We used to celebrate the birthday of George Washington, a great soldier and statesman and the Father of His Country. Now we have Presidents Day. What is that to celebrate? Praise to any corrupt or incompetent politician who managed to make it to the White House? Honour U.S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Warren G. Harding, Gerald Ford, two Bushes, or Joe Biden? This is merely evidence of the ongoing deterioration of American intelligence and spirit. The abominable opportunist Nikki Haley seems to be relying on her status as a minority to reach high office. It is true her parents immigrated from India. But put her in a group of white people and she does not stand out---unlike Barack Obama or Somalia Harris. She is not black or Chinese. It seems likely that like her Sikh ancestors she is Caucasian or mostly so. Under present conditions she can get a lot of credit for being an immigrant without any connection to historic America, but not for being nonwhite. Have you noticed that our Southern Republican leaders seem to be more devoted to making stupid war on Russia than to protecting our noble heritage against evil attacks? Donald Trump seems to have damaged himself beyond hope for reelection. He can still be a very useful gadfly, as went he was when he went to the disaster in Ohio. There is little doubt that our ruling class is declining into ignorant and arrogant folly. One of the saddest developments in recent history is that when the Soviet Union collapsed the U.S. leadership continued to this very day the Cold War against Russia. What a great great opportunity for peace our leaders threw away.
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I have always been in favour of capital punishment. There are just some people who need to be eliminated for the benefit of us all. And not all of them are politicians.
I just ran across the bit of reconciliation verse from the late 1800s by a Yankee poet, Will Thompson: FOLD THE BANNERS Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns! Love rules. Her gentle purpose runs. A mighty mother turns in tears The pages of her battle years, Lamenting all her fallen sons. Russell Kirk wrote that acquisitiveness, the desire to get and keep wealth, is often mistaken for conservatism. Vividly exhibited every day by the Republican Party. The “conservatives” at National Review are advocating a Presidential ticket of Tim Scott and Nicki Haley. They are too ignorant of history and the Constitution to know that Electors can’t vote for two people from the same State. At the Fredericksburg battlefield there is a moving monument by a famous sculptor to the “Angel of Marye’s Heights.” The Angel is the South Carolina Confederate soldier Richard Kirkland, who risked his life to give aid to the wounded Yankees left on the battlefield. I wonder if the federal government terrorists have destroyed this already or have targeted it for elimination. Some time back I stumbled onto a movie in which Confederate soldiers rode into a town, shot women and children in the back, and burned people in a church. I have heard a hint that there is a new TV drama about federal agents tracking down Confederate criminals after the war. It seems established that our people were evil sinners against the righteous. This stuff is a gigantic preposterous lie. Given the intensity of the war, Southern behaviour was in a large measure honourable and Christian. Lincoln’s massive invasions of the South were most certainly a War Crime by any known definition. Its intent was to conquer a people and deprive them of their self-government. And tens of thousands, maybe more, Union soldiers were war criminals, deliberately stealing the property, burning the houses, and destroying the food of women and children, not to mention destroying churches and schools. And they were just as hard, maybe harder on the black population of the South as the white. The record of federal crimes against civilians can fill a dozen books. And the criminals were often promoted and enjoyed substantial lifetime pensions. Does the American government need such falsehood to try to prove its righteousness? It is a BAD CAUSE that must be defended by lies. The United States is showing every sign of being governed by a decadent ruling class. In the Ukraine business they are still living in a mental universe of 50 years ago. They are too self-centered, shallow, and in love with their own power to realise that the situation has changed and needs a new approach. To continue the Cold War under changed conditions is very stupid and dangerous. But our leaders can’t think of anything other than to pose and play with the immense military that was built up by a previous generation and are incapable of understanding a changed world. The U.S. leadership continuing the Cold War after Communism had collapsed will be seen in future as one of the great mistakes of history. The Lee monument destroyed by the official hooligans in Richmond had only one word: “LEE.” That was all that was needed in a ciivilised country and time. To Our Valued Reckonin’ Contributors and Readers,
