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Gene Kizer, Jr.

Not About Slavery: Irrefutable Proof

3/14/2020

20 Comments

 
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​The North Did Not Go to War to End Slavery.
 
If they had, they would have started by passing a constitution amendment abolishing slavery. They did the opposite. They overwhelmingly passed the Corwin Amendment, which left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. This alone proves, unequivocally, that the North did not go to war to end slavery or free the slaves.

The North does not get to redefine, in the middle of the war, its reason for going to war. What the North proclaimed in the beginning, stands, as its reason for going to war ¾ and it is unchangeable. War measures halfway through the war, such as the Emancipation Proclamation that freed no slaves (and prevented close to a million slaves from achieving their freedom), have nothing to do with why the North went to war in the first place.

​A near-unanimous resolution entitled the War Aims Resolution established early-on what the North was fighting for. It was passed by the Northern Congress in July, 1861, three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter:
. . . That this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions [slavery] of the States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution [which allowed and protected slavery], and to preserve the Union. . . .

Throughout the antebellum years as the country achieved its Manifest Destiny marching westward, winning the Mexican War, growing in wealth and power, no credible Northern leader said they should march armies into the South to end slavery.

Throughout the first two years of the war, almost nobody in the North said they were fighting to end slavery. To do so would risk racist Union soldiers deserting because they signed up to fight for the Union, not to free slaves whom they feared would move north and inundate their towns and cities and be job competition. Julia Dent Grant, wife of Ulysses S. Grant, might have freed her four slaves if she had thought it was an abolition war and not a war for the Union.

Most Northerners, excluding a few truly good-hearted abolitionists, accepted slavery. As stated earlier, historians Lee Benson and Gavin Wright maintain that the percentage of abolitionists in the North was "probably no more than 2 per cent, almost certainly no more than 5 per cent, of the Northern electorate," and, ironically, many of them didn't like slavery because they didn't like blacks and did not want to associate with them. Prominent abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy had been murdered by an outraged Northern mob in Lincoln's own Illinois in 1837. The mob was trying to destroy Lovejoy's abolitionist materials and his press.

By 1861, Northerners had been supporting slavery for 241 years and would continue supporting it throughout the War Between the States since five slave states, as noted earlier, fought for the North. Again, those states are Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia, which came into the Union during the war as a slave state.

If the North was fighting to end slavery, it would never permit slave states to fight for the Union - or, it would have ended slavery in the Union slave states immediately.

It did the opposite and made sure by constitutional amendment and proclamation that slavery in the Union was protected, just as it was, and had always been, by the Constitution.

That's how the North really felt about slavery and freeing the slaves.

Lincoln himself took it a step further. He supported the first Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - the Corwin Amendment - which would have left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. It passed March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln's first inaugural. It reads:
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof [slavery], including that of persons held to labor [slaves] or service by the laws of said State.

About the Corwin Amendment, Lincoln said, in his first inaugural on March 4, 1861: 
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution — which amendment, however, I have not seen — has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. (Emphasis added.)

​Before Lincoln took office, President James Buchanan actually signed the Corwin Amendment after it had been approved by Congress and was ready to be sent to the states for ratification. Buchanan's act was symbolic only.

It is important to note that the Corwin Amendment had required a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and it had passed with mostly Northern votes because seven Southern states were out of the Union by then and did not vote. Indeed, the bill's sponsor, Representative Thomas Corwin, was from Ohio.

Three Northern states ratified the Corwin Amendment - Ohio, Maryland and Illinois - before the war made it moot.

After the Corwin Amendment's passage, Lincoln sent a letter with a copy of the Corwin Amendment to each state's governor pointing out that Buchanan had signed it. Lincoln was making sure everyone knew of his strong support of slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress.

​Before even mentioning the Corwin Amendment in his first inaugural, Lincoln made it clear that he strongly supported slavery and had "no inclination" to end it:
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming administration. (Emphasis added.)

​On August 22, 1862, sixteen months into the war, Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, in response to a letter Greeley had sent him, and reiterated:
​. . . My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that¾What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help the Union. (Lincoln's italics.)

