the Federal Government had a right or obligation to wage war against any state in the Union for any reason.

The country was not centralized in those days and each state was sovereign and independent and had been since the Colonists won the Revolutionary War. King George III agreed to the Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783, which stated:

Article 1st. His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free, sovereign and independent states . . . .

No state ever rescinded its sovereignty or gave up its independence.

In fact, three states were so protective of their independence that they insisted, before they would join the new Union, that they could secede from it if it became tyrannical in their eyes. Those states were New York, Rhode Island and Virginia. Because all the states were admitted to the Union as equals, the acceptance of the right of secession demanded by New York, Rhode Island and Virginia, gave that right to all the other states.

The right of secession was not questioned during the antebellum era. It was taught in places like the United States Military Academy at West Point in famous texts such as William Rawle's "A View of the Constitution of the United States of America." The New England states with their Hartford Convention almost seceded over the War of 1812, but the Southern boys under Andrew Jackson defeated the British in New Orleans and ended the war. New England threatened secession again with the admission of Texas in 1845. Even Horace Greeley believed in the right of secession ("let the erring sisters go") until he realized the loss of his Southern manufacturing market and cotton threatened to destroy the Northern economy, and along with it, his wealth and power. Then he wanted war.

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers called for the Constitution to be ratified by each state through a special convention of the people to decide that one issue, rather than through their legislatures. If they ratified it through their legislatures, a later legislature might rescind the ratification of an earlier legislature, therefore a convention of the people was a more sound basis for a state to approve the Constitution.

When the Southern States seceded, they followed the exact precedent set by the Founding Fathers in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Each Southern state called a convention of the people (commonly called a secession convention), elected delegates as Unionists or Secessionists, debated the single issue of whether to stay in the Union or leave, then seven states voted to secede. Four rejected secession for the time being.

When the guns of Fort Sumter sounded, there were more slave states in the Union (eight, soon to be nine) than the Confederacy (seven). Of course, the four that had rejected secession, immediately seceded when Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South because they did not believe the Federal Government had a right to invade a sovereign state or coerce it to do anything.

Secession was their legal right and they did it properly. So, the idea that the crew of the CSS Hunley were traitors, is ludicrous.

I might remind the letter writer that the Hunley crew's ancestors, like all Confederate ancestors, gave our country independence because the Revolutionary War was won in the South.

And the Hunley crew's descendants, being from the South - a region that reveres military service - helped mightily to win every other American war.

Patriot's Point represents the highest ideals of American valor and patriotism, and there is none greater than that exhibited by the crew of the CSS Hunley.

The Hunley museum should not only be at Patriot's Point, it should be the star of Patriot's Point. The Hunley is only part of the story of the Siege of Charleston, which was one of the longest sieges in history. Anyone who has seen some of the hundreds of pictures of Charleston destroyed from the Battery to Calhoun Street by Union shelling from ships such as the USS Housatonic, knows there is a tremendous story here. The Confederate semi-submersible cigar-shaped vessels (Davids) that harassed the Union blockade as well as the ironclads, Palmetto State and Chicora, and blockade runners, are not as well known as the Hunley but just as fascinating. All of this should be told at Patriot's Point.

Patriot's Point could become one of the greatest historical assets on the planet. With Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and the new International African-American Museum coming soon, Charleston could dominate history tourism like nowhere on earth and take us to a level we can't even imagine right now.

Gene Kizer, Jr.
Charleston Athenaeum Press
Charleston, SC

 

The "Confederates Were Traitors" Argument Is Ahistorical

Published on the Abbeville Institute Blog, May 4, 2023, by Lloyd "Doc" Garnett.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-confederates-were-traitors-argument-is-ahistorical/

www.AbbevilleInstitute.org

SUPPORTERS OF THE ERASURE & DESTRUCTION COMMISSION, aka Naming Commission, are fond of displaying their ignorance regarding the legal framework of the United States under the Constitution. Never is their misapprehension more evident than when they declare that Confederates were “traitors.”