My brilliant daughter Anne created the Reckonin' site as a place for Southern opinions. Reckoning means calling to account the many enemies of our Southern people for their lies and malice. We have posted a lot of good stuff and gathered a few dozen writers. Other responsibilities have at times kept us from giving as much attention to the website as we would like, but we intend to keep at it at a better pace. Notice our two great new writers, Perrin Lovett and Robert Peters. And remember our faithful, principled and talented regulars like Gail Jarvis, Mark Atkins, Walt Garlington, Bo Traywick, and Carolina Contrarian. Not to mention Yours Truly, who intends to contribute more in the future. For some inexplicable reason, people seem to like my scribblings. Cordially, Clyde Wilson In another column I confessed my admiration for the Russian leader Putin. This is based partly on reading his speeches. These show him to have a broad vision, to be a spokesman for Western Civilisation, and to have an understanding of the enemies of that civilisation who dominate America and Europe during our time. He speaks as a statesman, in reference to reality and longtime consequences, in sharp contrast to the vague blather about “democracy” practiced by Joseph Biden. Putin earned his spurs in a hard school, rising to popularity and power in the chaos of the disintegrating Soviet Empire, and gaining the recognition of his people as a true patriot and leader. Compare Biden, a museum quality specimen of a hack politician, representing a rotten borough for years. Follow his career and you will never see any evidence of an idea or a principle, nor any consistency. He has always taken the position that seemed most popular at the moment. Just as he is doing now, in defiance of his previous reputation for being somewhat moderate. And all the time he kept his snout in the public trough, getting rich for himself and his kin. (At least Trump earned some of his riches in the private sector.) And all along acting with a churlish groping of women. In fact, nobody would ever have thought of Biden as Presidential material if Obama had not chosen him as Vice President. One is tempted to suspect that Obama picked the weakest white man he could find. Putin is an anti-communist. He knows what Communism is. Biden, on the other hand, supports Critical Race Theory, a Communist doctrine, and the leftist street mobs that suppress law and order and rightwing dissent, a Communist tactic. Putin has fostered the return of Christianity where there was once a militantly atheist regime. Biden, claiming Christian membership, celebrates abortion and perversion in defiance of the doctrine of his own faith. Putin has made mistakes, but he has shown that he genuinely loves his country and people and strives to do what is best for them. His border war is designed to protect his own people. His conflict with the criminal, fascist state of the Ukraine is not an assault on democracy. Meanwhile, Biden is engaged in replacing his own people with hordes of illegal immigrants, supported by his government, who outnumber the people of several States. Putin has in fact acted moderately, always ready for negotiations and refraining from dangerous escalation of the present conflict despite Western provocations. While Biden has declared total hostility to Russia. Not to mention that his handlers tell him to rattle the saber at the great powers of China and Iran, which shows a reckless ignorance and arrogance. The only excuse being that it is necessary to defend “democracy,” whatever he thinks it is. And at the same time weakening our armed forces by the destruction of ideologically imagined Diversity. Take your pick. I admit it, I admire Russia’s leader Putin. He seems the only major Western leader who rises any where near the category of Statesman. This may seem strange for one who was raised during the height of the Cold War, but I am not alone in my admiration. In elementary and middle school in the 1950s we were taught to expect a Russian nuclear attack any time. Russia was the great beast behind everything bad. Ludicrously, fifth graders were told to shelter under their desks in case of such an attack. Strangely, we were not taught much about why Communism was so evil. Some of the biggest haters of Russia, although they were not alone, were Trotsky Communists who were later to emerge as Neoconservatives and are still today preaching war against post-Communist Russia, doubtless for their own reasons. Nobody really explained why Russia had become so great an enemy in the 1950s after being our “great democratic ally” in World War II. When I was growing up Communism was for many a true obsession. It was not something to be sensibly countered, but an unearthly evil that had to be actively destroyed. The atmosphere resembled the hysterical, fanatical hatred of the South that dominated much Yankee mentality in the 1850s. Our rulers went so far that they had a plan to massacre Americans and blame it on the Cuban Communists. I don’t pretend to have any expert authority over Cold War history, but when the rulers are not interested in defending their own people but involved in international gamesmanship, you know something is seriously wrong. It was also curious that the Establishment suppressed patriotic efforts to expose the Communist spies in its own membership who did so much to strengthen the Communist regime in Russia. See two excellent recent books: Stalin’s War by Sean McMeekin and American Betrayal by Diana West. But then came the great civilizational triumph of the fall of