​Exactly one month - September 22, 1862 - after writing his letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the very first paragraph states clearly that the war is being fought to restore the Union and not to free the slaves:
I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed. (Emphasis added.)

​Clearly, the North did not instigate a war to end slavery.

The focus on slavery as the primary cause of the War Between the States - even indirectly - is a fraud of biblical proportions and it prevents real understanding of American history.

Pulitzer Prize winning historian and Lincoln scholar, David H. Donald, back in the 1960s, was concerned about the overemphasis of slavery as the cause of the war. He said the Civil Rights Movement seems to have been the reason for stressing slavery as the cause of the war.

I have already proven that the North did not go to war to end slavery. There is much more evidence but the following is a good summary of the things in the beginning that show, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the North did not go to war to free the slaves or because of slavery:
  1. The North's War Aims Resolution, which states clearly that they are fighting to preserve the Union and not "for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions [slavery] of the States." 
  2. Lincoln's constant promises in high profile forums such as his first inaugural address, to protect slavery where it existed. 
  3. The United States Congress's overwhelming passage of the Corwin Amendment, which would have left black people in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. If the North was fighting to end slavery, it would have passed a constitutional amendment ending slavery, and not one that guaranteed that black people would be in slavery forever, even beyond the reach of Congress. Three Northern states ratified the Corwin Amendment including Lincoln's own Illinois before the war made it moot. This alone proves, unequivocally, that the North did not go to war to free the slaves or to end slavery. (Emphasis added.) 
  4. Lincoln's strong support for the Corwin Amendment as stated in his first inaugural and in personal letters to the governors.
  5. The North's historical support for slavery and slave-trading.
  6. The fact that, when Lincoln sent his hostile military mission to Charleston to start the war, just prior to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, there were more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy.
  7. Northern leaders ¾ no credible Northern leader throughout the antebellum period said they ought to march armies into the South to free the slaves. Indeed, abolitionists were hated in the North. Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in Lincoln's Illinois.
  8. Northerner leaders ¾ almost none of whom for the first two years of the war said that they were fighting to free the slaves. Ulysses S. Grant's wife, Julia, owned four slaves. It would be hard for Grant to say he had gone to war to end slavery when his own house was a slaveholding household.
  9. The five slave states that fought for the North throughout the war: Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
  10. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation issued September 22, 1862, that states clearly in the very first paragraph that "hereafter, as theretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation" between the U.S. and seceded states i.e., the Union. There is no mention of slavery. (Emphasis added.)
  11. The Emancipation Proclamation that freed no slaves (or few) and deliberately left at least 832,259, who were under Northern control, in slavery. Most of those black people officially stayed slaves until well after the end of the war. They could have been freed easily if the North had wanted to free them.

The Emancipation Proclamation states, literally, that it is a war measure, and it was not issued early on.

 
It was not issued before Lincoln took office, or after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, or during Lincoln's first inaugural. It was issued two years into the war - and it freed no slaves (or few).
 
The conditions around the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and its timetable establish the fact that the North most certainly did not go to war on April 12, 1861 to end slavery or free the slaves.
The North's support for slavery goes back to the beginning of the country when Northern (and British) slave traders brought most of the slaves here and made huge fortunes in the process. Dr. Edgar J. McManus in his excellent book, Black Bondage in the North, writes that "Boston merchants entered the African trade as early as 1644, and by 1676 they were bringing back cargoes from as far away as East Africa and Madagascar." McManus writes:
[The slave trade] quickly became one of the cornerstones of New England's commercial prosperity . . . which yielded enormous commercial profits.

​Virtually the entire infrastructure of the Old North was built on profits from the slave trade and slave traders such as Boston's Peter Faneuil of Faneuil Hall, the ironically named "Cradle of Liberty," which might have been a cradle for him but sure wasn't for the tens of thousands of black Africans he was responsible for snatching from their families and forcing into the horrors of the Middle Passage.
​
McManus explains the importance of the slave trade to the New England economy:
[The slave trade] stimulated the growth of other industries. Shipbuilding, the distilleries, the molasses trade, agricultural exports to the West Indies, and the large numbers of artisans, sailors, and farmers were all dependent upon the traffic in Negroes. It became the hub of New England's economy.