The charge is so unarguably counterfactual as to be absurd. While forgiveness (not forgetfulness) should be our Christian impulse, it is our duty to our birthright to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – which is to say, our individual and political sovereignty under God – to firmly set the record straight.

Setting the historical record straight is not a matter of rehashing bygones, which ought to be left as bygones. Rather, understanding the important Constitutional arguments involved then, is critical to grasping the political and social arguments now. As the current arguments by the ignorant and the malevolent have today devolved into riotous violence, injury and destruction of property, iconic art and symbolic reminders of our worthy heritage, it should be obvious that appreciation for the concept of “government by consent of the governed” is at stake.

FIRST, we must start with the plain language and known intent of the Constitution, which was adopted within the living memory of some, and by the parents and grandparents of many, who lived through the events of 1860 -1865.

By that Constitution, the Southern States had, as all states today have, the Right to Withdraw from the Union, to assume/resume the powers they previously delegated to the Federal government, and establish such governmental arrangements as the people of the respective, sovereign States desire. Nowhere in the Constitution is withdrawal by a sovereign State prohibited. This is not an accident or an oversight by the Framers. It is intentional.

#1) The first Founding Document (“The Declaration of Independence”) was approved by all 13 colonies. In it or by it, they each and collectively declared themselves to be free and independent, sovereign States, and asserted their right of secession from Great Britain as fundamental to government by consent.

#2) When the question was posed in the Constitution Convention, whether the proposed United States could prevent a State from leaving the proposed Union, the idea was summarily rejected. James Madison (“The Father of the Constitution”) advised the assembled delegates, that any attempt to assert such control would doom ratification because the States would never assent to prohibiting the very action by which their independence was gained. As the States had so recently fought a very bloody and costly war defeating the most powerful nation on Earth to assert that very right, Madison’s belief is indisputable.

#3) Whereas the Preamble of the preceding Articles of Confederation referred to establishing a “perpetual Union,” the Framers of the new government’s Constitution deliberately deleted the word “perpetual” from the document.

#4) The Bill of Rights, specifically Amendments IX and X clearly must include the right of the people of any State to withdraw from the Union, as it is not otherwise prohibited anywhere in the Constitution… to this day.

#5) Virginia, Rhode Island and New York all reserved the right to withdraw and/or to resume all of the powers delegated to the Federal government as a caveat to their ratification of the Constitution and joining the proposed Union. These three States were accepted by their sister States into the Union with this caveat. As the Constitution specifies that all States must be treated equally, the caveat demanded by Rhode Island, New York and Virginia was thus automatically applicable to ALL of the States.

#6) All of the States ratifying the new Constitution, had to first secede from the previous government under the Articles of Confederation. This they each did independently, with Rhode Island being the last to secede from the first and join the second, in 1790, three years after the first state, Delaware did so. By seceding from Great Britain and again, from the government under the Articles of Confederation, it is manifest that the overarching right of secession was embraced by them all.

#7) It was therefore clearly and universally believed that the sovereign States had the right to withdraw (secede) from the Union. The right of secession was even taught at West Point, using the textbook A View Of the Constitution of the United States by William A. Rawle, who was one of the foremost Constitutional scholars of the day. A native and lifelong resident of Philadelphia, Rawle was personally well acquainted, met and freely corresponded with a number of the Framers.

[Publisher's Note: It seems that the naming commission's Ty Seidule would know this since he was in the history department at West Point for years and retired from there. It would also seem that lead historian, Yale's Connor Williams, would know it too.

Connor Williams SHOULD know a lot about traitors since Yale is in Connecticut and the Hartford Convention of Hartford, Connecticut arguably was the most treasonous affair in American history. Of course they did have the right to secede from the Union but their timing, while the United States was engaged in a bitter war with the British, hurt the American war effort enormously. Patriotic Americans were deeply concerned that Massachusetts, Connecticut and other New England states might join the British.