the Soviet Union. What a great moment for mankind! Russia could now be welcomed back into the fraternity of free nations, join the West economically and culturally to the enrichment to both sides, and the greatest threat to peace be gone. It didn’t happen. I never saw my “Peace Dividend.” Instead, Washington did everything it could to loot Russian resources and keep up an air of hostility and suspicion. The leaders of the U.S. have too big a political and economic investment in a gigantic defense establishment to welcome peace. That establishment supposedly is required to defend “democracy” around the world. The U.S. is now more aggressive and projecting more military power over previously untouched areas than it was in the Cold War. They have launched massive costly defeated wars in the Mideast on the pretext of fighting terrorism. Terrorists are best dealt with by very good Special Forces, not huge invasions. The U.S. Establishment is now fighting a proxy war and whipping up hate against post-Communist Russia. A border dispute between Russia and the criminal regime of the Ukraine is not a grave international crisis---unless we make it so. It is not a world class threat to democracy. The ignorant American press and public has no idea that Washington has repeatedly rejected Putin’s reasonable requests for negotiations. And unlike the U.S. leadership, Putin has resisted provocation to make the conflict bigger. He has all along tried to achieve friendly relations with a West that refuses to treat Russia as a fellow. Unlike the American elite, he actually believes in and defends Western civilization. Putin may well have made some mistakes. But unlike the Western elites, he actually has a statesmanlike vision and actually does what he thinks is best for his country and people. I wrote in his defense and voted for him, although without much enthusiasm. What else were those of us to do who want to preserve the fragments of democracy and Christian society we have left, who I like to think are still numerous? I would probably vote for him again if he gets the nomination and the Democrats put up a candidate who is just as evil as Biden but more destructively competent. Trump has courage and is the only big voice against the Evil Empire. He still has, it would seem, considerable grassroots popularity. His present campaign, however, looks rather too personal. He wants to right the wrong of a stolen election. A good issue, but we must have a lot more. A successful general needs more than courage and the support of his troops. He needs to fight smart, know his enemy, know what to do to defeat him, and do it. Trump’s administration was a major failure in this regard. Is there any evidence that he has learned how to fight better? I don’t see it. True, he was backstabbed by his own party and got the most lying press that any President has ever suffered. Much attention is being given to Governor DeSantis. He talks the talk. But unlike Nixon, Reagan, etc. he actually seems to be walking the walk. He is doing in his State what opponents of the Evil Empire that governs us should have been doing all along. Doing what Trump should have been encouraging in every suitable State. But now it appears that self-referencing Trump only regards DeSantis as a rival to be put down. This is not good. The failure of the red wave (which Brion McClanahan amusingly calls the “red ripple”) has put the next presidential election in a new light. The poor Republican showing is given different explanations. Some blame it on discontent with the Supreme Court anti-abortion decision or revulsion at Trump. Another explanation might be that the Republican grassroots has finally discovered (although more than half a century too late) the dishonesty of their leadership. Suppose Trump gets the nomination. Who among the empty suits of the Republican party can stop him? But they are certain to keep backstabbing him in the election and in office. The Democrats have perfected the technique of election stealing. To overcome that he would have to have the very active support of the Republican leadership, and that he will never have. There is also talk of a Trump/DeSantis ticket. This would be a mistake for the Governor, likely to drag him down with Trump. He should maintain his own independent stand as a new and refreshing leader. Will the U.S. Navy’s new transgender Admiral command a warship or a missile platform? The purpose of NATO was to prevent Communist aggression into Europe. The Soviet Union fell. Why is NATO now more aggressive than ever? How is it defending democracy when the U.S. has missiles on Russia’s borders and hateful aggression when Russia objects? Why does the U.S. no longer have any major government people who can actually talk with common sense and logic instead of mouthing insincere labels from an imaginary universe? In the U.S. the rich are getting much richer and the middle class is disappearing. Why do none of our major politicians of either party never mention this? Our educational system is a disaster from top to bottom. Why does no politician ever get concerned with this except in a few cases to recommend vast new expenditures for more of the same? Instead, they keep proclaiming the lie that our schools are the best in the world. Why is it widely accepted that inanimate objects like guns cause people