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Slaughter at Cainhoy, The Worst Racial Violence in the South Carolina Lowcountry During Reconstruction, Part Two, Conclusion

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The wounded were lying in the chapel attached to the residence, and every one of them had not only been horribly mutilated, but they as well as the dead, had been robbed of their clothing. . . . The mattresses were literally soaked in blood.

Part Two, Conclusion, of
Slaughter at Cainhoy
The Worst Racial Violence in the South Carolina Lowcountry During Reconstruction
by Gene Kizer, Jr.
Brick Church, a/k/a White Church, near Cainhoy, SC, site of a bloody political ambush Mon., October 16, 1876.
Brick Church, a/k/a White Church, near Cainhoy, SC, site of a bloody political ambush Mon., October 16, 1876.

THE RECORD OF JOINT MEETINGS in the Charleston area had been good in spite of the Charleston riot of September 6th. There had been a joint meeting at Strawberry Ferry and successful joint meetings "on Johns Island, on Edisto Island and at other points." Nobody was suspecting trouble when a joint meeting was scheduled for "Brick Church, about three miles from Cainhoy, in the parish of St. Thomas and St. Dennis," to take place Monday, October 16, 1876.1

Democrats chartered the steamer Pocosin which left that morning with around 150 men on board including many black Democrats. At the last minute word was sent that Republican leader Bowen wanted to ride, and the steamer waited until he was aboard with 150 black Republicans including "McKinlay, Cyrus Gaillard and other prominent speakers."2

The day was beautiful and the trip very pleasant with Democrats "firing their pistols at such objects in the river as attracted their attention." Little did they know how valuable that ammunition would be a couple hours later. When they arrived, many Democrats were low or out of ammunition, not suspecting any trouble.

Republican Bowen knew their ammunition was low. He "started off in a buggy as soon as he could land, and must have reached the Brick Church half an hour or more before the arrival of the Democrats." Cainhoy villagers "provided wagons and other vehicles to convey" the Democrats to the church. They were very friendly and everybody was having a good time.3

A Mr. William Venning had also gone ahead and when he got there he found "a large body of negroes, well armed with muskets and rifles," and he heard them say that "they would not suffer Delany, a colored Democrat, to address the meeting." Mr. Venning also heard Bowen say to the blacks "hide your guns," which they did.4

The speakers platform was on a small hill. To the left of the platform "was an old brick building (an old kitchen), with only part of the walls standing." The church was 150 feet in front of the platform. There was a small building to the right of the church, used as a vestry.5

Bowen "called the meeting to order," the Eutaw band brought by the Democrats played a "lively air" and the speaking began. Democrat "W. St. Julien Jervey was the first speaker" followed by black Republican W. J. McKinlay "who seemed nervous and excited" and "began a very violent speech." The black Republicans, apparently thinking McKinlay was the black Democrat Delany, gave the signal and the massacre began.6

There were 40 to 50 black Republican muskets hidden in the chimney of the old building to the left of the speakers stand. The whites had found them but not said anything about them under instruction from George Rivers Walker who said:

I am sure that it was part of a plot to make the whites seize these arms as an excuse for bringing on a row; but at the time I advised that the guns be watched but not molested. Suddenly the whites by the old house saw emerging from pines and swamp at the back of the 'stand' detachments of negroes armed with muskets, which they pointed toward us. At the same moment a confusion was raised on account of the supposed Delany taking the stand, this commotion probably being the signal for the detachment to appear.7

The whites did not seize the guns until they saw the detachment of blacks with guns "at full cock." At that point, whites "made a rush for the chimney filled with guns, loaded, as I (George Rivers Walker) am told by all, with powder only." Venning and two others said the first shots were fired by the negroes advancing from the swamp. Walker said he "saw the negroes pouring volleys into these unarmed boys."8

The whites ran toward the vestry by the church sometimes returning fire from "small pocket pistols, but, of course, against volleys of buckshot, slugs and broken pieces of lead fired from muskets, the negroes retiring behind the pines, the pistols were useless." Walker said "I saw Abram Smith, a negro trial justice, on the stand firing at some boys and men who were running away and defenceless."9

The blacks went into the woods to reload which gave the whites a slight breather. Walker said that Bowen was at the vestry and asked for a white volunteer to go with  him to try and persuade the blacks to break off the attack. Walker immediately volunteered. Bowen told him to stop the Democrats from firing while they went, so Walker said "'Democrats, reserve your fire while I go with Mr. Bowen', and they strictly obeyed."10

Walker goes on to say that Bowen, at first, had some success stopping the attack even though he believed Bowen was responsible for setting it up in the first place. The effort was short lived because:

. . . suddenly Cyrus Gaillard, an incendiary negro, pushing Mr. Bowen and myself aside, called out to the negroes, "Mister Bowens, we can't listen to you now. Come on, boys; we've got 'em, now let's kill the sons of b______," and, rushing past us, he incited them to recommence; and I solemnly swear that they fired again on the whites without provocation, and without a shot being first fired by them.11

Walker found himself in trouble when he heard a black say "'Shoot that son of a b_____.'" He jumped behind a tree as the shot went off and ran "tree to tree for 200 yards back to the vestry" with  shots being fired at him constantly.

Whites tried to make a stand at the vestry but "the rain of shot was too hot to be met with half a dozen pistols at a two hundred yard range" so they retreated to Cainhoy.12 The boat took some of the wounded and "the boys and unarmed men" back to Charleston while 40 men stayed behind in Cainhoy to protect the women and children, many of whom apparently had to be rounded up. They spent a terrifying night "encamped around the residence" of the Rev. E. C. Logan:13

. . . When not on picket duty we were nursing the wounded, the night was very cold and the previous day being warm we were all without overcoats, and when morning and reinforcements came we thanked our God for protecting us from the 300 armed demons who we momentarily expected to attack us; . . .14

Another account said:

The wounded were lying in the chapel attached to the residence, and every one of them had not only been horribly mutilated, but they as well as the dead, had been robbed of their clothing. . . . The mattresses were literally soaked in blood.15

Another of the victims, a kindly old man in  his seventies named William E. Simmons, "an old, crippled and silver-haired white man"16 who had come out just to visit some friends and look at some property he had once owned got trapped in the vestry and was shot through the windows then:

. . . the devils must have dragged him out, chopped him with an axe, broke, by beating, almost all his bones, then shot him while lying on the ground with a musket, for we found below him on the sill to the vestry door and in the ground the holes made by the buckshot. As we picked him up the broken bones grated together, though he was at the time twelve hours dead.17

The only black Republican casualty was John Lachicotte, an old black man killed. No black Republicans had been wounded.18

Mr. Thomas Whitaker, mentioned earlier, who had been shot in the stomach at close range with buckshot then hacked so that big slices of flesh were missing from his body, dictated these last words to his mother. They were written as he was dying next to Rev. E. C. Logan "at whose residence the unfortunate man breathed his last:"

My Dear Mother -- I am very seriously wounded. They took off my shoes and cursed me for a d____d Democrat, saying that I came here to raise a row. I told them I did no such thing; that I only came here to hear the speaking. I send you my love. I wish I could come to see you, and I will do so if I am ever able. I am trying to put my trust in the Lord, and I hope to be forgiven my sins and meet you in heaven. Thomas Whitaker.19

Sworn statements began appearing in the newspaper two days after the massacre such as the following:

State of South Carolina,

Charleston County,

Personally appeared J. C. Boyce, who being first duly sworn, testified as follows: I saw the first shot fired at the Brick Church, St. Thomas and St. Dennis, on the 16th of October, 1876. I am positive it was fired by the negroes. No gun was seized by the Butler Guards until the negroes with cocked muskets were advancing on the whites.

Sworn to before me this 16th day of October, 1876. George Rivers Walker, Notary Public.

Mr. William S. Venning, Jr. testified under oath in a sworn statement that he had arrived before the Democrats. Here is part of his testimony:

. . . Bowen had arrived in advance of them (the Democrats). The negroes had almost all arrived, and were mostly armed with muskets. I heard the negroes say: If Delany speaks we'll have a row and take him down. C. C. Bowen said distinctly in my hearing: "Conceal your muskets." They (the negroes) at once did so until the row began, when they jerked them out and began firing on the whites, who were mostly unarmed, and those who were armed only with pocket pistols. I saw the row begin. The negroes suddenly ran for their arms and began charging the whites with muskets at full cock before a shot was fired. And I solemnly state that it is my firm belief that they fired first. I was in a position to see the contrary had it occurred, and I am sure the negroes fired first; but even were I wrong, no white man fired until the negroes were advancing on them with muskets presented as aforesaid. W. S. Venning. Sworn to before me this 16th day of October, A.D. 1876. George Rivers Walker, Notary Public.20

A man named James Jeffords, Cainhoy resident, told a News and Courier reporter that "as far back as ten days ago a negro named George Brady told him that he did not want to see any of his (Mr. Jefford's) family hurt, and that there would be trouble when this meeting (Cainhoy) took place." Mr. Jeffords came to Charleston and tried to "see some of the Democratic executive committee but failed to find them."21

There were several slightly different accounts of the way it started. A Mr. C. C. Leslie, in his statement, said "several women (Republican) who had been guarding the guns in a house near by rushed towards the house and the Republicans gave a yell and rushed for the guns also." This set off "a general stampede" and "the negroes rushed in every direction, picked up guns from the bushes, and began a sharp musketry fire upon the Democrats."22

Black Democrat J. R. Jenkins, whose life had been saved by white Democrats when Jenkins was turned over to federal troops during the King Street riot five weeks earlier, testified that he "heard a colored man cry, 'look out! look out!' and rush forward and fire a pistol into the air."

He says "upon this signal the Republicans rushed for the kitchen nearby and for the swamp, and in a few moments they returned with guns in their hands and the firing began. Jenkins said "before the firing commenced Bowen went around among the negroes whispering," and "that he had been with the negroes nearly an hour before the Democrats came up."23

It was also reported by several witnesses that during the fight, Bowen disappeared among the blacks who were firing from the swamp.

In the final count, five whites had been murdered and mutilated, and 15 to 50 wounded, many seriously. Among the wounded were three black Democrats. Only one black Republican was killed and none were wounded.24 The boy who had his right eye torn out, Walter Graddick, "recovered but was maimed for life."25

None of the offenders, even the well-known Cyrus Gaillard, were ever brought to justice because it would have been Bowen's responsibility to do so.

Bowen told Republican Governor Chamberlain that the whites had started the fight by shooting the old black Republican, Lachicotte. That was refuted in several sworn statements of witnesses who maintained Lachicotte was not shot until the fighting had been going on a while and he was shot in retaliation for him shooting a Democrat.

To sum things up, Bowen rode on the Pocosin with the Democrats and observed them wasting most of their ammunition amusing themselves. Upon arriving at Cainhoy, Bowen went straight to Brick Church and was seen among the blacks who had muskets, whispering to them and telling them to hide their muskets.

Guns that had been hidden by black Republicans in the kitchen to the left of the speakers platform were discovered by white Democrats but the whites suspected it was a trick so nothing had been done about them until whites spotted a "militia like" group of blacks moving out of the swamp behind the speakers platform with muskets cocked.

At that point the whites rushed to get those guns but they were apparently a trick all along. They were loaded with powder but no projectile, so it was as if they were loaded with blanks. Several people reported later that the guns had been loaded with powder only so were worthless in a fight.

It is likely, based on sworn testimony, that the blacks moving out of the swamp with muskets had done so on a signal, which was supposed to be the black Democrat Delany speaking.

However, black Republican McKinley was mistaken for Delany and things started as McKinley began speaking.

At the same time, one account has black women running out of the kitchen and shouting that the whites have found the guns and that starting it.

Another account has a brown-skinned Republican firing a shot in the air and that starting it.

No matter what, it seems certain that Delany was the signal for the black women to run out of the kitchen, or for the brown-skinned Republican to fire a shot to alert the black militia to come out of the swamp and start the attack.

In responding to Bowen's statement that the whites killing Lachicotte started everything, a Dr. Thomas S. Grimke, in a sworn statement on the 19th of October, 1876, said that:

. . . Lachicotte "was not killed until long after the attack began, I should say ten minutes at least, though in order to be strictly certain and exact I will and do assert that heavy firing had been going on for some time before he fell."26

Neither the King Street Riot of September 6, 1876, the Cainhoy Massacre five weeks later or federal troops pouring into South Carolina during the presidential campaign could deter white and black Democrats from electing former Confederate General Wade Hampton their governor.

The News and Courier, which was SO much more honest and honorable than its descendant, today's woke race-obsessed Post and Courier, editorialized the day after Cainhoy that "The Democrats know that they can carry the colored people with them, if they get a chance to talk to them; . . ."27

The News and Courier was right. Not only did the Democrats "carry the colored people with them" in 1876, Democratic policies put in place by Gov. Hampton persuaded large numbers of blacks to vote Democratic two years later.

Reconstruction in South Carolina ended when federal troops were removed in April 1877.28 It is too bad that the damage caused by almost a decade of Republican violence, race hatred and corruption by carpetbaggers and scalawags in South Carolina and across the South, caused a backlash against blacks within a decade that lasted until the 1960s.

That is the real legacy of Reconstruction.

 

1 "Bloody Work at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 17, 1876.

2 "The Crime at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Wednesday, October 18, 1876.

3 "Bloody Work at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 17, 1876.

4 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876.

5 "Bloody Work at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 17, 1876.

6 Ibid.

7 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 "The Crime at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Wednesday, October 18, 1876.

14 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876.

15 "The Crime at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Wednesday, October 18, 1876.

16 Ibid.

17 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876.

18 Melinda Meek Hennessey, "Racial Violence During Reconstruction: The 1876 Riots in Charleston and Cainhoy," South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 2, (April, 1985), 108-109.

19 "The Crime at Cainhoy," News and Courier, Wednesday, October 18, 1876.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Hennessey, "Racial Violence During Reconstruction," 108-109.

25 Alfred B. Williams, Hampton and His Red Shirts, South Carolina's Deliverance in 1876 (Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Company, Publishers, 1935), 272.

26 News and Courier, Friday, October 20, 1876, editorial page.

27 News and Courier, Tuesday, October 17, 1876.

28 Louis B. Wright, South Carolina, A Bicentennial History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. and Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1976), 15.

Slaughter at Cainhoy, The Worst Racial Violence in the South Carolina Lowcountry During Reconstruction, Part One

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Old Mr. Simmons, a decrepit man of seventy, took refuge inside the vestry, but the devils must have dragged him out, chopped him with an axe, broke, by beating, almost all his bones, and then shot him while lying on the ground. . . .

Part One of
Slaughter at Cainhoy
The Worst Racial Violence in the South Carolina Lowcountry During Reconstruction
by Gene Kizer, Jr.

During the presidential campaign of 1876, a political meeting took place at beautiful Brick Church near Cainhoy, South Carolina, Monday, October 16, 1876. It ended shortly after it started when Republican blacks savagely attacked the mostly white Democrats and shot, beat, hacked, mutilated and robbed them, killing five white men out of the group and severely wounding several others. An eyewitness, confirming the brutality of the attack, stated:

. . . Mr. Whitaker met with a worse fate, for he was brought in alive, suffering fearfully from buckshot through his stomach, and huge hacks of flesh taken out of him by an axe or hatchet. . . .

Daly (18 years old) was also left on the ground when wounded. His head was hacked in five places when found.

Poor Walter Gradick, a mere boy, had his eye gouged out, and was cruelly beaten and wounded. . . .1

All the victims had been stripped of their clothing and robbed.

The Brick Church, a/k/a White Church, north of Cainhoy in Berkeley County, S.C.
The Brick Church, a/k/a White Church, north of Cainhoy in Berkeley County, S.C.

This happened during the eighth year of Congressional Reconstruction in South Carolina, which began in 1868. Only three of the original eleven Confederate states were still occupied: South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. In the other eight, white Democrats, often with black support, had regained control of their governments.2

There was despair and hopelessness among Southern whites during much of Reconstruction, especially in South Carolina. Of 60,000 Confederate soldiers supplied by South Carolina to Southern armies in the war, 20,000 had been killed and another 20,000 maimed. The war in its totality had claimed 750,000 dead and over a million maimed. It is hard to fathom the grief and heartbreak from all that though Basil Gildersleeve, a Confederate soldier from Charleston who today is still considered the greatest American classical scholar of all time, tried in his book, The Creed of the Old South, published 27 years after the war:

A friend of mine, describing the crowd that besieged the Gare de Lyon in Paris, when the circle of fire was drawing round the city, and foreigners were hastening to escape, told me that the press was so great that he could touch in every direction those who had been crushed to death as they stood, and had not had room to fall. Not wholly unlike this was the pressure brought to bear on the Confederacy. It was only necessary to put out your hand and you touched a corpse; and that not an alien corpse, but the corpse of a brother or a friend.3

Reconstruction had begun this way for most white Southerners:

For some time now a straggling procession of emaciated, crippled men in ragged gray had been sadly making their way through the wreckage to homes that in too many instances were found to be but piles of ashes. These men had fought to exhaustion. For weeks they would be found passing wearily over the country roads and into the towns, on foot and on horseback. It was observed that 'they are so worn out that they fall down on the sidewalks and sleep.' The countryside through which  they passed presented the appearance of an utter waste, the fences gone, the fields neglected, the animals and herds driven away, and only lone chimneys marking spots where once had stood merry homes. A proud patrician lady riding between Chester and Camden in South Carolina scarcely saw a living thing, and 'nothing but tall blackened chimneys to show that any man had ever trod this road before'; and she was moved to tears at the funereal aspect of the gardens where roses were already hiding the ruins. The long thin line of gray-garbed men, staggering from weakness into towns, found them often gutted with the flames of incendiaries or soldiers. Penniless, sick at heart and in body, and humiliated by defeat, they found their families in poverty and despair.4

Blacks and whites could have adjusted to their new relationship after the war but the most unscrupulous people in all of American history, carpetbaggers and scalawags out for plunder and political advantage, did not want peace. They could not make money and hold power with peace, so they created racial hatred and division using violence and lies for their political advantage, not unlike the Marxists in America today with their "systemic racism" invention, and racial hate like Critical Race Theory, and fraud like the 1619 Project.

If it is true that history repeats itself, then the methods of control during Reconstruction and the methods of control of American Marxists today match perfectly. Of course, it's not exactly true that history repeats itself. It's the manifestations of human nature that repeat themselves over and over throughout time because human nature does not change.

