It Wasn’t About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. – A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Fourteen: Chapter XIV, Tyranny and Emancipation, Part Two

NEW YORK CITY had voted against Lincoln "two to one" in 1860, which is an even higher percentage than the 60% who had voted against him across the North.¹

New York City before the war was sympathetic to the South because of their trade and economic ties. New York Mayor Fernando Wood had "threatened to secede from both Albany and Washington in 1861" at the thought of losing its trade with the South.

New York and other Northern cities were pressure cookers with much grinding poverty and massive European immigration that made it worse. The scenes in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York are historically accurate. New immigrants such as destitute Irish and Germans arriving penniless and hungry had to compete for the few jobs. There was no social welfare in those days. You figured out how to make money or you died.

Emigration to the West was a huge reason racist Northerners did not want blacks in the West. The West was to be reserved for white people from all over the world as Lincoln had said in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

It is more understandable when you realize the West was the pressure release valve for the surplus population of the wild, turbulent North that had many cities busting at the seams with desperate people. Without that release valve, the North could have had a revolution. It had happened in other places with confiscation of the land and property of those who had it, by those who didn't. As Horace Greeley said, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country!"

Mitcham points out that "new arrivals were poor and not favorably disposed towards African American men, with whom they were competing for low-wage jobs." Sweatshop employers pitted them against each other and thus "kept wages low for immigrants and blacks alike." They made the Irish and blacks "destitute."²

There wasn't much "white privilege" for the Irish, which dishonest politicized academia and the news media tell us defines American history.

A precursor to the New York City Draft Riots occurred in March, 1863 when "white New York City longshoremen or dock workers were on strike for higher pay." Corporate bosses "brought in black strikebreakers to take their jobs." Strikers attacked 200 of them and there were injuries on both sides but no deaths.³

As I have said many times, Mitcham's narrative is always concise and direct. He writes:

Meanwhile, throughout the North, the allure and romance of the war evaporated under the withering fire of Confederate rifles and muskets. Voluntary Union enlistments slowed to a trickle. Due to his many military defeats and heavy casualties, Lincoln instituted a draft to fill his depleted ranks. Rich people, those who could pay $300 ($6,069.07 in 2017 money), were exempt from conscription. Excused from the draft were African Americans, who were not considered citizens yet. The striking longshoremen were already angry over wages. Now they faced being drafted into the Union Army to, as James Howell Street wrote, 'face death to give freedom to Negro slaves whose cousins had taken their jobs.'⁴

On July 11, 1863, the first drawing of Lincoln's draft took place in New York City, and on July 13 "a crowd of 500 people turned itself into a mob" led by firefighters and longshoremen and began "the most lethal riot in American history" that lasted four days:

Several regiments of Union troops had to be recalled from Pennsylvania; soldiers and police fired into the mob with cannons, muskets, and rifles; the police busted skulls with heavy locust wood clubs, tossed rock throwers off the roofs of buildings, and shot them with revolvers. One authority estimated that more than 2,000 people died and some 8,000 had been injured. Many African Americans were lynched, drowned, tortured, or set on fire.⁵

Riots protesting Lincoln's draft took place that summer not only in New York but to a lesser degree in "Detroit; Buffalo and Troy, NY; Cincinnati; Boston; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Rutland, Vermont; and Wooster, Ohio."⁶

The riots in New York were the "worst in U.S. history. Taken as a whole, the New York Draft Riots witnessed one of the largest mass lynching of innocent blacks in American history."⁷

Mitcham points out a mass hanging going on at the same time: "The Lincoln administration set the record for the largest mass hanging in American history conducted against a minority group in 1862. Following the suppression of an Indian uprising, a military tribunal found 303 Dakota (eastern Sioux) guilty of rape and murder."

The benevolent Lincoln thought 303 "was too many to kill all at once, so he granted clemency to all but thirty-eight; they were hanged at Mankoto, Minnesota, on December 28, 1862."⁸

Lincoln was worried he was going to lose the election of 1864, which might have opened up the possibility of a negotiated end of the war, but Atlanta fell and Lincoln won.

Too bad because the only thing Southerners wanted to do was govern themselves. Their economic prospects and free trade philosophy, however, were too bright and powerful for Lincoln, so the South had to be destroyed.

The barbarism caused by Lincoln's lust for other people's money and for political control was disgusting, for that was all they were fighting for. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, they were not fighting to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation, which didn't free any slaves, came about half way through the war after hundreds of thousands of men were dead. It was a war measure as Lincoln himself said, to keep Europeans from recognizing the South, and to encourage slaves to rise up and slaughter Southern women and children so Confederate men would have to leave the battlefield to go home and defend their families.