to commit crimes? And that if guns were suppressed there would be no crime? Do you really want to live in a country that destroys Lee and makes George Floyd its hero? How do you explain why the Republican Party has never actually opposed any leftward movement in U.S. government and society? And why do so many people continue to believe in lip service and suppose the opposite? Can you name one high ranking civilian or military official of the federal government who is not wealthy from corporate pay offs? Why does the U.S. military have installations at more then 100 places around the world? Why do they still call it the Department of Defense? Why are so many Americans so smothered in debased trivia that they can longer see realities? The Woke say they are for equality, but what they really want is sameness—equality at the lowest common denominator. And, of course, like Orwell’s pigs, they think some people (themselves) are more equal than others. It seems likely that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. We will never know for sure. The matter could have been settled if Trump’s Supreme Court justices had done their duty. Texas and some other States were suing Michigan and several other corrupt States for investigation of their election results. The Constitution requires the Supreme Court to adjudicate issues between the States. They ran for cover instead. Why? Because normie Republicans would rather see Biden illegally elected rather than Trump as President. It is doubtful that there has been any election in the U.S. since 1861 that was not corrupt in some way. And we should remember this---it was the Republican party which first established massively corrupt elections during the War for Southern Independence and “Reconstruction.” Their successes for Presidents and Congress were largely the result of army-controlled polls, cynical manipulation of clueless African American voters, intimidation, and ballot stuffing. At least three of the Republican Presidential candidates after The War were blatantly corrupt---Grant, Garfield, and Blaine. Yet Republicans claim that they are the honest party and the Democrats the crooked one. In fact, the Democrat party, except for urban machines, remained cleaner than the Republicans until FDR. If you are reading this, your government regards you as a rightwing extremist-potential terrorist. It can send its heavily armed thugs to break down your door in the night, rough up your family, seize your property, and take you to prison. Its official. Michael Hayden, former Air Force Major General, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and former head of National Security Agency has announced that rightwing jihadists are the greatest extant threat to America. Not China, Russia, or Islam, and certainly not crime and illegal immigrants General Hayden has 26 medals, although his Wikipedia entry does not contain a single mention of any actual combat. Reminds me of the present CRT commander of the Army Gen. Silly Milley. General Hayden has occupied every administrative post imaginable in the defense establishment of the United States. He did NOT go to West Point or Colorado Springs. He has also been accused of lying to Congress about surveillance of U.S. citizens. But maybe his recent statement is just a lapse because Wikipedia also reports that he suffers from aphasia. However, his alert about the greatest danger to our country is major news. The fact is that our defense establishment is a vast overgrown, catastrophically wasteful, incompetent bureaucracy, reflecting every defect of American government and society. But Republican politicians, always slow to learn if not incapable of learning, will always vote big appropriations, and the big defense industries are among the most powerful lobbyists in the Federal City. In retirement General Hayden has a net worth of $4.6 million and receives an annual salary of $1,460,000 from ION Pharmaceuticals. Oh, the sacrifices our public officials make to serve us. Pretty typical for the large number of generals and admirals that we support. Enough to tempt any normal mortal to assume an air of superiority. In our establishment, genuine fighting men exist only at the lowest levels. And it appears that such real dedicated and experienced soldiers are being purged as enemies of “American democracy.” What if we are to need a real fighting force, which given the world, the incompetence of our saber-rattling politicians and “generals,” seems highly possible. Our politicians and defense bureaucrats seem to think they can control the world by sending missiles around the globe, but serious patriots are aware of major vulnerabilities in U.S. war-making ability. China, Russia, and Iran have serious, competent leaders who actually care about their countries. And did you know that Biden has just appointed our first Transgender Admiral? Can you imagine this freak commanding a warship? Life was tough for everyone in the America of the 1600s and 1700s. The 1800s saw some improvement which led people to entertain the idea of enlightenment and progress in living conditions. Southerners were as much conscious of and happy about a general improvement in the human condition as anyone else. As always, they were far less confident than Northerners that spiritual progress was as certain as material progress.