So, South Carolina endured the lawlessness and corruption of an entrenched Republican Party loaded with carpetbaggers and scalawags for over eight long years. White frustration was epitomized by lawyer George Rivers Walker, son of the British consul in Charleston, who was at Cainhoy. Walker identifies a black Republican named Cyrus Gaillard as the one who kept the massacre going by telling other blacks to keep shooting the whites.5 Walker laments that taking legal action against Gaillard would be a waste of time because:

. . . first, the Republican trial justices will throw all obstacles in my way; when I say Republican I mean by it always Carolina Republican, for you know my Northern education prevents my holding any prejudices against bona fide Republicans of the North - then Bowen has complete control of the sessions, and the prosecuting officer, Buttz, is too well known for you to doubt the futility of my effort. . . .6

Walker is referring to the Republican sheriff of Charleston County, Christopher Columbus Bowen, and his protege, Solicitor C. W. Buttz.

Christopher Columbus Bowen, corrupt Republican sheriff of Charleston County during much of Reconstruction.
Christopher Columbus Bowen, corrupt Republican sheriff of Charleston County during much of Reconstruction.

Both Bowen and Buttz owed their positions solely to Republican political corruption, and Bowen maintained vice-grip control over black voters in Charleston County.

Early in the War Between the States, Bowen, a Georgia native, was in Jacksonville, Florida looting as the Confederate army pulled out.7

Later, Bowen was in the Confederate cavalry under Col. William Parker White. Bowen was court-martialed by White for forging a pass which extended a leave and enabled him to draw his pay.8 As a result, Bowen plotted to murder White. The plot was discovered and Bowen put in jail.

He was still in jail in Charleston at the end of the war but was released by federal troops entering Charleston when "former Confederate officials changed places with robbers, thieves, murderers and drunks."9

Bowen was typical of the men that raped and plundered the South during Reconstruction. In 1866, the Freedman's Bureau brought charges against Bowen for selling cotton "belonging to a freedman and instead of giving the money to the farmer, had kept it himself." He ended up in jail in Castle Pinckney for that but was eventually released.10

Bowen was charged with bigamy "twice during 1871."11 He got off the first time but was convicted the second time and went to jail. His wife pleaded with President Grant and got him a "good Republican pardon" so by July of 1871, he was again free.12

In 1872, Bowen was elected sheriff of Charleston County. Expenses had been "$20,000 a year to run the sheriff's office" in 1868. After 1872, when Bowen took over, "expenses doubled to $40,000 a year."13 Voting irregularities were also frequent with Bowen.

A respected Northern journalist was shocked by Bowen and Buttz and wrote to the News and Courier which published his statements October 15, 1874:

This candid and impartial observer tells the American people that the notorious C. C. Bowen . . . and his ally and protege C. W. Buttz, the prosecuting attorney of the country, are already at work to control the ballot boxes. . . . Never in my life as a stranger to all this sort of legal horror have I ever felt a sense of terrorization like the present.14

Bowen and Buttz were rotten to the core which is why white South Carolinians, along with thousands of blacks, had had enough of Reconstruction by 1876. Walker, who was almost murdered at Cainhoy, summed up the situation for all South Carolinians:

And now that these demons (Republicans) are rendering it unsafe for a man to go armed even through the country, Chamberlain (Republican governor) orders the whites to disarm, and calls for the United States troops to enforce his order, and at the same time arms the negro militia to murder us. My wife and all the ladies are in the greatest excitement. The negroes in our parish are most threatening, and while they outnumber us twenty to one, we are ordered to disband our organizations for defence and to disarm.15

The Mississippi Plan Adopted

Desperate South Carolina Democrats adopted a strategy that had worked in Mississippi the previous year and had as its main component the direct confrontation of corrupt Republicans at their own meetings. Gen. S. W. Ferguson of Mississippi, who had been born in South Carolina, explained to a group of Democrats at a big rally in Charleston August 25, 1876, that in Mississippi, they went to Republican meetings and when the Republicans lied, Democrats, face to face, "clinched them then and there" and "denounced the corrupt leaders" saying they were "liars and thieves."16

White Democrats were trying to discredit Republicans who were telling poor blacks that if whites get back in power, they will reestablish slavery and other such lies.

Racist Republicans also used violence and whippings on any black who did not vote Republican and on many blacks simply for being friendly to whites.

There were other methods of ostracism within the black community too, and all this added up to Republican intimidation to keep blacks voting Republican so carpetbaggers and scalawags could continue at the public trough.17 All of this is exactly like the Marxist left's "Cancel Culture" today.

Democrat whites at Republican meetings were to be courteous to blacks but not deceive or flatter or make promises, just plain talk, man to man, which they reasoned would cause blacks to respect them.

Democrats were also to form black Democrat clubs and to protect black Democrats. They were to be ready for violence but under no circumstances initiate it which would bring the Northern press down on them.18

Other parts of the Mississippi Plan included boycotts of Republican businesses and pressure on black employees of Democrats to vote Democratic, the same kind of pressure Republicans had been using for eight years.

However, at no time did Democrats threaten to whip blacks who didn't vote Democrat nor did they encourage black women to reject black men for being Democrats, nor did they ever tell blacks that Republicans would eventually turn on them and sell them back into slavery.

The Mississippi Plan was immediately put into effect. Republican meetings that Democrats attended became known as "joint meetings" with "division of time." Throughout the campaign, Democrats, black and white, went to Republican meetings and had their say.

Republicans were always invited to Democrat meetings but few came because of the difficulty of defending the party's record of corruption and public theft. Joint meetings with division of speaking time were agreed to in Charleston County by Republican leader Bowen, and his Democrat counterpart, Charles H. Simonton, Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee.19

A successful joint meeting took place at Strawberry Ferry on Thursday, August 31, 1876.20 There were approximately 300 whites in attendance and a similar number of blacks, though black voters in this area numbered over 600, to 25 whites. This was a stronghold of Bowen's. Everybody had had a good time, the discussions were lively, but things had gone well.21

This was not a good sign for Bowen and the Republicans as they "noted with growing dismay and fury the slow but steady additions to the number of negroes enrolling in Democratic clubs, for one reason of another."22 As thousands of blacks began supporting Democrats during the campaign of 1876 and even riding as red shirts, violence against them by Republican blacks increased dramatically.

This black Republican violence against black Democrats was demonstrated in a bloody riot in Charleston on Wednesday, September 6, 1876, some five weeks before Cainhoy.

That night, the Democratic Hampton and Tilden Colored Club of Ward 4 met in Archer's Hall (corner of King and George Streets). Outside, scores of armed and angry black Republicans had gathered and were threatening the black Democrats.

When the meeting was over, the black Democrats were put in the middle of the 45 or so whites, to protect them from the black Republicans, and they marched quietly up King Street toward Marion Square, called Citadel Green back then, with Republican blacks on both sides of King Street cursing and jeering at them the whole way. Journalist Alfred B. Williams writes:

The Hunkidories and Live Oaks, negro Radical Republican secret organizations, had gathered their forces and were massed, waiting, in King Street, armed with pistols, clubs and sling shots, the last made with a pound of lead attached to a twelve inch leather strap and providing a deadly weapon at close range.23

As the white and black Democrats got to St. Matthews Church "a mob of 150 negroes, armed with staves, clubs and pistols, came yelling after them, hurrahing for Hayes and Wheeler."24

The whites stopped, a black rioter ran up and "knocked the first white man he met in the head with a 'slung shot,' and the crowd immediately behind him fired a pistol into the crowd of whites, shouting that they would have the colored Democrats out even if they had to kill every man in the crowd to do it."

Whites shot over their heads to cover other whites who rushed the black Democrats to safety with the federal troops at the Citadel.25

The Citadel in 1865 on Citadel Green, today's Marion Square. It's now an Embassy Suites.
The Citadel in 1865 on Citadel Green, today's Marion Square. It's now an Embassy Suites.

With the black Democrats safe, the 45 or so whites then "retreated backwards up King Street, facing the negroes and keeping them off as well they could by returning the fire from the pistols of the mob." Suddenly, as the whites got to John Street, "the negro mob was reinforced by another multitude of blacks who swept out of John street and cut off the retreat of the whites." This mob was yelling "blood!"26

It became a hand to hand fight. Some policemen arrived but were "powerless to restrain the infuriated mob."

After 25 or so of the whites were beaten senseless, it looked like it might stop then it started back. Pistols "were going off every moment, and amid the firing Policeman Green fell shot through the abdomen, and Mr. J. M. Buckner, white, was shot through the abdomen."27

Finally, police reinforcements arrived and separated whites and blacks but when a detail left with the wounded "the fighting immediately began again." Soon blacks had complete control of King Street and the riot lasted until midnight. It had raged a mile along King Street from Cannon Street to Wentworth28 and the whole time whites had had to "stay in their homes with shivering and terror stricken families because any white man venturing on the street alone invited death uselessly."29

A reporter had observed "a mob of negroes chasing a white man, who had hardly a vestige of clothing upon his person, and covered with blood from a dozen wounds." He "was knocked down several times with brickbats or clubs, and several pistol shots were fired at him." He was rescued by a policeman and taken home "in an almost lifeless condition."30

Final casualties total one white man dead, over 50 beaten severely. No black Republicans had been killed and only a handful had been injured.31 The white man who died, Buckner, had been part of the escort protecting the black Democrats. He had a wife and child at home.

Whoever planned the ambush had their timing thrown off when the whites stopped to face the first mob. If the whites had gone just a block further up King Street, or their formation had fallen apart, or they had broken and run, there was no way they would have been able to get the black Democrats to safety at the Citadel. Since the black Democrats were the object of the mob, they certainly would have been murdered along with several whites who were determined to protect them.

There were no more night riots in downtown Charleston during Reconstruction because whites perfected their communications network and could put hundreds of armed men in the saddle quickly. The day after the riot a thousand white members of the Butler Guards and Charleston Light Dragoons patrolled the streets from sun down to sun up for the next three months, in force, and there was no more trouble at night.32

Charleston Light Dragoon, 1888 sketch by Edward Laight Wells.
Charleston Light Dragoon, 1888 sketch by Edward Laight Wells.
Charleston Light Dragoons, 1895 picture.

Five weeks later, with the election fast approaching, Democrats got careless and walked into another ambush, this time at Cainhoy, 12 miles up the Wando River from Charleston.

Next week, September 30, 2021, Part Two, Conclusion, of Slaughter at Cainhoy, The Worst Racial Violence in the South Carolina Lowcountry During Reconstruction.

NOTES

1 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876, front page.

2 Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 186.

3 Basil L. Gildersleeve, The Creed of the Old South, 1865-1915 (Bibliolife Network; reprint, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1915), 26-27.

4 Claude G. Bowers, The Tragic Era, The Revolution after Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1929), 45.

5 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876, front page.

6 Ibid.

7 Robert Douglas Mellard, Christopher Columbus Bowen: A Scalawag Discovers Opportunity in the New World of Reconstruction Politics, Master Thesis, University of Charleston and The Citadel, 1994, 15.

8 Ibid, 6.

9 Ibid, 16.

10 Ibid, 22.

11 Ibid, 67.

12 Ibid, 70.

13 Ibid, 88-91.

14 The News and Courier, October 15, 1874, as cited in Robert Douglas Mellard, Christopher Columbus Bowen: A Scalawag Discovers Opportunity in the New World of Reconstruction Politics, Master thesis, University of Charleston and The Citadel, 1994, 97.

15 "The Cainhoy Slaughter," News and Courier, Tuesday, October 24, 1876.

16 "To Live and Die in Dixie," News and Courier, August 26, 1876, front page.

17 David Duncan Wallace, South Carolina, A Short History, 1520-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951), 572.

18 Bowers, The Tragic Era, 513-14; "To Live and Die in Dixie," News and Courier, August 26, 1876.

19 Melinda Meek Hennessey, "Racial Violence During Reconstruction: The 1876 Riots in Charleston and Cainhoy," South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 2 (April, 1985), 107.

20 "'No Intimidation'," News and Courier, September 1, 1876.

21 Ibid.

22 Alfred B. Williams, Hampton and His Red Shirts, South Carolina's Deliverance in 1876 (Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Company, Publishers, 1935), 37-41.

23 Williams, Hampton and His Red Shirts, 121.

24 "A Bloody Outbreak," News and Courier, Thursday, September 7, 1876.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 "A Night of Excitement," News and Courier, Friday, September 8, 1876.

29 Williams, Hampton and His Red Shirts, 122.

30 "A Bloody Outbreak," News and Courier, Thursday, September 7, 1876.

31 Hennessey, "Racial Violence During Reconstruction," 106.

32 Williams, Hampton and His Red Shirts, 126-27.

Our Confederate Ancestors: A Year with Forrest, by Rev. W. H. Whitsitt, Part Two, Conclusion

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A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.

About eleven o'clock they laid the first ambuscade, but Forrest contrived to discover it in advance and, instead of walking into it, caused us to dismount and get into line and crawl up close to the enemy's position.

It would have made too much noise to have brought up a piece of artillery by horse power so soldiers were harnessed to it and dragged it to a point within two hundred yards of the enemy's line.

When the proper moment arrived, he ordered the cannon to open and the cavalry likewise so that we surprised the enemy instead of them surprising us. I walked along the line where they had been formed and found it littered from end to end with small bits of paper. It looked as if every man in their column must have employed the leisure afforded by that stop to tear up all the private letters found upon his person. It was clear that their alarm had become serious and would help us much if we could keep it up.

Part Two, Conclusion, of
A Year with Forrest

Address by Rev. W. H. Whitsitt, D.D., before R. E. Lee Camp, Confederate Veterans, of Richmond, Va., in Confederate Veteran magazine, Vol. XXV, No. 8, August, 1917.

Forrest-42K

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : This article, Part Two of Rev. Whitsitt's "A Year with Forrest," is one of the most exciting and inspiring I have ever read. It shows clearly what a genius Forrest was. Forrest's men were motivated by the fearlessness of their leader and became fearless themselves.

For example, Forrest, with only 475 Confederates, chased a Yankee unit made up of over 1,500 well armed men, across Tennessee and forced (tricked might be a better word) them to surrender as detailed in this article.

Forrest was relentless, on top of his enemy the whole way, anticipating their moves, designing traps, waging a psychological war to keep them scared and running.

Southerners needed brilliant leaders because they faced such overwhelming odds. They were outnumbered four to one and outgunned a hundred to one. The Yankee army was always well fed, well clothed and armed with advanced weaponry.

Southerners were usually hungry, ragged and always had inferior weapons.

The North had a huge pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world which is why 25% of the Union army was not born in America. Tens of thousands of foreigners poured continually into the North with only the shirts on their backs to find the Union Army recruiter waiting on the docks with fat enlistment bonuses.

The South had to build their country from scratch but the North started with a powerful army, navy, merchant marine, a functioning government, a stable financial system and most of the nation's manufacturing. Their horses to carry their cannons and cavalry were always well fed, healthy and replaced immediately when they were killed.

There were 19 marine engine factories in the North. Zero, in the South.

Gen. Grant did not mind losing men. He could easily replace them. Southerners could not.

Yet Southerners killed in battle roughly the same number of Yankees as they killed of us, and Southern ingenuity and valor such as displayed by Nathan Bedford Forrest, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and so many others, are second to none among all nations and all time.

Lincoln knew if he allowed such people as native Southerners with their talent and spirit to form their own country on his Southern border with 100% control of King Cotton, they would soon eclipse the Yankee empire as the greatest, most powerful nation in history.

That's why Lincoln started his war as fast as he could. He had to keep other nations from supporting the South like the French had done for the Colonists in the Revolution.

Lincoln had to cut off the South from the rest of the world quickly so he sent his invasion fleets with hundreds of troops and armaments to Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens to get the war started, then he announced his naval blockade before the smoke had cleared from the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

Despite the outcome, the intelligence, resourcefulness and valor of Southerners is there for all to read and understand. Their true federal republic based on powerful sovereign states is exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted for America.

Can you imagine Forrest, Lee or Jackson giving billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, Blackhawks, night-vision goggles, etc. to murderers like the Taliban?

The Taliban are Biden and Blinken's new buddies while Biden and Blinken work against former American military personnel and others who are struggling to get our citizens and friends out of Afghanistan.

We are being led by traitors and the most incompetent fools in American history.

"President" Joe Biden has disgraced and dishonored our country and our military in the eyes of the world so that even European parliaments have passed resolutions in disgust.

Biden has armed Taliban terrorists with our own weapons and the Taliban is now bringing in Al-Quida, ISIS and all the others.

Just like Obama gave ISIS their caliphate, which was destroyed in a few months by President Trump, Biden has gone further, and Americans will die. Because of Biden and Blinken, we no longer own the night.

What is it with Democrats and their love of terrorists and people who hate America?

It is as if the Democrat Party hates white Americans so bad they would arm terrorists because they are non-whites, rather than protect majority-white America.

Why couldn't Biden have sent drones to destroy the night-vision goggles and Blackhawks?

I'll tell you why.

Because Biden, Blinken and company are such idiots they removed the military first and put us at the mercy of the Taliban.

They then were afraid if they destroyed those weapons with drones, there would be a bloodbath even worse than currently taking place, and the photo-ops would be bad for Democrats.

So, they gave billions of dollars of highly sophisticated weaponry to our worst enemies knowing our media, which are the most corrupt propagandists in the history of the printed word, would cover for them.

What utter incompetence and treason.

This Federal Government that the "Federals" in the War Between the States forced on our nation is corrupt almost beyond repair, and the national Republican Party is feckless and cowardly. Without a strong leader like Trump, Republicans will never hold these traitors accountable.

Our founding documents are clear that the PEOPLE are the Sovereign in our country. Not Big Tech with its censorship, or the racist, Marxist Communist Democrat Party with its Critical Race Theory they are forcing on everybody.

Wake up America. We are still the greatest nation in history despite this internal onslaught by our America-hating enemies on the left.

It's time they experience that Righteous Might of the American people that FDR spoke about on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese and we entered World War II.

The things we face today are worse than that day of Infamy because there are traitors in our country at the highest levels, and they intend to make us a totalitarian tyranny with them in charge.

I can't imagine a more horrible fate for our children and grandchildren. All one has to do is go to any violent, drug infested Democrat big city to witness a crumbling civilization. People defecate in the street, laws decriminalize theft which makes thievery so rampant no business can survive. Bail laws put criminals back on the street before the ink is dry on their arrest warrants so they can prey again on innocent citizens.

The Southern border is wide open and every single month hundreds of thousands of unknown people, drug dealers, terrorists, thousands with third world diseases who are also COVID positive with new strains of the plague flow into our country but that doesn't matter because they are all future Democrat voters.

As others have observed, we are witnessing a Marxist Communist takeover of the United States of America in real time and it is being orchestrated by the Democrat Party. This is undoubtedly a foreign invasion enabled by Democrat traitors and there is nothing we can do about it at the moment.

The Democrat Party is at war with our country as we know it so they can enrich themselves and rule forever.