​See also the excellent 2005 book Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank of The Hartford Courant.

Let's go beyond the North's guilt for enthusiastic, widespread slave trading and look at the whole picture.

The North could not have gotten cargoes of slaves without tremendous help from blacks themselves. Black African tribal chieftains had captives from tribal warfare rounded up and waiting in places like Bunce Island off modern Sierra Leone to be picked up by slave traders from all over the world. The constant unrest in Africa today with genocides, kidnappings, never-ending warfare, people hacked to death, makes it easy to understand. Black tribal chieftains were worse then because there was no media attention on them. They made slavery easy. White people did not even have to get off the ship and usually didn't. Slavery could never have happened without those blacks in Africa who were all too willing to sell other blacks into slavery for profit.

Slavery has always existed including today. Indians enslaved other Indians. The Romans would conquer a place and kill all the men and take all the women and children into slavery. Most cultures, worldwide, had slavery at one time or another. American slavery is not the first. Only 5% of slaves in the exodus from Africa, called the African Diaspora, ended up in the United States. Many ended up in Brazil and other places in South America and the Caribbean.

Slavery is a blight on humanity but a fact of human history and we should understand the truth of it and not the politically correct lie that blames only the South. All Americans, but especially African-Americans, deserve to know the entire truth about slavery and not some white-washed version. "Truth" is why Lerone Bennett wrote Forced into Glory, to reveal that racist Abraham Lincoln deliberately did not free any slaves (or freed very few) with the Emancipation Proclamation, and, most of Lincoln's life (Lerone Bennett says all of his life) supported sending African-Americans back to Africa or into a climate suitable to them. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation confirms this long-held belief of Lincoln's that "the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued."

There would have been no American slavery without black tribal chieftains in Africa, and British and Yankee slave traders.

​The reason the South gets all the blame is because of a half-century of political correctness in which only one side of the story has been told because, if you tell the Southern side, even in a scholarly manner, you open yourself up to charges of being a racist and member of the KKK who wishes we still had slavery. Esteemed historian, Eugene D. Genovese, writes:
To speak positively about any part of this Southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity ¾ an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white Southerners, and arguably black Southerners as well, of their heritage, and therefore, their identity. They are being taught to forget their forebears or to remember them with shame.  (Emphasis added.)

NAACP resolutions passed in 1987 and 1991 spewing hatred on the Confederate battle flag also intimidate scholars who would rather not weigh in or who will take the anti-South side without a fair examination of the issues. Professors know that they stand almost no chance of getting tenure if they say anything good about the South in the War Between the States. They know that we live in a shallow and superficial time and just an accusatory whiff in the air that someone is a racist, whether they are or not, will end a college history career or prevent one from getting started.

But, remember the old proverb: "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

​The War Between the States is the central event in American history. It should be examined thoroughly just as Lerone Bennett has examined Abraham Lincoln and given us a fresh perspective on old Honest Abe the racist who used the "n" word more than the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the same Abe Lincoln who wanted to ship black people back to Africa and who deliberately freed no slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation when he could have freed close to a million under Union control. There is a lot to know and think about in order to understand what really happened.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article is Chapter Two of my book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument., available at Charleston Athenaeum Press. (Original at link includes footnotes).
20 Comments
Anthony Powell
3/15/2020 08:16:06 am

Thanks, Mr Kizer. Abe Lincoln and his minions callously sacrificed 700,000 + lives to force the South back into submission. The only moniker he deserves is 'mass- murdering tyrant.' I'm sure there are those, even on the Reckonin site, who will rebuke me for stating this, but if any man ever deserved a bullet to the back of the head, it was Abraham Lincoln.