Fortunately, Andy Jackson and the Southern boys whipped the British at the Battle of New Orleans and won the war for America, which let the Hartford Conventioneers off with just egg, and Benedict Arnold-type embarrassment, on their faces.]

#8) Acting in Convention, the New England States asserted their right and threatened to secede at least 4 times – over the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the War of 1812 (several New England states effectively “sat out” and did not participate), the War with Mexico and the admission of the Republic of Texas as a sovereign State. No one questioned the New England States’ right to do so.

SECOND: Therefore, having the Right to Secede and to form a new government of their choosing, South Carolina and the six States who first joined her, had the right to defend themselves against a hostile military invasion and naval blockade of South Carolina’s only deep water harbor and most important access to international markets (as well as to resist the massive, violent, overland military invasions that were launched upon them soon after).

“But, but, …” some irrelevantly feel compelled to declare, “the Confederates fired the first shot at Fort Sumter!” Apparently, they hold that by “firing the first shot” a country is guilty of starting a war, regardless of provocation.

By this logic, the United States was guilty of starting the War with Japan! In the early morning of December 7, 1941, before any attack on Pearl Harbor was even anticipated, the U. S. Navy sank a Japanese submarine. This was the first shot fired in America’s war with Japan, and Americans fired it. No one credibly asserts that the U. S. started World War II. The comparative analogy to what occurred 81 years earlier in Charleston Harbor is solid.

As Japan was merely suspected in November/December 1941, of having launched a war fleet possibly against the United States’ interests in the Pacific, the Lincoln government was by contrast, known to have launched a war fleet to reinforce and resupply Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.  By International Law, all countries have sole jurisdiction over their harbors and Charleston Harbor was subject to the jurisdiction of the CSA.

The purpose of Lincoln’s blockading and reinforcing fleet was not to put down a rebellion or insurrection, as he claimed. Rather, the new Confederacy wished only to withdraw and form their own nation, NOT overthrow the USA. So, Lincoln’s actual intent was to defeat the fledgling new nation before it could fully affect its sustainable independence.

The shots fired at Fort Sumter by the Confederates were for the purpose of defending its harbor against further attack and blockade, as they knew additional U.S. warships and reinforcements were on the way. A successful reinforcement of Fort Sumter would close that vital harbor and severely damage Southern independence hopes. And certainly, they reasoned that Lincoln’s military and naval subjugation efforts would not stop with just Charleston Harbor.

Thus, the Confederates having lawfully withdrawn from the Union and formed a new government and nation, according to the desires of the people of the respective sovereign Southern States, opened fire to take possession of Fort Sumter. That action was necessary to assert the new nation’s rights, which are the rights of ALL nations to protect and defend its borders, territory, harbors and access to sea lanes and commercial interests.

When subsequently, Lincoln announced a full scale military invasion of the seven seceded States, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri, until then pro-Union, were vehemently appalled by the Constitutional violation of this long accepted right to secede from a hostile government and to govern themselves. Those five States’ popular opinions changed virtually overnight from pro-Union to pro-secession, and they severed their Union bonds to defend their sister Southern States and themselves from illegal and violent coercion. The people of the seceded States believed they had a lawful right and a moral obligation to do so.

From the cornerstones of the Founding as detailed in The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the building blocks of the Confederates’ intellectual fortress against the defamation of “treason,” is summed up by the following question:

IF the right of government by consent is legitimate (It is!) , and IF it is not prohibited by the Constitution (It’s not!), and IF ALL nations have a right to defend themselves against foreign military and naval  aggression (They do!) , and IF the former U.S.A. military, naval and civilian government officials’ previous oaths were to defend the U. S. Constitution and to obey lawful orders, etc. (They were!) , and IF by their resignations, the Southerners concerned were no longer bound by that oath (They weren’t!) … then how could they be guilty of treason?

The answer is that they could not because they were not.