The American Sovereign, the People, better wake the hell up and fast because time is running out.]

Part Two, Conclusion, of
A Year with Forrest
by Rev. W. H. Whitsitt

ON THE 23d of April, 1863, we were ordered from Columbia to Courtland, Ala., and at Town Creek, not far away, we found our old adversary, Gen. G. M. Dodge, again with a large force of infantry and cavalry.

Their purpose was to afford a proper send-off to the expedition of Col. A. D. Streight, who had a commission to visit Bragg's rear and do all the damage he might find possible in Georgia and elsewhere.

General Dodge pressed us sorely all day of the 27th and also the 28th, but at midnight of the 28th a messenger appeared in our camp near Courtland to announce that a body of about twenty-five cavalry had passed through Mount Hope at dusk and had taken the road to Moulton.

It was then "Boots and saddles!" and at 1 a.m. of the 29th, the same hour at which Streight quitted Moulton, Forrest set out to pursue him.

The troops of Colonel Streight were brave and formidable. They were select and seasoned infantry from Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, who had been mounted on mules especially for this expedition. In action they always dismounted just as we did, and they were practiced and patient fighters.

During the forenoon of the 20th, we reached Moulton and followed the enemy to Day's Gap, a distance of seventeen miles, where we found him in camp a little after midnight. It was suspected that with all his excellencies as a commander Colonel Streight was too slow of motion for the business he had in hand.

He had been three and a half days on the march when we struck him and had traversed a distance of only sixty-five miles. What was the use of mounting his command if they were to be marched at the rate of infantry? If he had moved forty miles a day during these three days and kept up that pace, he could have reached Rome and Atlanta in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He must have considered that he was on a May-day frolic; he seemed to be trying to coddle the negroes. After we had come up with him he moved at the rate of fifty miles a day and threw in some fighting besides.

At nine o'clock on the mornig of the 30th of April, Forrest prepared to engage Streight in this camp upon Sand Mountain. Our regiment, which for this expedition was commanded by Captain McLemore, was sent with Biffle's 9th Tennessee to climb the mountain by another gap and gain the enemy's rear. Forrest hoped to hold him with a portion of Roddy's Brigade until we might catch him in that trap. But the engagement at Day's Gap was too brief for our purpose. Streight evidently apprehended the nature of our game and slipped out of the trap.

When Forrest found us in the road on Sand Mountain, he sent General Roddy and his brigade back to the Tennessee River to observe the movements of General Dodge, and, with the two Tennessee regiments mentioned and his escort and a section of Ferrell's Battery, he closely followed the enemy, although our number was less than half of theirs.

They had whipped Roddy in the initial encounter on the morning of the 29th and captured two of the guns of Morton who commanded after the death of Freeman. But we forced Colonel Streight to deliver battle again about sunset and when it was concluded the two pieces were left spiked on the field.

This was the first night battle I had witnessed. The pine trees were very tall, the darkness of their shade was intense, the mountain where the enemy was posted was steep, and as we charged again and again under Forrest's own lead it was a grand spectacle.

It seemed that the fires which blazed from their muskets were almost long enough to reach our faces. There was one advantage in being below them: they often fired above our heads in the darkness.

This battle closed about 9 p.m., and shortly afterwards the moon rose in great splendor. It seemed to have been sent for our special behoof.

I have said there is no reason to suppose that the old man had read Caesar's commentaries either in English or in Latin, but he followed the tactics of Caesar as if by instinct. His military lore in this emergency was expressed in the following command: "Shoot at everything blue and keep up the scare."

To execute this order he compelled us to hang upon the very heels of the enemy all the way. There was constant peril of ambuscade, but we waited for the moon to rise before pressing close upon the enemy after nightfall. By daylight we generally kept in sight and were able to see them and almost always to open the fighting when they attempted to surprise us.

About eleven o'clock they laid the first ambuscade, but Forrest contrived to discover it in advance and, instead of walking into it, caused us to dismount and get into line and crawl up close to the enemy's position.

It would have made too much noise to have brought up a piece of artillery by horse power so soldiers were harnessed to it and dragged it to a point within two hundred yards of the enemy's line.

When the proper moment arrived, he ordered the cannon to open and the cavalry likewise so that we surprised the enemy instead of them surprising us. I walked along the line where they had been formed and found it littered from end to end with small bits of paper. It looked as if every man in their column must have employed the leisure afforded by that stop to tear up all the private letters found upon his person. It was clear that their alarm had become serious and would help us much if we could keep it up.

At two o'clock the next morning, when most of our command had fallen asleep on horseback, we were ambuscaded at the ford of a difficult mountain stream and caused some losses, especially among the animals. We in our turn were thrown into a degree of confusion here, but they were too much frightened to press their advantage.

Indeed, most of those who fired upon us were drawn up on the other side of the stream. A small detachment lay in the undergrowth at the foot of a steep causeway upon which we were marching down to the river, but they ran away as soon as they had discharged their pieces. Wyeth declares that this ambuscade at two o'clock on the morning of May 1 was "practically a repetition" of the one attempted at eleven o'clock. It was a more serious affair; and after crossing the river, a branch of the Black Warrior, the General permitted us to get down and sleep from 3 to 5 a.m.

Colonel Streight seemed to have no proper ideas of what a cavalry soldier can endure. Possibly his men, having been only recently promoted to saddle, were galled and wearied by the novelty of the exercise. He was taking his ease as if no enemy were near when we found him at Blountsville next morning, May 2.

We immediately put his column in motion and kept it on the run to the Black Warrior, where he was compelled to fight us to obtain a crossing.

Here we were allowed a rest from 6 p.m. until the moon arose about eleven while two companies of Biffle's 9th Tennessee were detailed to hang upon the enemy's rear throughout the night.

We were summoned at the appointed moment and moved forward to find Colonel Streight next morning at Wilber's Creek, where Biffle's detail was relieved and Forrest again took the chase in hand.

About 11 a.m. of May 3 we came in sight of Black Creek Bridge and perceived that it was on fire, which indicated that the enemy were all on the other side.

They marched away after a brief season, assured of a respite of half a day before we should be able to cross the creek and catch up with them again; but Miss Emma Sanson piloted the General to a ford, and we were soon across the deep and swollen stream.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we struck Colonel Streight in Gadsden, four miles away on the banks of the Coosa River. Why should he be sauntering at Gadsden during those precious hours?

It seemed as if he had made up his mind to fail. He ought not to have failed. He recruited his horses almost every mile. It was a common thing to find standing in the highways the wagons and carriages of citizens from which he had removed the horses, leaving his exhausted mules in the place of them. Our horses were falling out constantly and we had no means whatever of renewing the supply.

At Gadsden, Forrest took a picked company of about two hundred of his best mounted troopers and followed the retreating enemy, fighting him every step of the way to Turkey Town, where, after nightfall, Streight planned an ambuscade; but, as usual, Forrest saw his game and got the best of it.

In the encounter that was occasioned by the Confederate flank movement the Federal Colonel Hathaway, with many others, was killed, and immediately all the hopes of Streight seemed to be crushed.

When we caught up with Forrest about nine o'clock, I learned that Hartwell Hunt, one of my dearest friends, had been killed in the skirmish, and the rest of the night was filled with grief.

During the half hour he remained in Gadsden, Forrest had procured a courier to go on horseback by a route on the opposite side of the Coosa River and advise the city of Rome of its peril. Col. John H. Wisdom was the man who rendered that service, but he was not a member of our command.

At Turkey Town Streight also dispatched a force of two hundred picked men to go forward and capture the city, which was about sixty miles distant; but Colonel Wisdom outrode them and saved the day.

The bottom was carefully removed from the bridge that led across the river, the State militia was under arms, and Rome was rescued from peril. When Streight's advance guard arrived, they were beaten off with small exertion and the doom of his expedition was sealed.

We rested at Turkey Town until the moon had risen, receiving strict orders to be mounted and on the road at midnight.

There was a disturbance when the General rode up and found us in line at the edge of the road; but our colonel settled it by claiming a difference of two minutes in watches, during which time we wheeled into column on the road and resumed the march.

Pursuing the enemy with renewed vigor, we found that he had burned the bridge by which he had only recently crossed Chattanooga River. Though the stream was swollen, we were ordered to plunge in, and we got across by swimming a few yards in the middle of it.

There was a deal of trouble about the cannon, but they were finally pulled across, while the ammunition was transferred by means of canoes that the citizens provided.

Before ten o'clock in the morning we bore down upon the enemy's camp, and, finding him unprepared for battle, General Forrest sent Captain Pointer with a flag of truce to demand his surrender. Colonel Streight replied that he would be glad to meet General Forrest and discuss the question  with him.

When the message was delivered, Forrest remarked: "If he ever talks to me, then I've got him." The old man had large experience and skill in such emergencies, and before noon the surrender had been accomplished.

The place was crowded with undergrowth and Streight proposed to march down the road until they should find an open field suitable for the business of laying down his arms.

Forrest gave assent, and in a few minutes we were in the road, which shortly became a lane with immense fields of growing cotton on each side. That was the longest lane I ever traveled. It may have been a mile, but it seemed ten miles in length.

Streight had about fourteen hundred and fifty men, and we had about four hundred and seventy-five in line. We were drawn up on both sides of them, and every man of them carried a loaded rifle and some likewise loaded pistols. If they had concluded to renew the struggle, it is difficult to understand how any of us could have escaped alive.

Forrest galloped up and down the column and busily gave orders to the courier to ride to the road and order imaginary regiments and imaginary batteries to stop and feed their animals and men.

But the regiments of Starnes and Biffle and Ferrell's Battery, which had been depleted to skeleton proportions, were the only available troops within a hundred miles.

Finally the lane came to an end and there was a field of broom sedge on the right-hand side. Colonel Streight led the way and his troops were shortly formed in line. Then at the word of command they dismounted, stacked arms, remounted, and rode away.

There was an inexpressible sense of relief when they had parted company with their arms and ammunition; but we did not venture to suggest the fewness of our numbers until we had delivered them safely to the keeping of the guards whom the government had dispatched to Rome to receive them.

Our victory was embittered by a message that Stonewall Jackson had been wounded in a battle in Virginia, which was announced shortly after we reached Rome. I can never forget the sorrow and foreboding it produced.

On the way back to Columbia, Tenn., a messenger arrived bringing tiding of the death of Gen. Earl Van Dorn, and Forrest was ordered shortly afterwards to take his place in command of the cavalry on the left wing of Bragg's army.

The retreat of Bragg from Shelbyville began late in June, 1863, and the duty of covering his rear was assigned to Wheeler and Forrest.

At Tullahoma on the last day of the month, the advance of Rosecran's army began to press against our brigade now commanded by Col. J. W. Starnes of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry, and in the encounter, this great soldier was fatally wounded by a sharpshooter. His loss was deeply deplored, and his name is revered by all who appreciate courage and capacity.

The alleged inefficiency of the general in command had become more glaringly apparent during the retreat from Shelbyville and especially in the maneuvers that preceded the struggle at Chickamauga.

Forrest, who enjoyed opportunities to observe every failure at close range, was fully convinced that the situation could not be improved as long as Bragg should be retained.

The fighting at Chickamauga was more trying than the average. We always dismounted and acted as infantry, but here we were in the same line with our veteran Confederate infantry regiments.

We held a portion of the front line all the morning of the 19th of September and found the enemy duly stubborn. Wyeth affirms that it was 1:30 p.m. when Cheatham's Division relieved us and pressed on toward Chattanooga. I always supposed it was 4 p.m. when Cheatham appeared. At any rate, the day was very long indeed.

When Cheatham took our place and went in, I must concede that the music became more lively than any we had made. We immediately got on our horses to take position of his flank and keep it from being turned. There was a short pause as the column was going into line, and half a dozen of us, standing with our horses' heads together, were listening to the tremendous din, when a grapeshot that had passed almost a mile of undergrowth struck Coleman, of Company F, in the stomach. He fell from his horse and was dead in three minutes.

Severe as the battle of the 19th had been, that of the 20th was still more trying.

We were in line with the troops of Gen. John C. Breckinridge on the right wing, and I have a distinct recollection of the appearance of that officer as he rode along just behind our column shorty after daylight.

The action did not begin till 9:30 a.m., but we had been ready since 6:30. When it finally opened, we played the part of infantry again and kept up with the advance of Breckinridge, but that was not very great.

We were face to face with General Thomas, a foeman worthy of our steel, who contested every inch of the ground. My impression is that this was the loudest noise and the longest day of my life, and the night which followed it was also memorable for its discomforts.

On Monday morning, September 21, Forrest pursued the enemy almost into Chattanooga and found him apparently engaged in evacuating the town. If General Bragg had pressed forward before noon of that day, there might have been a great victory.

Forrest claimed that when he went in person to inform General Bragg of the importance of immediate action he caught him asleep and that after he got him awake Bragg objected that his army had no supplies.

When Forrest suggest that there were abundant supplies in Chattanooga, no reply was made, and he turned from the commanding general in unconcealed disgust.

The friction had become so decided that it was now impossible for the two officers to  cooperate harmoniously and on the 28th of September, Bragg issued an order for him to turn over his command to General Wheeler.

He obeyed without delay. There was no sign of discontent or mutiny.

No farewells were spoken to his companions in arms. He passed our camp at the head of his escort as if employed on customary occasions. We were not informed of the action that had been taken until he was on his way to West Tennessee to found his fortunes anew and rise to the dignity of lieutenant general of the Confederate States army.

So long as we followed Forrest we enjoyed the respect of the army.

If we passed a regiment of infantry, they would heap the customary contempt upon us; but when it was suggest that we belonged to Forrest's people, they changed tune, and they fraternized with us as real soldiers, worthy companions in arms. They inquired about our battles and our leader and wondered at his genius and success. We were heroes even to the infantry.

But when Wheeler took command of us, all of that was changed.

The infantry could not be appeased, and it was vain to reply. General Wheeler was a brave and honorable man, but nobody ever accused him of genius.

Forrest was an extraordinary genius. He developed a new use for cavalry; and that was his specific contribution to the art of war.

All the other maxims of the great masters came to him by nature. He was equally at home in infantry, cavalry, and artillery.

By the readiness of his initiative he kept the whole campaign before his eye and could strike a blow at a distance of a hundred miles before anybody dreamed it was conceivable.

He could discern the exigencies of the field of battle swiftly and surely. He had the sanest initiative I ever observed, not blind, not foolhardy; balance, when retreat was essential he could perform it with more dispatch and repose than anybody.

It was hard to find a soldier with  intellect so strong and fertile and safe, whose will was so healthy and prompt and resistless, whose organization was so much of the hair-trigger variety, whose military education and military maxims were so admirable.

If he could have commanded the Western Army after Shiloh--but I will not indulge vain regrets.

In a letter to the Cincinnati Inquirer George Alfred Townsend recites an interview he held with Lee at Appomattox C. H., in which he inquired: "General Lee, who is the greatest general now under your command?"

Lee replied with grave deliberation: "A man I never saw, sir. His name is Forrest."

I am no military critic, but my affection inclines me to say that the War between the States developed three incomparable geniuses for war, all on the Southern side--Lee, Jackson, and Forrest.

When I first met General Forrest, he was already a famous man. He was in command of troops raised in Middle Tennessee, some 1,800 men, almost all of them raw recruits.

Colonel Starnes's regiment, the 4th Tennessee Cavalry, had seen much service; four companies of Russell's 4th Alabama were also trained men.

The other were newly enlisted--Dibrell's 8th Tennessee, Biffle's 9th Tennessee, and Freeman's Battery. These made up the famous Forrest Brigade.

General Forrest was a man of remarkable appearance, over six feet tall, somewhat muscular in build, powerful and graceful, giving an impression of solidity and completeness; while neatly dressed and groomed, he apparently took no thought of dress or accouterments and was altogether devoid of personal vanity.

 

NOTE: This article is verbatim from the original by Rev. Whitsitt in Confederate Veteran except for occasionally breaking up a long paragraph to make online reading easier, and occasionally adding or taking away a punctuation mark. No words or sentences were changed in any way.

Our Confederate Ancestors: A Year with Forrest, by Rev. W. H. Whitsitt, Part One

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A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.

There were two brigades of infantry close at hand, numbering in all about five thousand men, and the country swarmed with cavalry, but these did not count for much. The Northern generals still proceeded on the sleepy idea that it is the main function of cavalry to serve as eyes and ears for infantry. Forrest had gotten beyond that standpoint long before, and no cavalry trained upon the ancient maxims was able to stand against us.

Part One of
A Year with Forrest

Address by Rev. W. H. Whitsitt, D.D., before R. E. Lee Camp, Confederate Veterans, of Richmond, Va., in Confederate Veteran magazine, Vol. XXV, No. 8, August, 1917.

Forrest-42K

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : Rev. Whitsitt's address recounts a year with Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest mostly in Tennessee and often around the area of SCV national headquarters at Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee where Gen. Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, will be laid to rest in a little over a week.

We are blessed to have one of the greatest cavalry soldiers of all time and his beloved wife back home with us, inspiring us now as he did his compatriots during the war. It is as if Forrest is once again commanding Confederates, charging into the enemy, winning battles, except it is our honor to do so today.

SCV members should pilgrimage every year to Elm Springs and other inspiring places and come away determined to spread the true history of the South far and wide, and obliterate our woke, ignorant enemies.

A good way to celebrate the return of Gen. Forrest and his wife to those who love them, is with the powerful words of another Tennessean, Edward Ward Carmack (1858-1908), in his "Pledge to the South." Carmack was a United States senator from Tennessee and before that a member of the House of Representatives. These words were spoken on the floor of the House:

The South is a land that has known sorrows; It is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears; A land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead; But a land of legend, a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic memories. To that land every drop of my blood, every fibre of my being, every pulsation of my heart, is consecrated forever. I was born of her womb; I was nurtured at her breast; And when my last hour shall come, I pray God that I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep within her tender and encircling arms.

The Latin phrase, gaudium certaminis, is mentioned in this article and it means "the joy of battle" which describes That Devil Forrest and his Confederate compatriots to the letter.]

Part One of
A Year with Forrest
by Rev. W. H. Whitsitt

I JOINED THE ARMY at Winchester, Tenn., the latter part of April, 1862. Having taken my only sister to school at that place in the autumn of 1861, after the battle of Shiloh I decided to visit her; so about the middle of April I went to Murfreesboro, where the Federal lines were established.

I stopped with Prof. George W. Jarman, who the net morning took me to a lonely spot on the bank of Stone's River, where I took off my boots and small clothes and waded the stream. Replacing them on the farther shore, I waved mute thanks and farewells to my guide and friend and took my way on foot to Winchester, avoiding the turnpikes and traversing the entire distance of sixty miles by dirt roads.