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Gene Kizer Jr link
3/15/2020 01:04:22 pm

Anthony, Thanks for writing! It is hard to believe that a man whom 61% of the country voted against in 1860, and who started a war that killed between 650,000 and 850,000 soldiers, as you said, and maimed even more than that, gets away with so much in history, but that speaks to the pathetic nature of the history of the War Between the States in this day and age. It doesn't take much to realize that the North was headed for economic collapse without the South, and that was their primary reason for fighting. Lincoln was also anxious to fight in order to establish the new Republican Party, solidly, in American politics. After all, as Wendell Phillips said, the Republican Part was the first sectional party in American history and was the party of the North pledged against the South. So glad Thomas DiLorenzo and many others today are obliterating the Lincoln myth. Gene

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david7134
3/15/2020 10:37:58 am

This is a great article. I might add some thoughts that I have had. The Union of States was set up with the goal of the state being the principal unit and that affairs in the state where inviolate from the central government. Interference in the economy of a state was not part of the deal except as explicitly defined by the Constitution. Slavery is an economic model. It is not racist, it is not exclusively black. In Louisiana, many blacks owned slaves, and not as family. Google Melrose Plantation, it was one of the largest plantations in our area and owned by blacks. This level of business and accumulation of wealth was against the law for a black in the North. White soldiers were fighting for the rights of this family to conduct their business in our state as they saw fit. Is slavery wrong, today it surly is, then it was not. But consider this, what happened to old slaves? What happened to slaves of poor health? If you were going to get rid of slavery, who was to care for these people? If you stopped the plantation system, then what became of the millions of blacks who required the plantation owner to care for them? The North solved that problem, they killed them.

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Gene Kizer Jr link
3/15/2020 01:43:56 pm

You are right about slavery being economic. The economic issues were huge for both North and South, but critical for the North. Northerners woke up one day and realized manufacturing for the South and shipping Southern cotton were the sources of most of their wealth and power. We had a lot of black slaveowners here in South Carolina too. The famous cotton gin maker from Sumter County, William Ellison, was one of the largest. --- Good point about the slaves not being taken care of. Mississippi's declaration of causes for secession states that Mississippi (being a black majority state) is thoroughly identified with slavery but it also says that abolitionists want to destroy the slave's living conditions, housing, food, care, without giving him a replacement. A fact that is almost never brought up is that Mr. Lincoln's war caused hundreds of thousands of blacks to die of sickness, neglect, starvation, etc. after the war. A new book, Sick from Freedom, by Jim Downs, goes into detail on it. Southerners would have ended slavery in a much better way than it happened. Northerners should get NO credit for ending slavery in the North because they didn't. It is well documented that Northerners sold their slaves back into slavery in the South before they were to be freed. The book Black Bondage in the North by Edgar J. McManus explains it well. You are right about how the North dealt with the problem of freed blacks: they killed them by neglect after the war, then later when they no longer needed them for political control during Reconstruction, they left them on their own which led to Jim Crow and years of oppression. Thanks for writing! Gene

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Stephen
3/16/2020 07:45:09 pm

Mr Kizer, can you reference the Eugene Genovese quote?

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Gene link
3/16/2020 08:50:15 pm

Stephen,

Somehow all of my footnotes got left out of that article. I had 20 excellent notes, some explanatory and lengthy. They must have been deleted in the uploading process. The Genovese note is: Eugene D. Genovese, The Southern Tradition, The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), xi-xii. Dr. Genovese passed away September 26, 2012. ----- The article is posted on my blog at Charleston Athenaeum Press with all 20 footnotes. Please check it out here: https://www.charlestonathenaeumpress.com/the-north-did-not-go-to-war-to-end-slavery/. Thanks for bringing that to my attention! Gene

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Joe
3/17/2020 03:55:55 pm

Great article. It would be great if this truth would be taught in schools, maybe someday.

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Gene link
3/17/2020 05:10:02 pm

Thank you, Joe! As John Paul Jones said, "I (WE) have not yet begun to fight!"

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Roy Julian Jr
3/18/2020 09:58:07 am

Lincoln said that the Northern states would lose their source of revenue of the South was allowed to secede. The South seceded ,and was reduced to ruins. Where then, did the federal government recoup their losses by losing the tariff revenues from Southern Ports?