Nevertheless, on the eve of the War for Southern Independence, lifetime tragedy was commonplace. Poorly understood epidemics carried off significant percentages of city populations every few years. Even prosperous families were lucky to see half their children survive to adulthood. There was a terrible toll of young wives from infections associated with childbirth. Violent conflict between men was frequent and expected. A sense of fatalism and familiarity with death was perhaps what allowed soldiers in the war to risk their lives so regularly and spectacularly. And allowed Americans to commit amazing amounts of hard work through frequent sickness and debilitation while settling a continental wilderness. People had to plant, tend, and harvest their crops by hand, raise and slaughter their own meat, care for their own fowl, cattle, horses, and mules, make their own clothes, and often doctor and educate themselves. Not to mention the pioneer’s need to clear wooded land---backbreaking work. Anybody not fully aware of this reality is not qualified to comment on American history of the 1800s. Possibly also, our forebears, black and white, of those times had more downtime after the work was done, and more genuine leisure for contemplation and self-entertainment than we ever-distracted moderns. The marvel of black Southern gospel music may be evidence of this. A most significant and ignored fact of antebellum Southern society is that most slave ownings were small—5 to 10 people who lived and worked alongside white families, went to church with them, ate the same food, and were tended by the same doctors. Another large segment of owners were in the 15 to 20 slave category. On the plantation the races were closely matched in sex and generations—men and women, adults, old people, and children. This familial aspect of the slave society may indicate why many black people did not regard looting and burning by Northern invaders as a good thing. The large planters were confined to a few areas like the Carolina rice fields, the Louisiana sugar region, and the fertile Mississippi Delta. Middling people were the backbone of the South and of the Confederacy. Those who wish to make the true point that Confederate soldiers were not fighting for slavery often mention that only 1 in 10 soldiers owned slaves. This is a mistake. The Confederate army was full of the sons, nephews, friends, brothers-in-law of slave owners. Some Confederate soldiers hired or bought one or two black people to help their wives while they were away. About 1 in 4 of Southern families had an interest in slave property---nearly half in South Carolina, down to lower percentages in the Border States. This was a far larger percentage than Northerners who held ownership in the ruling banks and industries. Another neglected aspect of antebellum African American history is the free black population of the South. In 1860 more than half of American free blacks were in the South. In the South many free blacks had a secure accepted place in society and were prosperous although not political citizens. It is reported that half the free blacks in Charleston were slaveowners. A section of Louisiana was occupied by free “Creoles of Colour” with large plantations. Union soldiers had not the least hesitation to rob and burn the hard-earned property of free blacks in the South. By contrast, the black communities of the North and Canada were depressed in every social measure, exhibiting the urban dysfunction that we are all too familiar with in later times. Another very significant aspect of the history of the Old South and slavery is that Americans were moving west in great numbers. The noted memoirist Mary Boykin Chestnut wrote an account of how her father led a long wagon train of family, slaves, and equipment from South Carolina to Mississippi, something which must have been repeated many times. In 1860 half of the people, black and white, who had been born in Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee were living somewhere further west or south. The Southern culture spread from the James to the Rio Grande and through the Ohio and Mississippi valleys in two centuries, covering a much greater area than Northerners. The “West” was predominantly Southern and therefor slaveholding. Southern families and their bonded people could be found at the far reaches of the Texas frontier. According to abolitionists, Southerners were moving because they were unhappy and oppressed, or else in some conspiracy to spread slavery. But this movement was obviously a sign of a dynamic culture, with families so large it was necessary for some to move to newer lands. The problem of older, worn out soils in the eastern states was already being solved by Southern scientists by 1860. Technically, the slave was not the possession of the master. Though it made little practical difference, perhaps, a slave was not owned. He was bonded for his labour and had legal claims upon the master for support. Although for most of our gabbling classes Southerners are always the default villains in any scenario, in fact Southern courts were conscientious in seeking justice for bonded people when such issues came before them. The definitive work on slavery in antebellum America, largely ignored since its appearance in 1975, is Time on the Cross by Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel Laureate, and Stanley L. Engerman. These economic historians, neither of whom can be accused of sympathy with slavery or the South, showed that in general antebellum slaves fared well in nutrition, housing, leisure--- superior to the norm for the working