I met at Winchester the cavalry battalion of Col. James W. Starnes, which had just come over from Chattanooga on a scouting expedition, and found a vacant saddle in Company F of this command.

Company F had been raised in the beginning by Starnes, who commanded it until he was promoted to the office of lieutenant colonel and put in charge of the battalion, when he was succeeded in office by Captain McLemore.

The men were recruited in the vicinity of Franklin, eighteen miles south of Nashville, where I was brought up, and I had been acquainted with a number of them in their homes. It was a choice body of troopers, most of them coming from families of wealth, position, and culture. It would have been difficult to have selected in either army a company possessing nobler blood and truer breeding than Company F.

Not long after my connection with it the period of one year for which the battalion originally enlisted ran out, and they enlisted again for three years, or during the war, and were then reorganized as a regiment, Starnes being chosen as full colonel. The following notice of Colonel Starnes is selected from many others found in the biography of General Forrest by Dr. Wyeth:

This man was James W. Starnes, who signally distinguished himself on that occasion and had won the lasting regard and friendship of Forrest, a friendship which endured until at Tullahoma in 1863 the leaden messenger of death brought to an untimely end a career full of the promise of great deeds in war. A new regiment was now organized, with Starnes as colonel, and took its place with Forrest as the 4th Tennessee Cavalry. It was destined to become famous and to sustain throughout the war the reputation it was soon to win west of the Tennessee, ending its career in a blaze of glory in a brilliant charge at Bentonville, N. C., in the last pitched battle of the Civil War.

This estimate of the importance and services of the regiment is not overdrawn. The 4th Tennessee Cavalry was the finest fighting machine I ever saw on horseback.

Our armament at the outset was something pitiful to behold. Nearly the entire command were provided with muzzle-loading, double-barreled shotguns. There were scarcely thirty long-range rifles in the regiment.

The shotguns were fowling pieces that had been contributed by gentlemen in the practice of hunting birds and other game. They were loaded with buckshot and at short range constituted a most effective weapon, but at the distance of two hundred yards they were worse than useless.

This weapon imposed a peculiar sort of tactics upon the Southern cavalry during the first year of the war. Fighting on foot, which subsequently became almost universal in the cavalry service, was rare at this time.

It was the custom during the first year to charge up to a point within twenty yards of the enemy's line and to deliver the two loads of buckshot. Then those who were fortunate enough to own pistols went to work with these, while the others would load their pieces for two rounds more.

But matters hardly ever got to that point. The enemy were generally thrown into disorder by the first two rounds of buckshot. It was a favorite expedient to march all night and at the earliest dawn of day to line up before a camp of infantry and deliver a couple of charges of buckshot into the tents before anybody could wake up. But if the camp was large, the men on the opposite side of it would grasp their long-range guns and drive off the cavalry without much trouble. Indeed, it was a part of the game to run away when the long-range guns were brought into full operation.

The month of June, 1862, was a gloomy period, but the operations of Jackson in the Valley of Virginia and of Lee and Jackson in the Seven Days' battles around Richmond gave sensible relief.

The whole State of Tennessee had previously been imperiled. It seemed difficult to prevent the capture of Chattanooga and even of Knoxville, but shortly afterwards the whole scene had changed. Kirby Smith was preparing to invade Kentucky, and the regiment of Colonel Starnes was moved up to the vicinity of Cumberland Gap, where they scouted the adjacent country in Tennessee and Virginia.

At the opportune moment, when roasting ears were in season, we entered Kentucky at Big Creek Gap and marched upon Richmond. Our regiment was placed in a brigade commanded by Colonel Scott, of Scott's Louisiana Cavalry, and took an active part in the battle of Richmond.

When the defeat of the enemy's infantry appeared to be certain, we were sent to take a position on the turnpike leading from Richmond to Lexington, along which we found the enemy retreating in much confusion.

They commonly surrendered without parley; but on passing through a dense cornfield just before we reached the main road we encountered a party who made resistance and shot through the neck my messmate and close friend, Private James Powell, killing him on the spot.

The weather was intensely warm; but we were not allowed to cease pursuit until we had taken Lexington, Frankfort, Shelbyville, and were in the neighborhood of Louisville.

The soldiers were hopeful and contented as long as they were kept engaged. But after the earliest spurt of energy General Smith seemed to require a season of rest. We did not understand all the details, but we felt that there was need of more activity. Finally it was announced that General Buell had entered Louisville without a pitched battle with Bragg.

It was a special mercy for us that General Buell was not more vigorous and successful in the military art. If he had been a genuine soldier, we might have had some trouble getting out of Kentucky; but after delivering battle at Perryville we got off very light and made good our escape to Tennessee.

Our brigade did not arrive in time to share in the conflict at Perryville; but we covered the retreat for a day or two, and then our regiment was ordered to report to General Forrest at Murfreesboro, the bulk of the army having traveled by way of Cumberland Gap to Knoxville, thence by rail to Chattanooga and Murfreesboro.

When we found General Forrest, he had a handful of raw troops with which he was trying to take Nashville, then held by a garrison of ten thousand infantry commanded by General Negley.

I first saw him about the 1st of November, 1862, when I was ordered to report at headquarters for service as a guide, and I rode with him all day and between the Nolensville and Granny White Pikes. It was my first experience of the grave responsibility of acting as guide for a considerable body of troops.

General Negley was short of provisions and on that day had led a large force out the Franklin Pine as far as Brentwood to replenish his depleted stores.

On this day I got my first conceptions of the gaudium certaminis. It was in Forrest a genuine and extraordinary passion. The whole tone and frame of the man were transformed; his appearance and even his voice were changed. It was a singular exaltation, which, however, appeared to leave him in absolute control of his faculties. He was never more sane nor more cool nor more terrible than in the moment of doubtful issue.

We camped that night at Nolensville, twelve miles away, and were in the saddle almost daily for a week entertaining the garrison at Nashville and trying to worry them into submission before relief might appear.

We had lost our shotguns in Kentucky and were now armed with Enfield rifles, and henceforth fought chiefly as infantry.

Forrest always like to charge on horseback, but he had an unerring judgment in selecting the psychological moment for such an entertainment. He always sent one of his trustiest officers to assail the enemy in the rear, and at the earliest signs of disorder in their ranks he was glad to ride amongst them.

He had likely never studied any maxims of war, but he seemed as if by instinct to understand the value of sending a force to the rear and adopted that method even in this initial fight at Sacramento, Ky.

In the fight at Murfreesboro, in July, 1862, he had also adopted the policy of beating the enemy in detail. He was swift in movement, fierce in assault, and persistent in pursuit. He had not obtained these secrets from Caesar's commentaries; they must have come to him by instinct. He was a born soldier, not made.

If by any possibility he could have succeeded Albert Sidney Johnson at Shiloh, the war in the West might have run a different course. But the government at Richmond never took him seriously until it was too late, and one of the greatest natural masters of the military art was buffeted by outrageous fortune almost to the wrecking of his career and to the entire destruction of his country's hopes.

He was no bully nor barbarian, but a gentleman of such admirable presence that he would be observed among a thousand.

But when the passion of battle was upon him, he was the most inspiring figure in the army.

In religion he was deeply devoted to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and a regular attendant, but I am not sure that he was a communicant. His veneration of his mother's religion and his wife's religion was beautiful to witness, and the Rev. Herschel S. Porter, pastor of the Cumberland Church in Memphis, was his standard of excellent in pulpit performance.

In the opening skirmish at Nashville I found Capt. Samuel L. Freeman, who had been one of my teachers at Mill Creek Academy, on my mother's farm, and later at Mount Juliet Academy, near Lebanon. Just prior to the war he had entered upon the practice of the law in Nashville.

In the autumn of 1861 Freeman raised a company of artillery and on departing for the camps intrusted to me his law library, with the request that I should keep it safe till he returned to claim it.

About noon the General rode up to Freeman's Battery, which at the moment was engaged in a lively duel with Negley's Artillery, and there I greeted my beloved master, six feet in height, a type of friendly dignity, shy, womanly modesty, reposeful courage--every inch a soldier.

In due time we were recalled from Nashville to Murfreesboro, whence we were ordered to Columbia, in Maury County, where Gen. Earl Van Dorn was placed in command of us.

Toward the middle of December we set out for the Tennessee River, and crossing it at Clifton, we commenced operation in West Tennessee with the purpose of crippling Grant, who was then pressing against Vicksburg, and also to prevent him from sending help to Rosecrans to Stone's River.

We had less than two thousand troopers and Captain Freeman's battery of artillery. I was never sensible of the perils of that expedition until I read an account of it in Dr. Wyeth's history of Forrest.

We crossed about the 16th of December, and immediately all the great resources of the enemy were brought to bear to capture us.

The first town we struck was Lexington, where we captured Colonel Ingersoll, of Illinois; but he had not then become famous, and we made nothing of him.

We made a feint against Jackson and after driving the enemy within his intrenchments worked upon the railroads and burned many bridges to the north--south of the town.

We captured Humboldt, Trenton, Union City, and other places of smaller note.

But the problem of recrossing the Tennessee River was ever before us. It was patrolled by gunboats, but Forrest had sunk his two small ferryboats in a secluded spot where no gunboat could find them and had left a guard to watch them.

On the 27th of December we became aware that forces were converging from every direction to assault us.

There were two brigades of infantry close at hand, numbering in all about five thousand men, and the country swarmed with cavalry, but these did not count for much. The Northern generals still proceeded on the sleepy idea that it is the main function of cavalry to serve as eyes and ears for infantry. Forrest had gotten beyond that standpoint long before, and no cavalry trained upon the ancient maxims was able to stand against us.

Instead of moving immediately back to Clifton, raising the sunken ferryboats, and recrossing the Tennessee, Forrest, holding apposition between these two infantry brigades, concluded to attack and capture one of them before the other could come up in his rear, and take them home with him as prisoners of war.

It was a daring conception, but he considered that he was equal to it, notwithstanding the fact that Gen. G. M. Dodge, with  two other full brigades of infantry and some cavalry, was taking position between him and Clifton.

We attacked Dunam's Brigade at Parker's Crossroads by sunrise of December 31, 1862, hoping to beat and crush it before any of Fuller's Brigade might arrive on the ground.

We had done the work for Dunham by twelve o'clock, but Fuller just then closed in on our rear. In thirty minutes the surrender would have been completed, but in that nick of time Fuller charged us and compelled us to retreat without the prisoners who were rightfully our own.

By daylight next morning our advance had reached the river.

The two ferryboats were raised from the bottom and brought over to the west side, and the work of recrossing was begun. It was completed without incident the following morning, and we made our most respectful salutations when the enemy arrived an hour later and began to shell the woods on our side. What Jackson accomplished in the Valley of Virginia was hardly more masterful than the skill of Forrest in extricating his small force from this most perilous situation.

Early in February, 1863, General Wheeler, who was in command of the entire cavalry services of Bragg's army, led a force to attack Fort Donelson and was defeated. The weather was intensely cold, and the enemy was admirably intrenched.

Forrest formally protested, but the attack was made in spite of him.

There was a bloody slaughter, in which our regiment suffered greatly, and Forrest notified Wheeler that he would be in his coffin before he should ever fight again under his command.

Forrest understood better than Wheeler when to risk a desperate encounter.

On March 5, 1863, we fought the battle of Thompson's Station under the command of Gen. Earl van Dorn and captured the entire force of the enemy's infantry, a fine brigade under Colonel Cogurn, of Indiana; but Van Dorn permitted two regiments of cavalry and a battery of artillery to escape.

Forrest got in the rear and rendered the escape of the infantry impossible. It was here that we captured Maj. W. R. Shafter; but as he had not yet been to Cuba, we heard little of him.

In one of the engagement of this day Capt. J. R. Dysart, of Company D, who was standing in a position just above me on the uneven ground, was shot through the head and fell over upon me with a severe crash. I thought for an instant that I myself had been killed.

On the 24th of March, 1863, we left Spring Hill, midway between Franklin and Columbia, and daylight next morning found us at Brentwood, midway between Franklin and Nashville, where we captured and brought away about eight hundred prisoners.

This was a perilous expedition as Nashville, the base of supplies of the Federal army, and Franklin also were held by a large force.

On our retreat we had gotten across the last pike by which we could be attacked from Nashville and, considering ourselves at last somewhat secure, had halted for dinner. While we were thus engaged Gen. Green Clay Smith, who had been sent down from Franklin to pursue us, rushed upon our rear guard and occasioned some confusion.

Forrest soon got a regiment in line, and just then Starnes, who was returning from a scouting expedition down the Hillsboro Pike toward Nashville, fell upon the flank of the enemy.

Observing the confusion occasioned by that incident, Forrest instantly led a charge against the enemy and easily shook them off.

It was the common verdict  that General Smith displayed little stomach for fight. If Forrest had been in his position, he would have fought the Confederates every foot of the journey to Harpeth River. That stream was in league against us, being swollen by the freshets of springtime; and if Smith had shown any vigor, he would have given us much annoyance.

On the 10th of April, under Van Dorn's command, a reconnoissance was made in force from Spring Hill against Franklin, with the hope of relieving the pressure upon Bragg at Tullahoma.

By an unaccountable oversight the enemy's cavalry were permitted to assail our column on the right flank as we were marching down the turnpike toward Franklin. It was the brigade of General Stanley, which was striving to get in our rear.

The first we saw of them the 4th United States Regulars were charging down the hill along the base of which we were marching. They struck Freeman's Battery, and before a single piece could be brought into action it had been captured. Many of the men escaped, but Captain Freeman was taken.

We quickly rallied and recovered the guns and prisoners, but in the melee Captain Freeman was killed. The piece with which he had been slain was held so close to his face that the skin about the eyes was deeply burned with powder.

Some of his fellow prisoners reported that he had offered no resistance; but our pursuit was so rapid that he could not keep up with his captors, and rather than give him up they concluded to take his life.

He was the idol of the brigade, and it was hard to forgive the gentlemen of the 4th Regulars. Possibly the deed was done by no rightful authority; it may have been the conceit of some irresponsible private soldier.

The next day was Sunday, and I officiated at Freeman's funeral.

General Forrest stood at the side of the grave, his tall form bent and swayed by his grief. It was a sight to remember always, the sternest soldier of the army bathed in womanly tears and trembling like an aspen with his pain. The whole army sympathized in the mighty sorrow. . . .

 

To be continued next week, September 16, 2021.

Facing Racial Realities, Measuring an American Dilemma – Guest Post By Leonard M. “Mike” Scruggs

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“Murder rates in these cities showed blacks were at least 18 times more likely to be arrested for murder than whites, and Latinos were about 5 times more likely to be arrested for murder than whites.

Contrary to the supposition of many, violent crime offenders are more likely to be arrested if they are white, for example, 22 percent more likely for robbery and 13 percent more likely for aggravated assault.

There is in reality a bias against whites, probably because greater legal and public relations precautions are called for in dealing with minority offenders. . . . "

Facing Racial Realities
Measuring an American Dilemma

Guest post by
Leonard M. "Mike" Scruggs


[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : Mike Scruggs has given us a good analysis of the latest book from Charles Alan Murray, a brilliant American political scientist who follows facts, science and numbers the way most Americans did before the age of wokeness.

That he is hated by virtue signaling liberals tells you all you need to know. Murray scares the hell out of them because he proves with conclusive facts what everybody knows but many are afraid to say.

Here is the short Introduction to Murray's book, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America, by the author. It is quickly obvious that Murray is a very thoughtful man asking the right questions and determined to find the right answers for the good of our country.

I DECIDED TO WRITE this book in the summer of 2020 because of my dismay at the disconnect between the rhetoric about "systemic racism" and the facts. The uncritical acceptance of that narrative by the nation's elite news media amounted to an unwillingness to face reality.

By facts, I mean what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan meant: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts." By reality, I mean what the science fiction novelist Philip Dick meant: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."

I do not dispute evidence of the racism that persists in American life. Rather, I reject the portrayal of American society and institutions as systemically racist and saturated in White privilege. What follows is a data-driven discussion of realities that make America a more complicated and much less racist nation than its radical critics describe.

Of the many facts about race that are ignored, two above all, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, must be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about why American society is the way it is and what can be done through public policy to improve it.

The first is that American Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, as groups, have different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The second is that American Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, as groups, have different rates of violent crime. Allegations of systemic racism in policing, education, and the workplace cannot be assessed without dealing with the reality of group differences.

There is a reason that reality is ignored. The two facts make people excruciatingly uncomfortable. To raise them is to be considered a racist and hateful person. What's more, these facts have been distorted and exploited for malign purposes by racist and hateful people.

What then is the point of writing about them? Aren't some realities better ignored? The answer goes to a much deeper problem than false accusations of systemic racism. We are engaged in a struggle for America's soul. Facing reality is essential if that struggle is to be won.

Following Mike's bio and article are links to The Times Examiner website, Mike's outstanding columns, and to his books.]

Mike Scruggs is the author of two books - The Un-Civil War, Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War, Truths the Media Never Told You - and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.

The abridged version of The Un-Civil War sold over 40,000 copies and won the prestigious D. T. Smithwick Award by the North Carolina Society of Historians, for excellence.

Mike holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.

Facing Racial Realities

By Mike Scruggs

(First published in The Times Examiner, 12 July 2021)

Measuring an American Dilemma

Charles Murray’s just published book, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America, comes just as Neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory (CRT) doctrines have become major social justice engineering ideology and policy for the Biden Administration and Democrat Party leadership.

Facing Racial Reality 396 Pixels 56K

Murray is one of the most renowned and courageous political scientists in the U.S. and the world. He has a BA degree from Harvard and MS and PhD degrees from MIT. He is also the author of Losing Ground (1984), The Bell Curve (1994), Coming Apart (2012), and Human Diversity (2020).

Charles Murray speaking at the 2013 FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Charles Murray speaking at the 2013 FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada.

CRT is not a cure for racism, it is racism of the most vicious, hateful, and unforgiving kind. It is flagrantly anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-capitalist, anti-history, and knows no truth or moral standard but power.

CRT is an immediate threat to our military effectiveness and the integrity of our educational institutions. It is a protection racket that is corrupting American corporations and university administrations, and a divisive threat to public order and safety.

Murray points out, however, that CRT follows over 60 years of misguided affirmative action policies that have been weakening American commitment to what he calls the “American Creed.”

Samuel Huntington described this American Creed as “embracing the political principles of liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, human rights, the rule of law, and private property.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”

Jefferson meant by “equality” that all men were of equal human dignity in the eyes of God and thus must be treated with equal human dignity and consideration under the laws of men. This was understood by his peers. He did not mean that all men were equal in every personal characteristic or entitled to equal outcomes in life.