This fact unavoidably came slowly to be understood by the victorious USA’s legal scholars, jurists and eventually, reluctantly, by its politicians soon after the exigencies of warfare had ended and the many questions and challenges of re-establishing governance began to take precedence.

After the Southern armies had surrendered or voluntarily disbanded, CSA President Jefferson Davis was incarcerated by the Yankees for two years with the aim of prosecuting and convicting him of treason and then hanging him.

In attempting to build a case against Davis, however, two successive U.S. attorneys general, and the first two “Independent Counsels” in U.S. history, all independently concluded that Davis and the Confederates could not be justly convicted of treason.

It is believed by many that a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court believed so, as well, and were desperate to avoid ruling on the question. In his seminal The Civil War – A Narrative, Vol. III, pages 1035 -1039, Shelby Foote describes the evolution among Davis’s captors, would be prosecutors and President Johnson’s Cabinet, of the realization that Davis was not guilty of treason. Further, they rightly feared that to subject the question to a trial would result not only in Davis’s acquittal but that his acquittal would support the legality of secession!

Highly respected legal experts, in Washington City and all across the North, including the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, had reluctantly reached this same conclusion. Caught in a legal bind, and thus out on a legal limb all by himself, Federal Justice Underwood, the presiding judge, finally dismissed the charges against Davis, using a convoluted, incoherent argument claiming justification by the newly ratified 14th Amendment, ex post facto.

Thus, by a legalistic pretense, did Justice Underwood save the bloody, deadly, costly military conquest of the Southern people, from being civilly, peacefully reversed in the Court of Law!

FOURTH… but SLAVERY!

In no way, can the issue of slavery be related to the charge of “Traitor,” which is  wrongly assigned by mostly ignorant and a few malevolent accusers against the long dead Confederates. Slavery, morally wrong then as now, was nevertheless legal. And if one supported a lawful activity, it could not be grounds for a charge of treason. If one supported lawful slavery as grounds for lawful secession, even that could not be grounds for treason, either.

This part of the argument could be left at the last sentence above (PERIOD). But some, imbued with 158 years of relentless victors’ propaganda to the contrary, might require some supporting context. If so, I will attempt it as briefly as I can.

“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country” wrote Robert E. Lee, years before the war. He was probably correct about the prevailing opinion, North and even South. However loathe I may be to disagree with Marse Robert, based on my extensive reading, I believe most were amazingly ambivalent.

Here, we should note that a nationwide, orderly, peaceful emancipation of the slaves was never seriously put forth. Some Southerners freed their slaves voluntarily and without compensation. So, some Southerners talked of government sponsored, compensated and gradual emancipation to allow for peaceful and efficient societal adjustment. But Northern interests, having decades before rid themselves of slavery, mostly by selling their slaves via New England slave traders, would not hear of it.

In lieu of peaceful and orderly emancipation, a few Northern “radical abolitionists” actively funded and supported violent abolition, such as John Brown’s infamous, murderous rampages in Kansas and Virginia. Prior to John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, there were more Emancipation Societies in the South than in the North. But the celebratory Northern reaction to “Bleeding Kansas,” Brown’s murders and the refusal by Northern States to extradite escaped participants and co-conspirators, resulted in a hardening of Southern attitudes. White Southerners, outnumbered in some communities by Blacks, were understandably fearful of bloody revolts and vengeful reprisals such as John Brown’s, Nat Turner’s, Denmark Vesey’s, a half dozen others from New York to Louisiana, and the most “successful” genocidal bloodbath in Haiti. Thus, did the previously growing, general Southern appetite for emancipation begin to dramatically wane.

Without getting too deep into all of the complexities and myriad views of slavery, who profited, the tangled interests, whether and how to end it, etc., suffice to say with respect to the specific charge of treason: Slavery was legal from before the beginning, to after the end of the war.