poor in the North and Europe and were, contrary to Northern claims, more productive than Northern workers. They reported that Southern slaves received a 90% lifetime return on their labour. It is said that some Louisiana slave cabins have been converted into vacation cottages. Such residences were frequently used to hospitalise wounded soldiers. Northerners, fond of theorizing, believed that slave labour was unproductive because they defined it as unwilling---invalidated by the simple fact of the immense productivity of staples that provided the majority of American exports. Tobacco in the 1700s and cotton in the early 1800s were the bulk of American exports. Without the South the U.S. would have had little international trade. You have no doubt been told about how Northern visitors were shocked by the cruelly over-worked and starved slave population. There was a little of that, but most reactions were otherwise. Many visitors found the plantations peaceful and contented and Southerners admirable. Others in their letters home complained that the blacks were lazy, slovenly, and inefficient, and their masters not much better. Some could not stand the lack of puritan order and failure to focus on the bottom line. Sympathy for the enslaved was not very evident. In his novel The Virginians, published in the late 1850s, William Makepeace Thackeray’s visitor remarks in passing that English servants worked 4 or 5 times harder than American blacks. For three centuries there has been a Northern legend that Southern people are lazy. Maybe this is in the eye of the beholder---a question of warm climate, agricultural rhythm, and a different attitude toward living, rather than a moral failing. Plantations had no barbed wire, watchtowers, or attack dogs, or even very many locks. Slaves often slept in the same dwelling as masters. There were bloodhounds available that could track (but not attack) runaways. Corporal punishment was used on the plantation, although not as often as alleged. It was also common in the army, navy, merchant marine, factories, as punishment for crime, and in nearly every family. But the plantation was primarily governed not by force but by moral authority, practicality, love of homeplace, and genuine affection which is evident in many antebellum and wartime Southern family letters. Fogel and Engerman also show that break up of family ties by the vast westward movement was no more common for blacks than for whites. I know of two very prominent South Carolina families who had younger sons who went West and were never heard from again. The plantation was a place where people lived and grew crops, often over several generations. African Americans were part of a joint enterprise where all rose or fell together. Incentive rewards were normal. Work was directed by black foremen more often than by hired white overseers. A significant portion of the slave population could be classified as skilled artisans, necessary to run the self-sufficient community, of immense value to them after emancipation. African Americans commonly had their own garden plots with produce to consume or sell. Northern soldiers were shocked to find that slaves had watches and fine clothes and spending money. There were puritanical Yankee visitors who thought Southern slaves were undisciplined, rowdy, and had too much freedom. It might be comforting to think of African Americans as violent rebels against their condition. But the real admiration should go, as Eugene Genovese showed, to the fact that the slaves used their considerable leverage to manage their condition. Of course, masters did not want their labour to run away. But where were they to go? The South was the only land in which they were welcome. The Underground Railroad has been shown to be largely a postbellum invention. Possibly more slaves were stolen and resold than successfully ran away. The novelist John Updike writes that his Pennsylvania Quaker forebears took in runaways, worked them hard, and then threw them out. During most of the 20th century, in the reign of now-vanished nationalism, visiting Yankee tourists thought of Mount Vernon and Monticello as nice happy farms with happy people, not very different from what could be found in Ohio. Slavery was not much of an issue. John Wayne made a movie about the Alamo where all the main Southern heroes were acted by Midwesterners and a Brit and there were no Southern accents. There was even at the Alamo the New Jersey teeny-bopper idol Frankie Avalon. The same is true of the classic “The Searchers.” It is set on the Texas frontier but there is not a single Southern accent except for one buffoon. Southern history had been absorbed, cleansed, and made into an American myth. Many doubtless thought that the Alamo was an epic of the U.S. Army. At the actual time of the Alamo, New Englanders publicly spoke of the Southern defenders of the Alamo as barbarian bandits, “lawless, renegade adventurers,” oppressors and land stealers, not as American heroes. From the 1960s onward the idea of the Old South has reverted to a neo-abolitionist notion of the plantation as a concentration camp and a pit of evil. A parochial school student told me that the nuns teach that antebellum Southerners used their slaves for fireplace logs. American history has been made Southern again to the discomfort of nostalgic nationalists who don’t want to recognize the obvious connection between Washington and Lee, Jefferson and Calhoun. Both the Hollywood and the neo-Marxist assumptions are superficial and self-serving distortions of history for the comfort of Northerners. Most of what passes today