Murray further points out that an essential understanding of the American Creed is that people should be judged according to their character, merit, and work as individuals rather than circumstances of birth or status.

The most dramatic words of Martin Luther King’s momentous August 1963 speech to 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington were that his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” He was pleading for a more complete fulfillment of the American Creed.

But it only took a few years for the transformation of well-intentioned affirmative action policies into a political bargain that made race and gender more important than character and merit.

Under the cloak of civil rights and virtue-signaling political rhetoric, American civil rights and opportunity were slowly being molded into a race and gender conscious system of government pressured preference. Moreover, those who dared protest were shouted down by lockstep government, academia, and the media.

Murray summarizes the transition from affirmative action to blatant racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in three paragraphs:

The phrase ‘affirmative action’ originally referred to initiatives by colleges and corporations to seek out qualified Blacks who were being overlooked for educational and job opportunities.  It was a needed policy in the mid-1960s and legally innocuous. But it soon morphed into aggressive affirmative action, meaning government-sponsored affirmative preferential treatment in determining who gets the education and the jobs.

Working-class and middle-class Whites who now see themselves as second-class citizens in the eyes of the government are not making it up…They are now told by government officials, college administrators, and corporate human resources managers—to get in line behind minority applicants for admission to elite colleges and for employment and promotion in attractive white-collar jobs. Well-to-do Whites can find ways to circumvent this problem, but working-class and middle-class Whites cannot…It has long been my view…that aggressive affirmative action is a poison leaking into the American experiment. We are now dealing with nearly sixty years of accumulated toxin. It is not the only cause of the present crisis, but it is a central one.

I think it is fair to conclude that the American job market is indeed racially biased. A detached observer might even call it systemic racism. The American job market systematically discriminates in favor of racial minorities other than Asians.

The main purpose of Murray’s book, however, is to inform the public and policy makers on two important truths that cannot be ignored for a rational and just society.

First, although the overlap of cognitive abilities (intelligence) among self-identified racial or ethnic groups is tremendous, many decades of careful scientific research give overwhelming evidence that there are persistently significant differences in the averages and distributions for cognitive abilities in these groups.

Government, academic, economic, military, and other policies that do not consider this give unwise and unjust advantages to the lower testing groups and unjustly disadvantage higher testing groups. A society that rewards racial and gender preferences hurts itself and will probably decline.  The American Creed emphasizing individual character and merit benefits the nation and most individuals.

Most Americans would like to believe that all races and ethnic groups have the same average and distribution of cognitive abilities, and this wishful thinking is almost an ideology, but it is not based on decades of data and analytical, fact-driven science.

A large component of these differences is thought to be genetic, but some are rather obviously due to selective migration. There are other important factors that are not fully understood.  It is possible that these things will gradually change for reasons we do not now comprehend, but we cannot base near term decisions on uncertainties many decades away.

Cognitive tests are valuable because they are predictive. If they are not predictive, they fail the bias or practicality tests.

Cognitive ability tests are not only predictive of academic achievement, they are positively predictive for every job but especially analytically demanding jobs. They are also modestly predictive of income levels.

Perseverance, hard study, and hard work can overcome a lot of cognitive ability points but cannot move someone from average to a competent test pilot, doctor, chemical engineer, or accountant.

Murray gives the average scores and percentiles for Americans of Asian, European, Latin American, and African origin on page 38 of his 151-page book. I would prefer not to risk over-sensationalizing such numbers, but only to say that, for example, if we analyzed the most recent medical school graduates in the United States, we might find Asians the most over-represented, whites over-represented, Latinos a bit under-represented, and blacks under-represented but still common.

This would not be the result of discrimination but of differences in the upper ranges of cognitive abilities.

Non-Hispanic whites and Asians make up 66 percent of the U.S. population, but we could expect them to be 85 percent of those with cognitive abilities competitive for medical school.

Most people insist on knowledgeable doctors with good judgment. If we do not include cognitive ability as a variable in evaluating human resources, we are headed for academic, economic, military, and health services ruin.

Again, differences in average cognitive ability can change for various reasons over time, but usually a fairly long period of time. The gap between white and black test scores shrank by one-third from 1972 to 1987 but then leveled off. What was happening from 1972 to 1987 that stopped?

Two parent families apparently make a big difference in educational achievement.

Latino scores are getting better because recent immigrants include many with higher skill levels.

Asians continue to improve because Asian migration is highly selective for high technology jobs.

The simple solution is operating according to the American Creed of judging individual character and merit and tossing quota pressures in the trash can of failed and dangerous ideas.

The Second reality that we must face is that there are significant racial and ethnic differences in the incidence of violent crimes. Most people of all races are generally law-abiding, but the differences are important for evaluating public law enforcement policy.

Murray studied the violent crime arrest rates for thirteen cities. The ratio of black to white arrests averaged 9.6 to one. The worst cities were Washington at 19.9 to one and Chicago at 14.5 to one. The ratio of Latino arrests to white averaged 2.7 to one. Many Hispanic crime rates, however, are quite low.

Murder rates in these cities showed blacks were at least 18 times more likely to be arrested for murder than whites, and Latinos were about 5 times more likely to be arrested for murder than whites.

Contrary to the supposition of many, violent crime offenders are more likely to be arrested if they are white, for example, 22 percent more likely for robbery and 13 percent more likely for aggravated assault.

There is in reality a bias against whites, probably because greater legal and public relations precautions are called for in dealing with minority offenders.

According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, black violence against whites is 5.7 times more common than white violence against blacks. A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black assailant than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a police officer.

There are many other considerations and many nuances that deserve more mention on these subjects, but they cannot be adequately covered in a single short article.

Our task now is to reject false narratives and virtue-signaling and seek truth measured by reality.

We must, of course, reject CRT, which insists on equal outcomes that lead only to folly, misery, and tyranny.

Wisdom can only be found in truth. In that spirit, we must embrace the principles of freedom that preserve the dignity and rights of individuals and the common good.

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Link to The Times Examiner website: www.timesexaminer.com

Link to Mike Scruggs's columns at The Times Examiner: https://www.timesexaminer.com/mike-scruggs

Link to Mike's book website:

https://www.universalmediainc.org/books/. His books are also available on Amazon and other places.

H.R. 4994 Will Defile and Dishonor Sacred Battlefields

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H.R. 4994 Will Defile and Dishonor Sacred Battlefields
Called the "No Federal Funding for Confederate Symbols Act," It Removes Monuments to Southern War Dead in All National Parks and on All Federal Public Land
This Is Nothing But the Shameful Use of Hatred for Political Gain
It's Based on the Sponsor's Extreme Ignorance of History
But Despite How Vile This Legislation Is, Cowardly Stupid Republicans Have Destroyed More Southern Memorials than Antifa, BLM and the SPLC Combined, Times 100
by Gene Kizer, Jr.

U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York's 13th District, who brags everywhere online that he is the first formerly illegal immigrant elected to the United Stated Congress,1 has once again introduced an unconscionable and unhistorical piece of trash into the United States House of Representatives as H.R. 4994.2

This is an immoral piece of legislation that desecrates sacred battlefields on which hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a war that killed 750,000 and maimed over a million.

Most likely, Espaillat has given no thought to the long-term hatred and division this kind of legislation promotes. He is feeding the Democrat Party hate monster.

Or maybe he has thought long and hard about it, and this is exactly what he wants. He has introduced this legislation before.

George Orwell warned in 1984 about erasing history so that a society is unmoored, untethered, removed from its foundation and thus easy to control the way Big Brother controlled Oceania. Knowledge of the past, like the roots of a tree, give a society its strength and confidence. That's why destroying history is a prime Marxist Communist tactic.

Of course, human nature never changes and Orwell and the people alive in the 1930s and '40s lived through this exact same thing. That's why Orwell wrote: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the PRESENT controls the past." (emphasis added).

For Espaillat and his party, it is about putting forth a fraudulent historical dialog in the present so they can interpret the past in ways that benefit them politically (like the constant emphasis on slavery, which is part of our history but does not define our country in any way), thus they control the future with the past.

That's why "President" Biden and so many other Democrats support the 1619 Project though its primary thesis -- that the American Revolution was fought because the Colonists thought the Brits were about to abolish slavery -- is a total, complete and utter fraud without one iota of evidence. It was fabricated by a racist, Nikole Hannah-Jones,3 then of the New York Times, whose goal she has admitted repeatedly is reparations.

She still got a Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, mainly because the Pulitzer board is controlled by the New York Times and Washington Post.

Both of those newspapers also got Pulitzers for reporting as serious news the hoax that Trump colluded with Russia, which proves that Pulitzer Prizes are corrupt and meaningless today.

I don't agree with Espaillat on anything though he seems like a nice enough guy. He replaced Charlie Rangel of New York who I also did not agree with on anything but he too was a personable fellow.

Espaillat was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic in 1954. He came to America with his mother and sister in 1964 at nine or 10 (accounts vary). They overstayed their visas and were illegal for a while but eventually got green cards. Espaillat became a naturalized American citizen in the early 1980s (his late 20s).

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D. NY, sponsor of H.R. 4994, 8-10-21.
U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D. NY, sponsor of H.R. 4994, 8-10-21.
He has a large online presence and there are many references to his former illegal immigrant status and his being the first formerly illegal immigrant in the U. S. Congress, but I could find no reference to his naturalization ceremony and his becoming an American citizen until I found a Real Clear Politics article from 2016 that mentioned with no detail that he had become a citizen. It states he "stayed without documentation for more than a year after his visa expired. He ultimately became a U.S. citizen in his late 20s."4

It is as if he is proud to have once been an illegal immigrant but not proud to be a naturalized U.S. citizen which is surprising because so many who become naturalized citizens are seen at the most touching, wonderful ceremonies, crying, so happy to now be American citizens.

Of course, so many in the Marxist socialist Democrat Party today hate America so celebrating being illegal verses being a happy new American citizen is typical from their standpoint.

Espaillat "worked as a community activist before becoming the first Dominican-American elected to the New York legislature in 1996. He stayed in the General Assembly for more than a decade before moving up to the state Senate in 2010." After Rangel retired, Espaillat won Rangel's House seat and took office in 2017.

Espaillat is a liberal and most of his pet issues are social justice and immigration issues.

It appears he is influenced by the Southern Poverty Law Center from the way his bill is written. Why would a New Yorker make it his annual crusade to erase Confederate monuments that he admits are mostly in the South?

Sec. 2. FINDINGS., items (3) and (4) both regurgitate the SPLC's wildly inaccurate hate campaign against all things Confederate with the SPLC's listing of Confederate memorials so that they can be targets for local vandals and activist efforts.

SPLC's campaign is like something the Nazis would have done in Germany to get rid of all Jewish memorials. Erase the history and degrade the historical memory of your political enemies and you weaken them. To the SPLC it is never live and let live, and support each other as Americans. They always act like they want to kill you, vandalize your property, steal from you, erase you.

However, Sec. 2, items (1) and (2) are a provable fraud. Here is the entire bill, calling out Espaillat's extreme ignorance of history:

117th CONGRESS
1st Session

H. R. 4994

To prohibit the use of Federal funds for Confederate symbols, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

August 10, 2021

Mr. Espaillat (for himself, Mr. Evans, Mrs. Beatty, Ms. Meng, Mr. García of Illinois, Ms. Bass, Ms. Schakowsky, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Raskin, Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Brown, Ms. Lee of California, Ms. Velázquez, Mr. Pocan, Mr. Rush, Mr. Huffman, Ms. Jacobs of California, Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, Mr. Costa, Mr. McNerney, Mr. Kilmer, Ms. Tlaib, Ms. Escobar, Ms. Brownley, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Carson, Ms. Norton, Ms. Kelly of Illinois, Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, and Mr. Pappas) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committees on Armed Services, and Transportation and Infrastructure, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To prohibit the use of Federal funds for Confederate symbols, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “No Federal Funding for Confederate Symbols Act”.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds the following:

(1) The Confederate battle flag is one of the most controversial symbols from U.S. history, signifying a representation of racism, slavery, and the oppression of African Americans.

[Publisher's Note: Item (1) above, as stated, is a complete fraud. The Confederate battle flag is a more pure symbol of American patriotism and valor than the American flag. I love our American flag, and it flies in front of my house, but it is a national flag that flew over all the New England slave ships carrying on the slave trade and making millions for New York, Boston and the North.
Rep. Espaillat's New York, in 1862, during the War Between the States, 54 years after the slave trade had been outlawed by the United States Constitution, was STILL, along with Boston, Massachusetts the largest slave-trading ports on the planet. New York, Boston and other New England cities were still making millions in the slave trade here and in other places around the world and they did so until 1888 when Brazil finally abolished slavery.
Here's what W. E. B Du Bois wrote in his book, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), reprint; 179. He is quoting his footnote #2, page 179, from "The Slave-Trade in New York" in the Continental Monthly, January, 1862, p. 87:

The number of persons engaged in the slave-trade, and the amount of capital embanked 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 treasures of political organizations, and their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

The Confederate battle flag had nothing whatsoever to do with race, slavery or the oppression of African Americans. That is an SPLC and Democrat Party lie.
The Confederate battle flag was a command and control device on some of the bloodiest battle fields in world history. The color bearer was shot down always almost immediately but it was such an honor to carry the flag somebody always picked up the blood soaked flag and advanced it.
Battle flags were often made from the clothing of a loved one or something from back home. They were sacred in the minds of the men who loved them and willingly died for them on hallowed battle fields across the country that Rep. Espaillat and the Marxist Democrats want to desecrate.
The Confederate battle flag never flew over a slave ship as the American flag did for 80 years after the Constitution outlawed the slave trade.
The Confederate battle flag is the most pure symbol of valor and the fight for independence in American history, and it is on the same level in terms of honor as the American flag.
You can argue that the Confederate battle flag is on a higher level than the American flag because the battle flag was always just a soldier's flag on bloody battlefields. It was never a national flag.
We can not help it that the battle flag was such a powerful symbol of honor and valor that many groups wanted to be associated with it and carried it, and some, like the Ku Klux Klan today, have no claim to it whatsoever.
The Confederate battle flag until recent years was ubiquitous in the South and even in the North, among blacks and whites. All regions thought of it in terms of nothing but honor and valor.
As late as the 1990s, national polls showed an overwhelming majority of people considered the battle flag simply a symbol of the pride of Southerners in their gallant ancestry, and even black people polled showed a majority had no problem with the Confederate battle flag.
The NAACP's constant campaign against the flag in the 1980s and today the SPLC's constant hate toward everything Confederate has changed some minds as those activist organizations knew would happen because they have the fake news media that nobody trusts in their pockets; but that does not change the true meaning of the Confederate battle flag.
It was a soldier's flag on some of the bloodiest battlefields in all of history and its honor is above reproach.]

(2) The Confederate flag and the erection of Confederate monuments were used as symbols to resist efforts to dismantle Jim Crow segregation, and have become pillars of Ku Klux Klan rallies.

[Publisher's Note: Item (2) above is another Espaillat fraud and lie and it displays Espaillat's ignorance of history.

Jim Crow laws started in the North and were there for years before moving South. The South was a bi-racial society always. The North was, as people like Espaillat would say today, "white supremacist," as well as slave traders.

See "The Real Jim Crow, Now Northern Jim Crow Laws Moved South" by Mike Scruggs (link in footnote below).5

Here are several pictures from the height of the Jim Crow era in the early 20th century showing the Ku Klux Klan with only the American flag. No Confederate battle flags in sight.

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Ku Klux Klan with the American flag, early 20th century, height of Jim Crow era.
Ku Klux Klan with the American flag, early 20th century, height of Jim Crow era.

Also see esteemed historian C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, A Commemorative Edition with a new afterword by William S. McFeely, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 17. Woodward writes:

"One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force."]

(3) There are at least 1,503 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces, including 109 public schools named after prominent Confederates, many with large African-American student populations.

(4) There are more than 700 Confederate monuments and statues on public property throughout the country, the vast majority in the South. These include 96 monuments in Virginia, 90 in Georgia, and 90 in North Carolina.

SEC. 3. FEDERAL FUNDS RESTRICTION.

(a) In General.—Except as provided in subsection (c), no Federal funds may be used for the creation, maintenance, or display, as applicable, of any Confederate symbol on Federal public land, including any highway, park, subway, Federal building, military installation, street, or other Federal property.

(b) Confederate Symbol Defined.—The term “Confederate symbol” includes the following:

(1) A Confederate battle flag.

(2) Any symbol or other signage that honors the Confederacy.

(3) Any monument or statue that honors a Confederate leader or soldier or the Confederate States of America.

(c) Exceptions.—Subsection (a) does not apply—

(1) if the use of such funds is necessary to allow for removal of the Confederate symbol to address public safety; or

(2) in the case of a Confederate symbol created, maintained, or displayed in a museum or educational exhibit.

Rep. Espaillat's bill is political hate and he is ignorant of American history.

Somebody ought to do some digging and see how much money he is getting from the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups to promote this hateful political fraud.

Republicans are worse than this.

The most dishonorable man in the United States Senate, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, then head of the Republican-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee in 2020, promised President Trump he would not change the names of United States Army bases in the South such as Fort Bragg and Fort Benning.

President Trump did not want the base names changed because we won two world wars from those bases and others. Most of those Confederate base names were a century old.

But INCREDIBLY STUPID AND DISHONEST JIM INHOFE, showing that he has NO HONOR or character, marshaled through Elizabeth Warren's request to change all the base names in the South from their current Confederate names.

The Confederate base names in the South were a gesture of reconciliation from the Union Army and Federal Government to the South after the War Between the States to bring our great nation back together. As such, they, themselves, are history lessons, but Inhofe is a dishonorable fool and traitor to his then president and party.

When his NDAA was announced which required the base names be changed, it happened just before the two senate runoffs in Georgia in January of this year and with two bases in Georgia -- legendary Fort Benning, and Fort Gordon -- many many Georgians were DISGUSTED with Republicans and did not vote in the runoffs.

Who can blame them. You support the Republican Party with money and voting and campaigning with all your might then Republicans like Inhofe FU*K you over in order to give Elizabeth Warren a victory over Republican voters.

HOW STUPID CAN YOU BE?

If you are Jim Inhofe, the answer is stupid to infinity and as stupid as he is characterless and dishonorable.

And as a result, all of us have to pay for Inhofe's lying and lack of character, and Democrats win.

Thanks IDIOT INHOFE, the most dishonorable man in the United States Senate and the STUPIDEST REPUBLICAN IN HISTORY.

It was not just the base names, it was all things Confederate on the military posts so all street names, memorial names, building names, everything. Jim Inhofe and the Republicans have destroyed more Southern memorials than Antifa, Black Lives Matter and the SPLC combined, times 100.