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Gene Kizer, Jr. link
3/18/2020 12:20:49 pm

Roy,

Excellent question! The short answer is that the economic stimulus of the war to the Northern economy provided growth for the Northeast and revenue for the Federal Government.

A lot of normal but very dynamic things were also going on such as the First Transcontinental Railroad which was constructed between 1863, during the war, and May 10, 1869, when the golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah signifying its completion. This began opening up western markets for the Northeast.

The economic domination of the country was the primary reason for the war.

That's why Lincoln and all other Republican leaders stressed UNION, which they would dominate with their larger population, and not slavery as their reason for fighting.

It was always about their money and power. Alexis de Tocqueville had forecast that if any one state ever got the power to dominate the others, it would make the other states tributary to its power, and that is exactly what happened except it wasn't one state. It was all the Northern States with their similar commercial interests.

In 1861, cotton was king on planet earth and the South controlled it 100%. Southerners wanted to industrialize and keep their money home to grow their own cities rather than it flowing up North.

But, Northerners were not about to give up their money pipeline of Southern money then have to face the South as a major world competitor that had free trade verses Northern protectionism with its high tariffs, bounties, and subsidies of Northern businesses.

Especially since the free trade South would be tight with Europe meaning military and trade agreements. In this situation the North would not be able to beat the South in a war.

So, in the spring of 1861, Abraham Lincoln, president of the North, decided with every day that went by, the South got stronger and the North got weaker. There was no reason to wait a second longer so he sent his hostile military mission to Charleston to get the war started. Even many Northern newspapers agreed that Lincoln had figured out a way to be the aggressor without appearing as such.

With four times the white population, nearly all the country's manufacturing which meant arms production, a pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world to feed Union armies (25% of the Union army were immigrants while close to 100% of the Southern army were native born Americans), Lincoln was a man 40 feet tall armed with modern weaponry facing a man five feet tall carrying a musket. Hell yes, Lincoln wanted to fight. He could not wait to fight.

The increase in the size and power of the Federal Government - which was the main result of the war - destroyed the republic of the Founding Fathers wherein states were supreme.

Thanks to Lincoln's war, the Federal Government and the Northern States that controlled it were now supreme.

Of course, the result was exactly what Lincoln and the Northeast wanted and was their reason for fighting. They completely established New York and Northeastern cities as dominant in the United States of America forever.

The fact that Southerners wanted to be independent and govern themselves was an inconvenience to Lincoln and the North, and had to be stopped. Didn't matter that almost a million men died and another million were maimed. The North got what it wanted though the South covered itself with honor and glory and wrote the book on American valor.

And Southerners, being the good people they are, accepted the result of the war and did like Gen. Lee said. They rejoined the country with great vigor and have been the best Americans ever since.

Gene

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Gene Kizer Jr link
3/18/2020 04:07:45 pm

Roy,

I'd just like to add that, almost certainly, there was an economic effect in the North after the War Between the States, similar to America after World War II. In the 1950s, our "Happy Days" American economy was powerful and helping to fill the world's pent-up demand for goods and services after four years of war. This vigorous economic activity produced revenue for the Federal Government, as did continued high tariffs and the deliberate discriminatory shipping differential between North and South. Northerners could ship goods to the South a lot cheaper than Southerners could ship them to the North. This kind of economic theft is exactly why we had the war in the first place.

Gene

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Forrest
3/19/2020 06:55:10 pm

Love it!
I’d say to anyone; read the “black” and not between the lines.
Absolutely “spot on.”
Was in the Third grade when an elderly lady spoke to our class, and described the onslaught as she remembered, and your article resonates exactly as I recall, was told us, first hand. I believe she was a member of the Fersner family, of the four holes area, near Orangeburg, S.C.