for the understanding of slavery has more to do with bolstering the righteousness of Northerners in their brutal invasion of the South than with the sufferings of black people in bondage. A majority of American Presidents before Lincoln were plantation men, not to mention many others of the outstanding men who made and optimistically expanded American freedom and self-government into vast new territories. The plantation was a large and long-lasting and mostly quiet way of life, producing a leadership that has never been matched since. The U.S. is now trashing a noble part of its history. To be replaced by what? Those who blabber about slavery these days don’t know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, those who have historical knowledge in their custody are often the worst offenders. Thus activists, “community organisers,” professors, media gurus, politicians, and government bureaucrats are now our experts on “slavery.” These are people who have always had abundant privileges, largely unearned, a free and easy life. Most have never worked up any perspiration from physical labour or wanted for anything. Their view of the world is entirely presentistic and self-centered. They lack the knowledge to conceive of other times and therefore have no right to pose as “slavery” experts. For them, the past is only a resource for extortion or virtue-signaling. In fact, black slavery was long a fact of American society that was commonplace and seldom attacked. Some Connecticut journalists wrote a book about their surprising discovery of the link between Connecticut and slavery and white supremacy, which included violent closing of black schools and digging up black bodies from cemeteries. There should be nothing surprising about Northern racism except for the routine ignorance of Northerners about American history and their routine assumption of superior virtue. John Randolph of Roanoke in his will freed his slaves and gave them land in Ohio, but Ohio refused to let them in. For years, R.E. Lee, in difficult economic times, worked to fulfill his father-in-law’s will to free his slaves and provide them with property. Many of those freed remained at home. In 1860 the people at Arlington were part bonded and part free. “Stonewall” Jackson established a Sunday School for black people. Jefferson Davis’s family kept close and warm ties with their slaves long after emancipation. Contrary to what is today assumed, the Old South was not a closed and defensive society--- before John Brown. Northerners and Europeans did not react in horror to their experience of slavery in the South. The division between “free States” and “slave States” was an entirely political matter and did not reflect American social life. Southern household slaves went with their masters to Northern spas, Canada, Europe, and California and generally returned home after the experience. Sometimes they traveled by themselves on family business. As in any society there were hardships for many, but for many Southerners of both races life was easy-going. Numerous Northerners and Europeans had no hesitation and were matter-of fact in becoming planters by purchase or marriage. Lincoln, Grant, and Stephen Douglas acquired slaves with their wives’ property and did not regard it as much more than a normal event. Lincoln had no problem in selling the slaves and as a lawyer working for the recovery of runaways. Given that history is the sad record of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind, antebellum American bondage was an evil not near the top of the list. White and black Southerners made a livable society that had the moral resources for evolution toward a better society than that created by invasion and conquest and rivers of blood. Leading Southern clergy were already at the time of secession preaching of practical steps of progress for the black people now that the South was free to manage its own future. Unlike Northern advanced thinkers, Southerners never denied that their slaves were made in the image of God. Unlike the leading Northern abolitionist guru Emerson, Southerners never advocated the extinction of African American people. Emerson said that the black people, deprived of the protection of slavery, would become “as rare as the Dodo.” This did not seem to trouble him in the least. In New York City in 1860 there were women and children working 16-hour days for starvation wages, 150,000 unemployed, 40,000 homeless, 600 brothels (some with girls as young as 10), and 9,000 grog shops where the poor could temporarily drown their sorrows. Half the children in the city did not live past the age of five (unlike slave children in the South). At the same time there were ostentatiously rich men---speculators in government bonds and currency and bank and railroad stocks--- who kept race horses and mistresses, dined every day on thick steaks at Delmonico’s, lit their cigars with $50 dollar greenbacks, and when the war came enjoyed great profits and draft exemptions. No wonder that the New York city draft rioters attacked mansions of the wealthy and Republican newspapers. Many planters had been to New York. Some had seen the slums of London. They could not be patient with the constant infamy heaped on them by malicious outsiders without a single constructive suggestion to make. They might feel some disquiet over the evils of slavery. But that encouraged them follow St. Paul’s instruction to be good Christian masters to good Christian servants. |
AuthorClyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews Archives
May 2024
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