The monument destroyers are mostly Republican whose voters are way better than they are getting from the lying, despicable national party.

The national Republican Party is a cowardly disgrace but it is possible to influence them. They MUST be made to respect Confederate war memorials and they can be. Their voters are in the red state South.

We have GOT to get through to them. There is no hope with racist, woke Marxist Communist Democrats but there is still hope with Republicans who are only stupid and cowardly. We have to MAKE them wake up, open their eyes and start serving their voters once and for all.

The time is way past for being nice. It is time to RAISE HOLY HELL.

Notes:

1 "Alumnus Adriano Espaillat, First Dominican American And Formerly Undocumented Immigrant To Serve In Congress, Named Queens College 2020 Commencement Speaker", January 29, 2020, Alumnus Adriano Espaillat, First Dominican American and Formerly Undocumented Immigrant to Serve in Congress, Named Queens College 2020 Commencement Speake – CUNY Newswire, accessed 8-26-21.

2 H.R.4994 - No Federal Funding for Confederate Symbols Act, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4994/text, accessed 8-26-21.

3 Jordan Davidson, June 25, 2020, "In Racist Screed, NYT’s 1619 Project Founder Calls ‘White Race’ ‘Barbaric Devils,’ ‘Bloodsuckers,’ Columbus ‘No Different Than Hitler’",

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/25/in-racist-screed-nyts-1619-project-founder-calls-white-race-barbaric-devils-bloodsuckers-no-different-than-hitler/, accessed 8-26-21.

4 James Arkin, RCP Staff, November 17, 2016, "New Lawmaker Was Once an Undocumented Immigrant", https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/17/new_lawmaker_was_once_undocumented_immigrant.html, accessed 8/26/21.

5 Mike Scruggs, June 23, 2021, "The Real Jim Crow, How Northern Jim Crow Laws Moved South", https://www.charlestonathenaeumpress.com/the-real-jim-crow-how-northern-jim-crow-laws-moved-south-guest-post-by-leonard-m-mike-scruggs/, accessed 8-26-21.

The Present American Crisis, The March of Marxist Revolution – Guest Post By Leonard M. “Mike” Scruggs

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“We are actually witnessing a Communist overthrow of the United States in real time.”

James Simpson, author of Who Was Karl Marx?

The Present American Crisis
The March of Marxist Revolution

Guest post by
Leonard M. "Mike" Scruggs

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[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : Here is another outstanding article by Mike Scruggs, inspired by James Simpson's excellent book, Who Was Karl Marx? The Men, the Motives and the Menace Behind Today's Rampaging American Left.

The first step to defeating this Marxist threat that is everywhere today, is understanding Marxist goals and methods. Simpson's book analyzes them well, as Mike points out below, and gives us a blueprint for defeating this vile enemy. Other excellent books raise the alarm too, like Mark Levin's American Marxism.

Marxist Communists murdered over a hundred million people in the past 100 years. It is an ideology of misery, mediocrity, hate and force, that worships only power. It's purveyors, like one of BLM's "trained Marxist" founders, Patrisse Cullors, who recently bought her fourth million-dollar home, get filthy rich, while others toe the party line or else.

When Nikita Khrushchev said in the 1960s that Communists would conquer America from within without firing a shot, nobody believed him because we were strong and united back then, enough to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Today, it is far different because the Marxists have spent over a half century from their strongholds in disgraceful academia and the news media marching through our institutions as their evil philosophy commands. Academia has taught a generation of young people to hate their country. The threat today from these horrible people is serious and real.

Following Mike's bio and article are links to The Times Examiner website, Mike's outstanding columns, and to his books.]

Mike Scruggs is the author of two books - The Un-Civil War, Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War, Truths the Media Never Told You - and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.

The abridged version of The Un-Civil War sold over 40,000 copies and won the prestigious D. T. Smithwick Award by the North Carolina Society of Historians, for excellence.

Mike holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.

The Present American Crisis

By Mike Scruggs

(First published in The Times Examiner, 11 August 2021)

The March of Marxist Revolution

The United States is experiencing a rampage of revolutionary Marxist inspired social chaos and lawless political disorder. The destruction of property, political order, and many lives seen in over 600 massive, organized riots in 220 American cities by Black Live Matter and Antifa in the last 18 months is only the tip of the iceberg.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa are certainly Marxist led and inspired movements, but they are supported by billions of dollars from newly woke big corporations, Big Tech billionaires, and institutional funding. Many more continue to succumb to their bullying protection racket.

The new “woke” Marxist ideology and hateful and unforgiving “cancel culture” and obsequious political correctness dominate the social ethic of most of the education, media, and entertainment establishments. It thoroughly dominates the thinking, policies, and actions of the “Biden” Administration—which should more rightly be called the Obama Third Term Administration—and almost every Democrat politician.

For over 20 years, I have been warning that immigration was being used to change U.S. electoral demographics to favor a leftist dominated Democratic Party and, in fact, guarantee their permanent political dominance. Under the “Biden” Administration, it is now happening at exponential levels. Our Southern border has been opened to millions of illegal immigrants, not just from Mexico and Central America, but from everywhere in the world. They are receiving financial and relocation aid and encouragement but practically no screening. Many are members of criminal gangs and Mexican drug cartels. Many are radical Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood’s own plans to overthrow American culture and government. Huge percentages of them carry the Covid virus to unsuspecting American communities around the country. The Obama and Democrat Party plan is to make them voters as soon as possible, even before they become “citizens”—the Democrats are making the concept of citizenship meaningless.

Through Critical Race Theory (CRT), which on its face is utterly deceitful and extremely divisive, hate-mongering nonsense, Marxist ideologues are attempting to indoctrinate our children in schools and even subvert our Armed Forces. Leading the subversion of our Armed Forces are Obama generals, admirals, and Defense Department appointees, who have placed their personal advancement and future job prospects above duty, honor, and country. Morale in the Armed Forces is already plunging in anticipation of a political purge of traditional conservatives. CRT has already damaged our military preparedness and put our national security in peril. The People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Iran, and others stand ready to exploit our growing domestic and geo-political weaknesses and increasing lack of backbone.

Not the least of our concerns should be election and voter integrity. We have already seen in the 2020 Presidential Election how election procedures and thus legitimate results were severely compromised in many states. We have also seen how the Covid crisis was used to open the doors wide for massive vote fraud by mail.

Even legitimate science was compromised for the purpose of fear-mongering political propaganda and manipulation. Fake science has become a plausible political danger to American health and economic prosperity.

This has already shaken American confidence that future elections will be fair and honest and has also caused a considerable loss of confidence in the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), Federal courts and even the U.S. Supreme Court and the Center for Disease Control (CDC). There are certainly more agencies, including Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and tragically those general and flag officers who have condoned the monstrous and divisive evils of Critical Race Theory. None of this matters to Democrats and useful idiots who embrace the Marxist philosophy that “the end justifies the means.”

The Marxist culture destruction being hard pushed by the “Biden-Obama” Administration includes the usual exploitation of sex and gender issues as well as stirring up racial and ethnic unrest. Marxists have always used sexual liberation issues to increase their public popularity and gain political power. Now they are straining every nerve to create social chaos by gender confusion. Our children stand in danger of terribly malicious confusion and permanent physical and psychological damage. They are also attempting to seduce our churches through inclusion of or compromise with anti-Biblical forms of social justice.

Meanwhile huge, irresponsible, and deceitful government spending programs are igniting inflationary pressures, robbing all Americans of the buying power of their income and savings. Much of this spending is for environmental, “climate-change,” and infrastructure scams that will prove economic disasters.

Freedom of speech and religion are constantly under attack. Marxism allows no tolerance for conservative views.

I wish I could say it was only Democrats who are the useful idiots here. At least 17 U.S. Republican senators are considering making the most evil, expensive, and dishonest legislation ever proposed in Congress a bipartisan disaster. [Publisher's Note: All 17 plus two more for a total of 19 U.S. Republican senators voted with all 50 Democrats for the one trillion dollar infrastructure bill mentioned above but the House is demanding a 3.5 trillion bill that includes massive spending for radical social programs that benefit Democrats and the green new deal.]

All these things are accompanied by a storm of lies, many of them self-evident lies, which are faithfully supported by the dominant but colossally irresponsible leftist media.

Under Marxism and almost all totalitarian systems, power alone determines truth and moral compass. Marxism is bloody, because its economics, like that of most naïve socialist schemes, are lies and do not work. Coercion is necessary to make people work and live in a system that does not work and replaces freedom with fear.

In his recently released new book, James Simpson lists four concepts that patriotic Americans need to understand to rid the country of Marxist lies and insanity.

First, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always Revolution…. No matter what the issue, be it gay and ‘transgender’ rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, welfare rights, ‘social justice,’ 'equity’ [socialist equal outcomes for all] or whatever buzzwords they use, the issue is only relevant insofar as it can advance the ‘Revolution'.”

The Revolution is the Left’s relentless goal to overthrow and destroy the existing order to achieve absolute power and the wealth that comes with it. The issues matter only in that they can create the chaos necessary to destroy the culture and old order and establish a new one in which Marxists have all power.

The second concept we have already addressed in part. “Stop thinking of our political controversies as simply differences of opinion between right and left.” Stop thinking they are just political differences between Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives. “We are actually witnessing a Communist overthrow of the United States in real time.”

American Marxists, like the global Communist movement, have a plan. The brutal and pitiless philosophy of this plan was written in a 3-page pamphlet in 1869 by Russian anarchist Sergey Nechayev. It introduced the slogan “The end justifies the means,” and foreshadowed the grim totalitarian social environment described in George Orwell’s 1984.

Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci elaborated it in his 1926-1937 strategic plan for sedition “marching” through a target nation’s supporting cultural and government institutions.

Neo-Marxism conquers nations institution by institution. First comes the media, then education, the culture, and the government.

Our military institutions are being undermined by CRT and will be commanded by Obama appointed Marxist flag officers, and then by thoroughly indoctrinated field grade officers, company grade officers, and NCOs. All ranks will be expected to embrace the folly. Opportunity for advancement by those who do not enthusiastically embrace the obvious but highly poisonous lies will probably be minimal.

Our Police forces are also in danger of this anti-Constitutional transformation. Demonizing police and defunding police forces are only initial steps toward a totalitarian national police force.

The Marxists want a national police force with all local police forces under national authority. Most importantly, they want police personnel loyal to Federal Marxist bureaucrats or generals rather than the Constitution or local American citizens. BLM and Antifa could be core human resources for loyal Marxist police officers enforcing Marxist agendas.

Third, “There is a method to the madness. Every day we are subjected to mind-numbing lies and demonstrations of hypocritical double standards by media, Hollywood, Big Tech, the political Left, and certain circles in law enforcement. Down is up, right is wrong, truth is a lie, black is white.”  America is beginning to look like George Orwell’s books Animal Farm and 1984.

“Normal people are baffled by its seeming illogic. But it is a deadly logic to unhinge our society from any and all anchors to reality, stability, and security, to strike fear into our hearts, and make us desperate for it to stop.” Simpson calls it psychological terrorism. “The Left created absolute chaos for the Trump Administration’s four years. Biden has not ended the purposed chaos. He has ramped up the madness.”

Creating chaos and confusion is typical Marxist brainwashing and propaganda strategy.

Simpson’s fourth concept to understand is more shocking, but I have long believed it. “The heart of this evil Marxist agenda is Satanic. Leftists run the gamut from well-meaning liberals thinking the Democratic Party is 'compassionate' to hardcore Stalinists using every malicious tactic they can dream up to seize power. The core of the agenda, however, can only be described as Satanic.” Many Communists are not strictly atheists. Many initially professed Christian or Jewish faith but became bitter enemies of God, shaking their fist at him. Such were Karl Marx, Nicolai Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.

Doctrinaire Marxists have always seen Biblical-Christianity as an institution that must be destroyed before Marxism can advance.

Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed by a lack of knowledge.”

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Link to The Times Examiner website: www.timesexaminer.com

Link to Mike Scruggs's columns at The Times Examiner:

https://www.timesexaminer.com/mike-scruggs

Link to Mike's book website:

https://www.universalmediainc.org/books/. His books are also available on Amazon and other places.

Our Confederate Ancestors: Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and His Men in Action

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A Series on the Daring Exploits of Our Confederate Ancestors in the War Between the States.

Laying down the body, Forrest spread his handkerchief over his dead brother's face and, calling on a member of his escort to remain with the corpse, he mounted his horse and said to those who were present: "Follow me." Then turning to his bugler he said, "Garis, sound the charge," and away he dashed, followed by those present, with the fury of a hurricane. They galloped into the enemy as some of them were mounting to retreat, and the spirit and animation of the spectacle so enthused the other Confederates that they rushed forward like a mighty storm and trampled down everything in their front, driving the enemy in the wildest confusion and capturing all his artillery, wagons, and a thousand prisoners besides a great quantity of supplies and several hundred negroes who were running away with the Yankees. The pursuit was kept up until night. . . .

Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and His Men in Action

From Forrest's Wonderful Achievements by Capt. James Dinkins of New Orleans, Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, January, 1927.

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[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : Every son and daughter of the South can gain ENORMOUS inspiration from Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest just as his own men did. They achieved so much because of the dynamism of their leader.

The entries for Forrest in Broadfoot's Confederate Veteran index go on for pages. It's like the Shakespeare section in the library.

All you have to do is absorb Forrest into your brain then go win EVERY heritage fight one way or another, like Forrest did. If a monument comes down, put up 10 and write 10 books, construct 10 more highway battle flag memorials in the area.

Campaign against the dogs who vote to remove century old monuments to war dead and throw them out of office. Sue them if possible as individuals.

Read all the inspiring accounts of Forrest you can lay your hands on then read Gen. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and all the others. The blood coursing through their veins during the great battles of the War Between the States is the same blood coursing through ours today.

Capt. Dinkins' title way understates the extreme excitement in his article on the exploits of Forrest and his men. It is riveting. I could not put it down and neither will you.]

From Forrest's Wonderful Achievements
by Capt. James Dinkins of New Orleans

AFTER THE BATTLE of Chickamauga, Forrest tendered to Gen. Bragg his resignation as brigadier general. He felt so depressed on account of the delay and the inaction in following up a great victory, and, furthermore, was dissatisfied with various conditions which seemed to indicate that he was not appreciated by the commander in chief.

For some time previously, Forrest had received urgent requests from prominent people in North Mississippi to come to that section and organize the scattered bands and defend their country from the frequent raids by the Federal forces at Memphis and along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. That may also have had its influence upon Forrest's decision.

It happened that Mr. Davis was at General Bragg's headquarters when Forrest's resignation reached him, and he at once wrote Forrest in graceful language saying he could not accept his resignation nor dispense with his services, and requested that he meet him in Montgomery a few days later.

At the time designated, Forrest met the President, who promised to give him an independent command in the department of West Tennessee and North Mississippi, and also stated that Forrest should carry with him such regiments as General Bragg could spare.

However, when Forrest took his departure, he did so with McDonald's Battalion and Morton's Battery, besides his escort company, all told three hundred men and four guns.

He reached the Mobile and Ohio Railroad at Okolona, Miss. on the 15th of November, 1863. He decided soon afterwards to move into West Tennessee and use his influence and prestige in bringing together numbers of men who had been furloughed on account of wounds and other causes and having recovered were not willing to go back to the infantry service.

He, therefore, crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad at Saulsbury and moved to Jackson with 250 men and two rifle guns of Morton's battery. He reached Jackson on the 6th of December, 1863, and went into camp with as much composure and confidence as if he had a division instead of a few squadrons.

Major General Hurlbut, commanding the Federal forces at Memphis and West Tennessee also set to work at once to prevent Forrest's escape. He sent a force from Memphis, one from Corinth, and one from Fort Pillow, in all, about 20,000 men, well-equipped, to accomplish that object.

Think of it! Forrest with but those few hundred men surrounded by twenty thousand veteran troops. No other man on earth so situated could have marched away. Forrest soon had assembled about three thousand men, who, however, had no arms, and to protect those men from capture with the aid of only three hundred men seemed impossible---but that word was not in Forrest's vocabulary.

About this time it began to rain and bad weather lasted several days causing all the rivers and creeks to overflow their banks; but on December 22, Forrest put his column in motion and crossed the Forked Deer River, going in the direction of Bolivar. His scouts reported large Federal forces moving on him from all sides, but, with about five hundred armed men and three thousand men without guns, he set out to reach the Confederate lines. Arriving at Bolivar, he was met by Col. D. M. Wisdom with one hundred and fifty men, which made his fighting force nearly seven hundred strong.

Ascertaining that a Federal column was encamped just south of the Hatchie River and directly in the line of his intended march, Forrest constructed a bridge over the river during the night, and crossed over, and while the enemy were wrapped in slumber just before day, he dashed into their camp, creating the wildest confusion and stampeded the entire force, which left behind a large number of wagons and several hundred head of beef cattle.

Forrest then moved rapidly in the direction of Somerville, where he learned that the whole country was swarming with infantry, cavalry, and artillery, ready to pounce on him. Forrest, with the additional responsibility of protecting his captured beef cattle and wagons, was in a hopeless position it would seem.

Halting a few hours before reaching Somerville, he sent some three hundred armed men and about a thousand without arms to get in the Federal rear, and, moving boldly with the remainder of his command until he met the enemy's pickets, he drove them in.

About the same time the detached force charged into the federals on the other side, Forrest sent forward a flag of truce demanding the unconditional surrender of the enemy, consisting of 5,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, and the Federal commander, believing that he was surrounded by a large force, began a hurried retreat in the direction of Memphis.

Taking advantage of the fright, Forrest led his escort company and McDonald's Battalion upon their retreating columns, riding them down and scattering them in all directions.

The victory was so complete that the unarmed men joined in the pursuit and captured several hundred prisoners from whom they secured arms, etc.

Leaving the Federal command scattered and in great disorder, Forrest marched toward Memphis, creating the impression that he would attack the place, which caused the Federal commander, General Hurlbut, to hurry all the troops along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, from Corinth westward to Memphis, and also recall the forces he had sent from Fort Pillow.

The heavy rains had in the meantime caused the Forked Deer, the Hatchie, and the Wolf rivers to overflow their banks, so that they could not be crossed at all, which left the Federal forces in Forrest's rear utterly harmless.

While the enemy was hurrying to Memphis, Forrest suddenly changed his course to the south, and crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad at Mount Pleasant into the Confederate lines, with a thousand head of cattle and a large number of wagons and stores of different sorts. The cattle were sent to feed the Army of Tennessee.

Many amusing incidents occurred during the stampede of the Federal forces at Somerville. In the pursuit of a column of these fugitives, a Confederate officer, Lieutenant Livingston, received orders to turn back with his company. He shouted after them: "Get out of our country, you worthless rascals."