If the Emancipation Proclamation had been a serious measure to free the slaves, Lincoln would have first freed the slaves in the six Union slave states that were carefully exempted by the EP as was much of captured Confederate territory. Three of the Union's slave states had slavery even months beyond the war. It took the second Thirteenth Amendment to free them in December, 1865.

Abraham Lincoln, to win his bloody war, embraced the rape of Southern women and murder of children and other civilians under the concept of "total war." Mitcham writes:

It began in April 1862, when Colonel Ival Vasilovitch Turchinoff, a former Russian officer, entered Athens, Alabama, with the Nineteenth and Twenty-fourth Illinois Infantry Regiments. Now going by the alias John B. Turchin, Turchinoff encouraged his men to commit many atrocities aginst the defenseless civilians of the town. Drunk federals robbed stores, broke into private homes, burned, pillaged and raped. Several women---both black and white---were assaulted sexually at bayonet point, and one pregnant woman miscarried after she was gang raped. This went on for some time. When Turchinoff's commanding officer, General Buell, learned what had happened, he had the Russian court-martialed. Found guilty, Turchinoff was dishonorably discharged on August 6, 1862. Lincoln not only set aside the verdict; he promoted the disgraced officer to brigadier general.⁹

Lincoln's behavior is about as disgraceful and characterless as you can get.

Typical outrages such as those on Sherman's march across Georgia occurred all over. A Northerner, living in the South, Mrs. Elizabeth Meade Ingraham, experienced it first hand. She was the sister of Union Major General George G. Meade.

Mitcham writes:

U.S. major general James B. McPherson headquartered at "Ashwood" plantation, the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Meade Ingraham. McPherson refused to protect the place, and his men looted it for days. The general personally took part in the pillaging. He and his staff stole two five-gallon demijohns of whiskey. The men broke into Mrs. Ingraham's home, opened the dining room closet with a hatchet, and took the family's silver and table linen. They stole or broke every pan, pitcher, cup, plate, etc., and stole buggies, wagons, and every horse and mule---except one who was about to foal and refused to move. They shot all the sheep, killed or stole all the cattle, and shot all but four of the hogs. They even made off with dresses, sheets, and blankets. They destroyed all the portraits of deceased family members and even stole her Bibles, although 'What such rascals want with Bibles I can't tell,' Mrs. Ingraham noted caustically in her diary.¹⁰

Lincoln's conquest "was marked by wanton pillaging, malicious cruelty, and rape."

Jacob Thompson's beautiful "Home Place" was pillaged for days then burned. Mrs. Catherine Ann Thompson was given only 15 minutes and she "removed her few remaining valuables" but "As she was leaving, a squad of blue-coated liberators robbed her at gunpoint. She was left with nothing. Other defenseless citizens, black and white, were whipped or sexually molested."

One Yankee recorded a scene that was widespread across the South:

'. . . In fact, where once stood a handsome little country town, now only remained the blackened skeletons of houses, and the smoldering ruins that marked the track of war.'¹¹

U.S. army lieutenant Thomas J. Myers "wrote to his wife in Boston from South Carolina in early 1865" stating "We have had a glorious time in this State." He went on:

'Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order of the day. The civility have been stripped of most of their valuables. Gold watches, silver, pitchers, cups, spoons, forks, and so forth are as common in camp as blackberries . . .

Officers are not allowed to join in these expeditions unless disguised as privates. One of our corps commanders borrowed a rough suit of clothes from one of my men and was successful in his place. He got a large quantity of silver among other things . . . and a very fine watch from a Mr. DeSaussure of this place.

. . . I have a quart---I am not joking---I have at least a quart of jewelry for you and the girls and some No. 1 diamond pins and rings among them. General Sherman has gold and silver enough to start a bank.

The damned niggers, as a general thing, preferred to stay at home particularly after they found that we wanted only the able bodied men and to tell you the truth the youngest and best looking women. . . .'¹²

Mitcham compares Lincoln's invasion with a violent abusive husband who beats his long-suffering wife every time she tries to leave. He

grabs her by the throat and beats her until she submits. Here the analogy breaks down, however. An abused wife might be able turn to charities, police authorities, her church, or family for help. The South was on its own. Rather than help, the government was more interest in stealing what remained after the destruction.¹³

Next Week:

A Comprehensive Review of

It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.

Part Fifteen, Conclusion

Chapter XV

The Costs and Results of the War

(Click Here to go to previous week: Part Thirteen: Chapter XIV, Tyranny and Emancipation, Part One)

NOTES:

(Scroll down for:
It Wasn't About Slavery, Actual Citation from Book)

¹ Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn't About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 164.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 165.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 166.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 167.

¹⁰ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 167-168.

¹¹ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 169.

¹² Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 169-170.

¹³ Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 170-171.

It Wasn't About Slavery,
Actual Citation from Book