[Publisher's Note: New York, Boston and other New England cities carried on an illegal slave trade until years after the War Between the States though the slave trade had been outlawed by the U.S. Constitution in 1808. W. E. B. Du Bois said in his famous book, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States, that in 1863, during the war, Boston and New York were the largest slave trading ports on the planet.]

When the war was launched by Lincoln to “preserve the Union,” there were seven Confederate States, all of which permitted slavery, and nine Union States that permitted slavery. There were more Union “slave states” than Confederate when the war was started. Four “slave states” joined the Confederacy upon Lincoln’s announcement of war to prevent secession. Five “slave states” remained in the Union. Later, a sixth “slave state,” West Virginia, would secede from the Confederacy and join/re-join the Union.

Slavery would not become illegal in the United States until the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which occurred AFTER the war was over. Ironically, the first state to ratify the Constitution, Delaware, which remained in the Union throughout the war, was the last state to end slavery after ratification of the 13th Amendment.

So if support of lawful slavery were somehow tantamount to the crime of treason, the slaveholding Union States of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri (Claimed by both the Union and the Confederacy), and later, in West Virginia (admitted to the Union during the war as a “slave state”) … and in the slave holding territories of Oklahoma and New Mexico, would have suffered no end of prominent gallows.

At no time, did Lincoln or the Republican Congress declare that ending slavery was an objective of the war. In fact, Lincoln specifically, adamantly said the opposite many times. In fact, Lincoln even said in his first inaugural address that he supported adoption of an Amendment to the Constitution, which would ensure that slavery would be perpetually allowed by the Constitution. Known as the “Corwin Amendment,” it was passed by the Republican Congress and ratified by five Union states including Lincoln's Illinois until the war made it moot.

The Republican Congress’s official “War Aims Resolution” did not even mention slavery, much less declare abolition as an objective.

As for the much vaunted and ballyhooed  “Emancipation Proclamation,” only those who haven’t carefully read and analyzed it fantasize that it freed a single slave anywhere.

To put the bizarre allegations of the “slavery = treason” connection away: When the war was started to prevent Southern independence, there more slave states in the USA than in the CSA. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves, and West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a “slave state” during the war after the Emancipation Proclamation was published. Slavery remained legal in the Union until after the war. Lincoln specifically stated ending slavery was not an objective of the war. And the Republican led U. S. Congress formally omitted any mention that the abolition of slavery was a war aim.

The charge of “treason” against the Confederates is refuted by facts and logic. Neither secession, which was lawful, nor the institution of slavery, which was also lawful, constituted rebellion, insurrection or treason by the lawful authority of the governing U. S. Constitution.

We should not stand quietly by as “know nothings” distort our history, defame our ancestors and mischaracterize the essence of government by consent of the governed. Grave harm will fall upon succeeding generations of Americans regardless of ancestry, if we do.

PLEASE NOTE: This began as an informal email conversation among friends, a couple of whom asked me to clean it up for submission to the esteemed Abbeville Institute. All unassailable facts and logic, I have merely remembered from the works of many great historians, patriots and thinkers. As I’ve been reading about the events in question for over 60 years, I wish to express my debt and gratitude to far more people than is possible. However, among those still with us who continue to contribute their hard work, research, clear thinking and inspiration, I sincerely thank Clyde Wilson, H. V. (Bo) Traywick, Jr., Philip Leigh, Samuel Mitcham, Jr., Boyd Cathey, Thomas DiLorenzo, Gene Kizer, Jr., James and Walter Kennedy and the indefatigable Ann McClean… along with a regiment of like minded friends and family too numerous to list by name.


Lloyd Garnett

Lloyd Garnett is a retired “jack of several trades,” avid reader, observer and a Virginian.

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1 Henry L. Benning, "Henry L. Benning's Secessionist Speech, Monday Evening, November 19," delivered in Milledgeville, Georgia, November 19, 1860, in Freehling and Simpson, Secession Debated, Georgia's Showdown in 1860, 132.

2 Ibid.