In the rear of the Federals, on a horse somewhat slower than the rest, was a trooper, who, turning his head, exclaimed in unmistakable brogue and with the ready wit of his countrymen: "Faith, ain't it thot same we're trying to do jist as fast as we can?"

Forrest had them reach safe ground, and we can but wonder how it was possible for him to escape with his wagons, cattle, and unarmed men in the face of the manifold dangers which environed him.

Leaving Jackson, Tenn., on a march of one hundred and fifty miles with three thousand unarmed men, a large wagon train, and hundreds of cattle, thoroughly surrounded by more than 20,000 of the enemy (which General Hurlbut admits in his official report), having to cross three overflowed rivers, with the loss of less than thirty men, seems marvelous. And almost any other man to have thought of such a possibility, would have been regarded as foolishly rash and perilously vain.

A correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial, writing from Memphis on January 12, 1864, in summing up Forrest's operations, said: "With less than 4,000 men, Forrest moved right through the Sixteenth Army Corps, passed within nine miles of Memphis, carried off one hundred wagons of provisions, seven hundred head of beef cattle, and innumerable stores; tore up railroad track, cut telegraph wires, ran over our pickets with a single Derringer pistol, and all in the face of 20,000 men, and without the loss of a man that can be accounted for."

Arriving at Holly Springs, Forrest found that the almost incessant rain for a week was giving way to clear, cold weather.

Forrest-on-horse-edited-43K

On December 28 the command moved toward Como, Panola County, Miss. Forrest reached Sucotobia late Wednesday evening, December 30, and remained there until Friday morning, January 1, 1864, thence to Como.

Between Como and Senatobia runs the Hickahala River, which the entire command crossed, including the artillery and wagons, on the ice. It was the coldest day known to the oldest inhabitants, and will never be forgotten during the life of those who encountered its horrors.

The writer was ordered to move with a small squad of men as rapidly as possible ahead and press into service every able-bodied negro to be found and put them to work chopping down timber and building fires.

Arriving at Como, there was not a member of the little party able to dismount without assistance, but the few citizens and negroes of the town set to work to throw us out, and within a half hour or so we were able to begin the work. The men were scantily clad, and, with less than a blanket each, their suffering was fearful, so much so that numbers of the young recruits which followed out of West Tennessee left their commands to return home.

In the meantime, Forrest had been appointed a major general and put in command of all the forces in North Mississippi and West Tennessee. He set to work to organized his force into regiments and brigades. Four brigades were formed, the first under Brig. Gen. R. V. Richardson; the second under Col. Robert McCullough, composed of the 2nd Missouri, Willis's Texas Battalion, Faulkner's Kentucky Regiment, Kinzer's Battalion, the 18th Mississippi, and a fragment of the 2nd Arkansas, commanded by Capt. F. M. Cochran.

The third brigade was under Col. T. H. Bell, and the fourth was commanded by Col. J. E. Forrest, a brother of the General.

In all, there were about 6,000 men, rank and file. The brigades commanded by Cols. McCullough and J. E. Forrest composed the first division, and it was commanded by Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers. The other division was commanded by Brigadier General Richardson for a short time, but finally by Brig. Gen. A. Buford.

These details having been accomplished, Forrest moved his headquarters to Oxford and left General Chalmers at Panola.

While at Oxford, the squads which had been sent after the deserters returned with nineteen of them, whom they delivered to General Forrest. He gave orders that in consequence of this desertion and disgraceful conduct, the whole lot should be shot, and instructions were issued that the executions would take place at an early date.

The news spread like a cyclone, and very soon prominent citizens and ladies, also every clergyman in Oxford, waited on General Forrest with urgent appeals to forgive the boys and spare their lives. Some of the officers advised Forrest that they had intimations of meetings among the soldiers.

But he was unmoved, and apparently determined on the executions. All preparations were carried out and one a bright morning, the 20th of January, 1864, the procession of wagons containing the deserters, sitting on their coffins, moved through the streets to a skirt of woods just west of the university buildings, where the graves had been dug. The men were made to get out, and the coffins placed alongside the graves. Then all were blindfolded and seated each on his coffin.

The company detailed for the purpose marched in front and loaded their guns and came to a ready. There was but a moment between these men and eternity. The next instant the commands "Aim" and "Fire" would be given. But while they were standing at the ready, Captain Anderson of General Forrest's staff, announced that the men were pardoned and would return to their commands.

The lesson was not lost and will never been forgotten by anyone who was a witness to the spectacle. As a matter of fact, I do not know of more than a dozen men living who were present at that time. The news scattered broadcast that Forrest had shot a lot of boys who went home, etc., and many people believed to the day of their death that the boys were shot. The writer was present and the statement is true in every particular as given above.

A short time after the occurrence just mentioned, General Polk, who was department commander, notified Forrest that Sherman was moving from Vicksburg toward Jackson with a large force; also that a force had moved at the same time up the Yazoo River. This information was quicky followed by news that a column had moved from Memphis toward Panola, and another from Collinville toward Holly Springs.

Jeffrey Forrest was sent to Grenada to watch the column moving by the Yazoo River, while General Chalmers posted McCullouch at Panola, Bell at Belmont, and Richardson at Wyatt, all on the Tallahatchie River. Forrest soon learned, however, that a large cavalry force was arranging to leave Memphis, and he at once decided that it was intended to participate in a cooperative movement with Sherman, and that the columns sent toward Panola and Holly Springs were feints.

Sure enough, on the 11th of February, Capt. Thomas Henderson, Chief of Scouts, reported that a force of cavalry about eight thousand strong and four batteries of artillery were moving rapidly in the direction of Germantown. Forrest ordered Chalmers to move with his division to Oxford, leaving one regiment (Faulkner's) to guard the river at Wyatt and Abbeville.

Reaching Oxford on the 14th, Chalmers received orders to march with all dispatch toward Okolona, as the enemy, under Maj. Gen. W. S. Smith, about ten thousand strong, seemed headed for the rich prairies south of Okolona, which facts confirmed Forrest's opinions.

It was raining almost constantly, and the roads were next to impassable, but we outmarched General Smith's force and reached West Point, Miss., on the 17th. Forrest established his headquarters at Starkville and sent Col. Jeffrey Forrest with his brigade to meet the Federal column in the neighborhood of Aberdeen.

Colonel Forrest had a number of light skirmishes while General Smith pressed his small brigade back to West Point. Anticipating that General Smith might cross the Tombigbee at Aberdeen, Bell's Brigade was sent to Columbus, where he crossed the river and moved along the east bank toward Aberdeen, but finding that Smith was moving his entire force toward West Point, he took up a position at Waverly. In the meantime, Forrest, with Chalmers, marched with McCullouch's Brigade and two regiments of Richardson's Brigade, to the relief of Col. Jeffrey Forrest.

The situation at this time was critical on both sides. The rivers in front and behind both the Federal and Confederate forces were badly swollen and there could be no retreat for either. The Tombigbee on the east the Sooh-a-Toucha on the south, and the Okatibbyha on the west were all in flood.

Gen. Stephen D. Lee notified Forrest that he was marching to his support with a brigade of infantry from Meridian and Forrest hoped to avoid a general engagement until his arrival. Forrest, therefore, went into camp about four miles west of West Point, from whence, we could see the eastern horizon lighted up by burning houses, barns, gin houses, fences and everything which the enemy could set on fire.

The sight so infuriated Forrest that he determined to put a stop to further devastation.

The following morning he led McCulloch's Brigade to a crossing on a little river called Siloam, about four miles east, and resolved to do all in his power to stop such an uncivilized kind of warfare. He expected to strike the Federal left flank but found that the force consisted of but one brigade, which he quickly put to flight. He ordered all his force forward from West Point and found the enemy in position in a woods four miles from that little city.

Chalmers quickly dismounted his men and moved to the attack. The men went rushing and yelling at the Federal line with as little concern for their lives, apparently, as they would have shown in a skirmish drill. The effect was instantaneous and the Federals, after firing a round, mounted their horses and galloped away.

In the meantime, McCulloch had sent the force at Siloam helter-skelter. The fugitives, on reaching Smith's main column, added tenfold to the demoralization. The whole force began a hurried retreat. Having the swollen river at their backs, the audacious onslaught of the Confederates made the victory a stampede.

The Federals could not be halted. The scene was indescribable. The roads were knee deep in mud and the fields were boggy. Wagons and caissons were left behind and our men could barely keep in sight of the fleeing house burners. Stop a moment and think of the disparity of the two forces.

General Smith's command numbered ten thousand men and twenty-four cannon. Men who had been selected from the Army of the Cumberland, seasoned and tried troops, with the best equipment, while Forrest's force did not exceed 4,000 men and eight cannon.

Bell's Brigade of 2,000 men at Waverly, ten miles distant when the fight began, did not reach the field until after the route began.

The roads and the whole country were soaked from the continued rain, and the passage of the Federal artillery and wagons left the roads impassable.

Forrest made every effort to overhaul the enemy by sending detachments through the fields, but the ground was so rotten it could not be done, although the enemy was encumbered with plunder and hundred of negroes.

However, Forrest was after them and with unsurpassed impetuosity succeeded in overtaking the Federal rear guard, several times during the day, with his escort company, and had two or three sharp brushes, but was not able to bring them to a stand.

Night coming on, the command went into camp, but the following morning, February 22, 1864, McCulloch's and Jeffrey Forrest's brigades were in hot pursuit.

Nine miles out of Okolona, Jeffrey Forrest was ordered to take a left-hand road and cut off the retreat if possible. In the meantime Barteau, with Bell's Brigade, had reached the Federal right flank, which forced the enemy to make a stand at Okolona.

Forrest, at the same time, had been dogging the rear of the Federal column with his escort company so savagely there was no alternative but to fight. General Smith, therefore, posted his force in a very favorable position across the Pontotoc road, in a skirt of woods. Barteau, with Bell's Brigade, dismounted, charged across a field and met strong resistance and suffered great loss but just at that moment Jeffrey Forrest struck the Federals in the rear and caused another stampede.

Barteau's men quickly recovered their setback and joined in pursuit. McCulloch reached the field about this time and his presence added to the confusion of the Federals, and the rout became general.

The Confederates, however, in the excitement, lost organization for a time and did not follow up the chase as well as could have been done.

In the meantime, General Smith had found a most favorable position eight miles distant from Okolona, and posted his line on a ridge of post oak timber.

Forrest soon got his men in hand and sent McCullock to the left and Jeffrey Forrest to the right, with orders to drive into them.

Jeffrey Forrest, at the head of his brigade accompanied by Col. D. M. Wisdom, made the attack with great vigor. The Federals fired a volley into his ranks as he approached and Colonel Forrest fell, mortally wounded, about fifty yards from the enemy's line.

The enemy was pushed back and soon, General Forrest, hearing of the wounding of his young brother, galloped to the spot where he lay, dismounted, raised his head, and with passionate tenderness begged Jeffrey to speak. He died in his arms. They were throughout life devoted. The General was the oldest and Jeffrey was the youngest of the family. The General had been unwearied in his efforts to give his brother an education, and he felt his untimely loss. The flower of his life had been snatched from him.

Laying down the body, Forrest spread his handkerchief over his dead brother's face and, calling on a member of his escort to remain with the corpse, he mounted his horse and said to those who were present: "Follow me." Then turning to his bugler he said, "Garis, sound the charge," and away he dashed, followed by those present, with the fury of a hurricane. They galloped into the enemy as some of them were mounting to retreat, and the spirit and animation of the spectacle so enthused the other Confederates that they rushed forward like a mighty storm and trampled down everything in their front, driving the enemy in the wildest confusion and capturing all his artillery, wagons, and a thousand prisoners besides a great quantity of supplies and several hundred negroes who were running away with the Yankees. The pursuit was kept up until night. It was a wonderful achievement.

I was induced to write this story because of a remark made to me by an old comrade I met during the reunion of the Louisiana Division, U. C. V., held at Alexandria, November 25-26.

He said: "Forrest's Cavalry was the greatest body of soldiers ever assembled."

I answered: "They were made so by Forrest's example."

The Farewell Address of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Forrest’s Cavalry Corps, May 9, 1865, from Michael R. Bradley’s The Last Words

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The Farewell Address of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Forrest's Cavalry Corps, May 9, 1865
from Michael R. Bradley's
The Last Words, The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States
Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Forrest's Cavalry Corps, CSA.
Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Forrest's Cavalry Corps, CSA.

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : Michael R. Bradley probably knows more about Nathan Bedford Forrest than anybody in the country. His highly acclaimed Nathan Bedford Forrest's Escort and Staff and They Rode with Forrest, along with other books, articles and talks, attest to that.

I am extremely proud to publish, by Charleston Athenaeum Press, his outstanding new book, The Last Words, The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States. It will be out in the next few weeks.

Dr. Bradley's research and writing are extraordinary. He has drawn wide praise over the years as an historian. The Last Words is a masterful bit of original research where he dug out all the extant farewell addresses he could find of Union and Confederate commanders. Lee had surrendered but units were still in the field and had not yet broken up and gone home. Not all commanders gave farewell addresses but Bradley found 17 who did, nine Union, and eight Confederate. These are the last words commanders would say to the men they had led for years through bloody hell, death, grief, enormous privations, victories and defeats.

As primary sources originating from the battlefield with no opportunity for anything to influence them - no political influence, no sentimentality, no years of fading memories - these words are straight from the hearts of the men who fought in the war and spoke them except for, perhaps, Gen. Grant's address, which was not signed and appears to have been issued by somebody in the government.

Bradley's unit histories and vivid descriptions of their battles during the war make the reading of the various farewell addresses incredibly meaningful. The biographies of commanders are outstanding too.

The book opens with Gen. Lee's "General Orders, Number 9" and more or less alternates with a Union address and a Confederate address, which adds contrast.

This is an important book and you will love reading every word of it.

Below is Dr. Bradley's bio followed by Chapter Three of The Last Words, Nathan Bedford Forrest's address and Dr. Bradley's excellent historical narrative.]

Dr. Bradley's Bio:

Michael R. Bradley is professor emeritus of History at Motlow State Community College in Tullahoma, Tennessee where he taught for 36 years. He is a native of the Tennessee-Alabama state line region near Fayetteville, Tennessee. He attended Samford University for his B.A., took a Master of Divinity at New Orleans Seminary, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1970. He has been pastor of two Presbyterian churches in Middle Tennessee. He served as interim Pastor of two others.

Dr. Bradley is the author of several books on the War Between the States including Tullahoma: The 1863 Campaign; With Blood and Fire: Life Behind Union Lines in Middle Tennessee; Nathan Bedford Forrest's Escort and Staff ; It Happened in the Civil War; Forrest's Fighting Preacher, David Campbell Kelley of Tennessee; The Raiding Winter; Civil War Myths and Legends; They Rode with Forrest, and others including a lifetime of articles and talks. In 1994 he was awarded the Jefferson Davis Medal in Southern History. In 2006 he was elected commander of the Tennessee Division SCV and is a Life Member. He served on Tennessee's Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission.

The Farewell Address of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Forrest's Cavalry Corps, May 9, 1865

Soldiers:

By an agreement made between Liet.-Gen. Taylor, com manding the Department of Alabama. Mississippi, and East Louisiana, and Major-Gen. Canby, commanding United States forces, the troops of this department have been surrendered.

I do not think it proper or necessary at this time to refer to causes which have reduced us to this extremity; nor is it now a matter of material consequence to us how such results were brought about. That we are BEATEN is a self-evident fact, and any further resistance on our part would justly be regarded as the very height of folly and rashness.

The armies of Generals LEE and JOHNSTON having surrendered. You are the last of all the troops of the Confederate States Army east of the Mississippi River to lay down your arms.

The Cause for which you have so long and so manfully struggled, and for which you have braved dangers, endured privations, and sufferings, and made so many sacrifices, is today hopeless. The government which we sought to establish and perpetuate, is at an end. Reason dictates and humanity demands that no more blood be shed. Fully realizing and feeling that such is the case, it is your duty and mine to lay down our arms -- submit to the “powers that be” -- and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land.

The terms upon which you were surrendered are favorable, and should be satisfactory and acceptable to all. They manifest a spirit of magnanimity and liberality, on the part of the Federal authorities, which should be met, on our part, by a faithful compliance with all the stipulations and conditions therein expressed. As your Commander, I sincerely hope that every officer and soldier of my command will cheerfully obey the orders given, and carry out in good faith all the terms of the cartel.

Those who neglect the terms and refuse to be paroled, may assuredly expect, when arrested, to be sent North and imprisoned. Let those who are absent from their commands, from whatever cause, report at once to this place, or to Jackson, Miss.; or, if too remote from either, to the nearest United States post or garrison, for parole.

Civil war, such as you have just passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of all such feelings; and as far as it is in our power to do so, to cultivate friendly feelings towards those with whom we have so long contended, and heretofore so widely, but honestly, differed. Neighborhood feuds, personal animosities, and private differences should be blotted out; and, when you return home, a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect of your enemies. Whatever your responsibilities may be to Government, to society, or to individuals meet them like men.

The attempt made to establish a separate and independent Confederation has failed; but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully, and to the end, will, in some measure, repay for the hardships you have undergone.

In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way, referring to the merits of the Cause in which we have been engaged, your courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields, has elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success in arms.

I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous.

N.B. Forrest, Lieut.-General
Headquarters, Forrest's Cavalry Corps
Gainesville, Alabama
May 9, 1865
General Orders No. 221

 

Nathan Bedford Forrest is the most controversial, and the most misrepresented, general officer of the entire war. He is the man liberal historians love to hate and the man Civil War buffs adore. Forrest is celebrated for his military genius and his intuitive grasp of psychological warfare (keep the scare on 'em) and damned for his supposed approval of a massacre of African American and white Tennessee Unionists at Fort Pillow and for his presumptive post-war leadership of the Ku Klux Klan. William T. Sherman said, in 1864, “there will never be peace in Tennessee until Forrest is dead.” Since controversy and argument still swirl around Forrest it appears he is not deceased!

Forrest grew up on a small farm in Bedford County, Tennessee (his birthplace is now in Marshal County thanks to a redrawing of boundaries) and became “the man of the family” in his early teens when his father died. Later he took the family to Mississippi where he became a successful farmer, businessman, and political leader. He moved to Memphis, engaged in the slave trade, and was elected alderman. By 1860, still in his thirties, he was worth over a million dollars.

Forrest enlisted as a private, was made a lieutenant colonel almost immediately and was instructed to raise a regiment of cavalry. As head of a cavalry force he rose quickly through the ranks to become a lieutenant general before the end of the war. Forrest also established a reputation for hard fighting, beginning with his first encounter of any importance at Sacramento, Kentucky and continuing to his last battle at Selma, Alabama. He also perfected the technique of striking deep behind the Union front line to disrupt lines of supply. The first attempt by Forrest at such raiding came in July 1862 at Murfreesboro, Tennessee on his forty-first birthday. He repeated the tactic in December 1862 by raiding for two weeks into West Tennessee, thoroughly destroying the Mobile & Ohio Railroad which brought supplies to the army of Ulysses S. Grant. By 1864 Forrest had been given an independent command in Mississippi and West Tennessee and there he won some of his most brilliant victories such as Brice's Cross Roads. Two other raids into Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee in 1864 cemented his grasp of raiding.

Forrest spent most of his military career doing traditional cavalry service, scouting and screening the infantry force of the Army of Tennessee. It was in this traditional capacity that he served at Fort Donelson, at Shiloh, and throughout 1863 during the Tullahoma and Chickamauga campaigns.

By the end of the war Forrest was the most feared opponent the Union had in the west and the most celebrated leader in the Confederate ranks. His campaigns are still studied today as early examples of mobile warfare.

Fort Pillow, April 9, 1864, casts a dark shadow over the memory of Forrest. Something happened there which has been exploited but never explained. After an all-day engagement Confederate forces got close enough to the fortifications at Fort Pillow to capture them by storm, doing so only after the Union commander had refused to surrender. In the ensuing chaos of a position captured by direct assault some Union soldiers were killed in a manner which violated the rules of war. The crucial questions of how many such deaths occurred and who is responsible have never been answered, though Forrest, as commanding officer, bears responsibility for the conduct of his troops.

The Fort Pillow affair was immediately exploited by the North. A congressional committee investigated the matter and published a report of which 40,000 copies were distributed, in which survivors gave graphic reports of men being shot after surrendering. One very obvious problem is that none of these witnesses gave the name of a single person who they saw killed. The men of these units had served together for more than a year, yet no-one recognized a friend, mess mate, or non-commissioned officer who was killed unlawfully. The more serious problem is that the Congressional Report has all the markings of a propaganda piece. The Union cause, militarily and politically, was at a low ebb. The Confederates had taken serious blows in 1863 but they still appeared full of fight. Recruitment in the North was difficult and very large bounties were being offered to lure recruits. The Democratic Party, with its call for peace, appeared to be in good position for the 1864 elections at all levels---state, congressional, and presidential. Something was needed to arouse public opinion in support of the war. Fort Pillow was used to provide that stimulus.

Post-war, the name of Bedford Forrest came to be associated with the Ku Klux Klan. The assertion that Forrest was head of the Klan has been repeated in so many books as to be beyond counting. The problem with this assertion is that no historian has ever produced any primary source document which proves Forrest held that position. Writers of secondary sources cite each other but none cite a document from the 1860—70's to prove their case. In short, there is no valid historical evidence to support the claim that Forrest was head of the Klan.

Eric Foner is considered by many to be the leading contemporary historian of the Reconstruction Era. His book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, discusses the Klan in great detail over a number of chapters. The name of Bedford Forrest is never mentioned. A growing number of academic historians admit that there is no evidence linking Forrest to the Klan, yet still the folklore is repeated whenever the name of Forrest is mentioned.2

The historical fact is that a congressional investigating committee cleared Forrest of any involvement with the Klan and commended him for his opposition to the group. Forrest also became an advocate for African Americans exercising the right to vote. Historians who condemn Forrest for his supposed affiliation with the Klan either ignore these facts or make great efforts to dismiss them but in doing so they violate the duty of an historian to deal with facts and not to substitute personal opinions or folklore for primary sources.

Forrest was a fierce fighter. His force held out until May 9, 1865, a month after the fighting had ended in Virginia and several days after it had ended in North Carolina. Forrest accepted the inevitable with good grace and advised his men to do likewise. The farewell address he issued to his command at Gainesville, Alabama is a model of calmness and reconciliation.

There were no U.S. forces present to accept the surrender of Forrest's command. On the morning of their departure the men fell in for roll call and Forrest's final order was read aloud. The men then marched by their own ordinance sergeants and turned in their weapons, the artillery was parked in a grove of trees, and the men then reported to their regimental adjutant to received previously printed and signed paroles. Then they went home.

What does Forrest's final address tell us about his ideas concerning the cause of the war? The order states that, for Forrest, the causes of the war were irrelevant but that the result of the war was obvious, the South had lost and the Confederacy was no more. The only thing for sensible people to do was accept the results and get on with their lives. This statement reflects the same pragmatic attitude with which he had fought during the war. It should be noted that Forrest had opposed secession and had voted against it in February 1861 when Tennessee took its first vote on the issue. Forrest stood by the Union as long as the Union stood by the existing laws. Once respect for law was abandoned Forrest moved to protect his home.

Forrest's Escort Company and Staff formed an association even before the United Confederate Veterans were formed and they regularly read aloud the Farewell Address. The sound advice it contained stood them in good stead during the hard economic times that followed the war. The words do much to disprove the common public impression that Forrest was a monster.

 

1 Thomas Jordan and J.P. Pryor, The Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest and of Forrest's Cavalry (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 680-82. Originally published 1886.

2 See Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014). Originally published, 1988.

CRT Transformation of the American Military – Guest Post by Leonard M. “Mike” Scruggs

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CRT Transformation of the American Military
Neo-Marxist Subversion and Its Washington Allies
Guest post by Leonard M. "Mike" Scruggs
Eye-opening book about Marxism in our military by U. S. Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier.
Eye-opening book about Marxism in our military by U. S. Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier.

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : United States Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier has done our country a HUGE HUGE favor by publishing his excellent book, Irresistible Revolution, Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military. This extremely important book should be read by everybody who cares about our country and military, and people need to start RAISING HOLY HELL about all this.

It seems that every institution in our country is under attack by Marxists in the Democrat Party and their "long march through the institutions." People had better wake up and start fighting back.

Where is the Republican Party?

I am a Republican but without Trump the Republican Party is the most worthless cowardly party in history. They allow this stuff to go on when there should be universal outrage about all of it. This is not business as usual. Critical Race Theory has got to be destroyed and those promoting it, discredited.

People should demand that academia, where all this hatred and Marxism come from, be defunded. Academia gave us CRT and this racist hatred of white people, who I might remind them still make up 62% of the country. Academia does not deserve one penny of taxpayer money.

I know there are good people in academia but they damn well better stand up and take their institutions back from the Marxists or they can go down with them. But don't hold your breath.

Academia is sick. Real debate is impossible because it is 100% liberal. I know the actual number is only 90% but the other 10% will not say a word and risk the mob showing up at their office, or having their tenure denied.

It is hard to believe that anybody would accept CRT when 62% of the country is white and only 12% is black. Why would 62% of the country allow their precious children to be labeled racists and oppressors so the Democrat Party can use the 12% of blacks to their political advantage?

Black people don't like Critical Race Theory either! They don't want their precious children labeled losers and the oppressed, because they are not.

Face it. The Democrat Party does not care a damn about black people or they would solve problems like 70 blacks being shot every weekend in Chicago. Defunding the police will make that worse.

Democrats divide everybody into racial groups because that's what today's Marxists do. They couldn't take over with class struggle because American capitalism obliterated Socialism and Communism and provides so much opportunity and wealth, there is no class struggle. Everybody has opportunity in America.

So racist American Marxists seek to destroy our country with racial hate and division.

They think they can control the future by open borders, and they might. We are on track for over 3,000,000 people from all over the world, many who are COVID positive, to cross our southern border this year and be taken by the federal government to states where they can one day make the difference in national elections. This is treason. It is certainly not democracy.

Also, those 3,000,000 illegal immigrants prove that the Democrat Party and Marxists in academia are frauds who are lying about systemic racism and America being so horrible. Nobody would risk all to come to a horrible, racist country.

The Democrat Party and Marxists in academia have convinced a generation of young people to hate their own country when the evidence is in plain sight that America is the greatest nation in history, while the Democrat Party and Marxists in academia are the biggest frauds in history.

See my article on this blog: "Woke Liberals in Academia, and the Marxist Communists They love." There is a link below. It quotes extensively from the definitive work about Communism, The Black Book of Communism, Crimes, Terror, Repression. It labels Communism, which academia loves, as a "tragedy of planetary dimensions" that has murdered over a hundred million people.

And academia is supposed to be about knowledge, learning, enlightenment? Yet they choose Marxism and racism over America? Academia has taught a generation of young Americans to hate their country. There is nothing wrong with America but there is a lot wrong with the unimpressive people in academia.

Republicans and Independents believe in Martin Luther King's colorblind meritocracy, where people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Critical Race Theory rejects Martin Luther King as a dupe and tool of the white man.

The Democrat Party believes skin color is the most important thing about a person and they don't care a damn about the content of one's character as long as they vote democrat.

Contact your representatives and other leaders and tell them you are fed up with what's happening in the country. Contact veterans and veteran groups, especially high-ranking retired military personnel with political connections. Write letters. File law suits. Speak at school board and city council meetings. Band with neighbors and make yourselves heard. Run for office. Set up a website and blog. We should fight these traitorous Marxists everywhere they pop their ugly heads up.

Fly the American flag. I put one on my house this past Fourth of July and I love looking at it every day, several times a day. Love it! I draw power from it!

Push for laws which forbid American Olympic athletes from dishonoring the American flag or the national anthem by kneeling while representing the United States on the world stage. They can hate America all they want but if they have to dishonor the flag or kneel for the national anthem, they can not be on the American Olympic team. Period. There should be stiff fines for disobeying this rule, and a lifetime ban on ever representing the United States in the Olympic Games again. Many athletes from Communist countries have made the point that if a Communist athlete dishonors their country's flag, they are executed.

Lt. Col. Lohneier's book was just published in May and as of July 27, 2021 had 1,241 reviews on Amazon and a 4.9 out of 5 overall rating. The book is self-published, which makes him one of the greatest American patriots of all time for taking the initiative to warn our country of this dire Marxist threat.

It is 230 pages and out in hardback and paper. It has an Amazon ranking of #2 under Military Policy, and #11 under Communism and Socialism. Buy it on Amazon and other places, and on Lohmeier's website where there is more information including videos of several national TV interviews with people like Tucker Carlson. There is a link below.

This article, by Mike Scruggs, is eye-opening. Mike is an historian, author and columnist for The Times Examiner out of Greenville, South Carolina. He goes into detail on Lt. Col. Lohmeier's book, points out acts of blatant insubordination in the ranks, and takes apart Critical Race Theory, which threatens to destroy the United States Military. CRT is well embedded already in the military, apparently starting under Obama.

Our military has always been one of the greatest institutions in the history of the world, a true colorblind meritocracy, until now. Like the Democrat Party, they are becoming anti-white racists who are super-aware of skin color and politics, which will degrade and destroy the greatest military ever. We must stop CRT now.

Following Mike's bio and article are links to The Times Examiner website, Mike's outstanding columns, and to his books.]

Mike Scruggs is the author of two books - The Un-Civil War, Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War, Truths the Media Never Told You - and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.

The abridged version of The Un-Civil War sold over 40,000 copies and won the prestigious D. T. Smithwick Award by the North Carolina Society of Historians, for excellence.

Mike holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.

CRT Transformation of the American Military

By Mike Scruggs

(First published in The Times Examiner, 26 July 2021)


Neo-Marxist Subversion and Its Washington Allies

The greatest threat to American security is not China, Russia, or Iran. It is the Critical Race Theory (CRT) transformation of our military. CRT is also our greatest threat to freedom.

According to U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, during the first month he was assigned as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at a Colorado Air Force and Space base in July 2020, he was asked by base leadership to watch two videos in preparation for training and discussion on race and inclusion. This was in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and rioting, looting, and burning in Minneapolis. Trained facilitators would mediate discussion sessions for base personnel.

The first video portrayed American history as 400 years of racist white supremacy beginning in 1619.  The film taught that the U.S. Constitution codified a racist social order that intended to keep whites in power and subjugate and oppress blacks and that this racist foundation remained strong. The video narrator claimed that upon ratification of the Constitution, “white supremacy” was now the “official policy of the United States of America.” It also made reference to then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel and asserted that because the mentality of white supremacy has become engrained in our nation’s psyche, he and others like him, do not want blacks to “get too far.” The narrator stated that the racism of these white people is true whether they recognize it or not, and they cannot help it.

The second video portrayed Republican politicians as racist and claimed that George Bush 2 won his election by causing Americans to fear black people and showed clips of Donald Trump before the 2016 election that cast him in a negative light, insinuating that he had fueled systemic racism in America. The video also portrayed President Trump, who was still President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the time this video was created and shown to base personnel, in a terrible out-of-context light directly implying that he enjoys oppressing blacks and keeping minorities in an inferior status. However, the video portrayed Democratic politicians as aiding the black community. The video included favorable clips of Barack Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, depicting them as having undoubtedly made great contributions to the eradication of anti-black racism and systemic oppression of the black community at large. The video also contained clips of an interview with Marxist activist Melina Abdullah, who organized the Los Angeles Black Lives Matter chapter. According to Lt. Col. Lohmeier, Abdullah’s comments were intended to build a suitably unfavorable narrative of American history to justify and demonstrate sympathy for violent riots in the United States. Throughout the video, the United States in referred to as a “system of oppression.”

According to discussions Lohmeier had with a base chaplain, many of the chaplains were pushing the CRT concept of “systemic racism” and the belief that “basically all whites are racists” All this divisive and slanderous nonsense was being done in the name of “racial healing.”  In my opinion, CRT is completely incompatible with Scripture-based Christianity or Judaism.

Note again that Donald Trump was President and Commander-in-Chief at the time these videos were authorized by base commanders and shown to military personnel.  Moreover, the President was in the midst of the 2020 election campaign.

President Trump did not become fully aware of this insubordinate treachery until the summer months of 2020. Under the guise of Diversity and Inclusion training, the Defense Department and several other Federal agencies had been spreading Critical Race Theory (CRT). On September 4, 2020, the Trump Administration took swift action to intervene. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under Director Russ Vought, issued a memorandum (M20-34) to cease and desist this radical anti-American training and materials distribution. Below are some excerpts from the memorandum:

It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date “training” government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda.

For example…employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism.’ Or where they are required to say they “benefit from racism.

These types of trainings not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce…. We cannot accept our employees receiving training that seeks to undercut our core values as Americans and drive division within our workforce.

The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive , un-American propaganda training sessions….All agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is inherently evil or racist or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil…

The memorandum went on to assure all personnel that President Trump continued to be fully committed to fair and equal treatment of all individuals regardless of race, religion, or creed and ended with this statement:

The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.

On September 22, 2020 President Trump issued Executive Order 13950 restating much of the OMB memorandum of September 4 to be effective immediately.  It further contrasted the ideals of America’s founding documents and its historical progress of freedom with the lies, malign ideology, and distorted anti-American propaganda taught in CRT training. It included this statement:

Today, however, many people are pushing a different vision of America that is grounded in hierarchies based on collective social and political identities rather than in the inherent and equal dignity of every person as an individual.

The EO also cited several inappropriate training materials from various agencies, including the Smithsonian Institution, which included such statements as “virtually all White people, regardless of how ‘woke’ they are, contribute to racism,” and that racism is “interwoven into every fabric of America.” “White males” are criticized as placing an unhealthy emphasis on “rationality over emotionality.” Many non-minority participants were asked to “acknowledge their privilege.”  It also asserted that the policy of the United States does not permit promotion of stereotyping or scapegoating in the Federal workforce and Uniformed Services.

On September 28, the OMB issued another memorandum (M-20-37) on training forbidding divisive training that undermined the “Principle of Fair and Equal Treatment of All.”

On October 16, Defense Secretary Mark Esper directed the immediate suspension of diversity and inclusion training for all military and civilian personnel.

However, according to Lt. Col. Lohmeier, promotion of CRT did not stop, except for postponements (until after the November Election?) of larger training sessions. Less visible and smaller sessions on CRT issues continued, at least on his base.

In late October 2020, he attended a “book study” led by a polite but CRT-promoting officer. The book was So You Want to Talk about Race by CRT activist Ieoma Oluo.

The book teaches that the United States is a “white supremacist society” that must be “dismantled piece by piece.” The book covered the usual range of CRT subjects including “privilege,” “intersectionality,” “cultural appropriation,” “police brutality,” and “microaggressions.”

All these were specifically prohibited by Secretary Defense Esper on October 16 and the previous memorandums of OMB and President Trump’s Executive orders. Obviously, President Trump was being outrageously and secretly betrayed and undermined by senior military officers and deep state federal bureaucrats who opposed his agenda. This was also a monstruous outrage of Constitutional government and a betrayal of the American people.

According to Elaine Donnelly, President of the Center for Military Readiness, the Obama Administration began increased efforts in 2011 to shift the Department of Defense away from the principles of non-discrimination and individual merit to increased emphasis on quotas. The driving agency for this was the Pentagon’s new Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC), which was composed largely of diversity consultants and leftist academics. Their reports closely resembled CRT promotions of “diversity,” “inclusion,” and the Marxist equal outcome philosophy of “equity.”

Besides the wild-eyed but clueless CRT enthusiast President Joe Biden and his radical but almost invisible VP Kamala Harris, David Horowitz recently named several top military and Defense Department officials, who are deeply involved in pushing CRT in the military. They are Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday, Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown, Jr, the leading candidate to replace Milley as CJCOS, and Bishop Garrison, of the National Security Institute, and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense on Human Capital, Diversity, “Equity,” and Inclusion, who according to Horowitz in leading the charge to purge conservatives and Trump supporters from the military.

It is my opinion that there are abundant signals that the Obama/Biden Administration plans to transform the military into an environment where conservatives are unwelcome and have little chance of advancement. Morale is already plummeting, and our military readiness and preparedness will soon be showing those stresses and losses in highly trained and skilled personnel, which are essential to national security, especially when confronting increasingly aggressive hostile or potentially hostile powers. Dumping the fanatical and poisonous chalice of Marxist CRT is urgent to preserve national security and American freedom.

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Link to The Times Examiner website: www.timesexaminer.com

Link to Mike Scruggs's columns at The Times Examiner:

https://www.timesexaminer.com/mike-scruggs

Link to Mike's book website:

https://www.universalmediainc.org/books/. His books are also available on Amazon and other places.

 

Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier's website where you can buy  his excellent book:

www.MatthewLohmeier.com

 

My article about Marxism and Communism quoting extensively from The Black Book of Communism, Crimes, Terror, Repression showing how Communists have murdered a hundred million people in their utopian idiocy:

"Woke Liberals in Academia, and the Marxist Communists They Love", by Gene Kizer, Jr.