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Gene Kizer, Jr. link
3/19/2020 08:00:34 pm

Forrest, Thanks for your kind words! My book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument., makes the argument thoroughly with 218 footnotes and over 207 sources in the bibliography. One can argue any point including the right of secession, which has its own section, and back it up with excellent sources. Gene

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Gene Kizer, Jr. link
3/19/2020 08:03:23 pm

Please check out Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument. on www.CharlestonAthenaeumPress.com. Thanks!

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Bo Traywick link
3/31/2020 06:16:25 pm

The one book required reading on what the historian Barbara Tuchman called "The North's War against the South's Secession " No conquered people ever wrote the accepted version of history. Voltaire said "History is the propaganda of the victorious." Thus we have "The Myth of American History. " This book blows it out of the water. Don't be led into defensive, eyes-glazing-over defensive explanitions of the South's cause. If you are explaining you have already lost. Do like "Stonewall" Jackson: blow it back at them and "drive 'en in the river!" Here's the book to do it with!!

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Gene link
3/31/2020 07:36:02 pm

Let me add three more books to help "drive 'em in the river!": Virginia Iliad, The Death and Destruction of "The Mother of States and of Statesmen"; Empire of the Owls, Reflections on the North's War Against Southern Secession; and The Monumental Truth, Five Essays on Confederate Monuments in the Age of Progressive Identity Politics, all by H. V. Traywick, Jr. They are all great books, full of valuable, quotable information and argument. I am proud to stand with Bo Traywick, who was commended by the Virginia General Assembly, House Resolution No. 189, for his "admirable scholarship" in Empire of the Owls. Like Robert E. Lee said after the War Between the States, "Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity." And we WILL do just that!

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James link
5/24/2020 03:27:47 pm

What aload of claptrap. Revisionist nonsense trying to justify the killing if US troops by unscrupulous traitors

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Gene Kizer, Jr. link
5/24/2020 05:14:38 pm

Well, James, Southerners founded this country at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, wrote the Declaration of Independence, provided the Father of the Constitution, and today serve in MUCH higher numbers in the United States Military than any other region.

They had the right to secede and they did so properly.

If you want to talk about traitors, research the Hartford Convention of the New England States in the War of 1812 who wanted to secede and had the right to, but were aiding the British in the process, which made them TRAITORS. Southerners NEVER did an unscrupulous thing like that. They wanted to govern themselves as the Declaration of Independence promised, you know, that line about governments deriving their JUST POWERS from the consent of the governed.

In 1860, the South was being robbed blind by Northern tariffs, bounties, subsidies, monopolies, then Northerners used hate to rally their votes in the election of 1860 to take over the Federal Government so they could keep robbing the rest of the country blind.

Southerners seceded peacefully (New York, Rhode Island and Virginia had demanded the right of secession in writing before they joined the Constitution and all the other states agreed to it thus giving the right of secession to them as well).

But by doing so, the Northern economy was threatened with annihilation, so Lincoln started his war.

I might remind you also that the Revolutionary War was won in the SOUTH, and the most decorated American soldiers in all of our wars are Southerners such as Alvin York of Tennessee in World War I, and Audie Murphy of Texas in World War II. There is no lack of patriotism in the South the way it is in other regions that seem like they hate America.

So, you know what you can do with your "claptrap."

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Robert J Byrnes
6/18/2020 03:44:08 pm

Great information and thank-you for reinforcing my arguement (always peacefully) about why the war between the States occured!

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Gene Kizer Jr link
6/18/2020 04:16:38 pm

Thanks, Robert! It is up to us to get the truth out there because academia and the news media are both so corrupt, and politically correct, you surely won't get it from them. Please visit my website for more: www.CharlestonAthenaeumPress.com. All the best to you! Gene

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    Gene Kizer, Jr. is an author and historian in Charleston, South Carolina, and founder of Charleston Athenaeum Press. He graduated magna cum laude from the College of Charleston in 2000 at middle age with History Departmental Honors, the Rebecca Motte American History Award, and the highest award for the History Department, the Outstanding Student Award. He is author of Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument.; The Elements of Academic Success, How to Graduate Magna Cum Laude from College (or how to just graduate, PERIOD!); and Charleston, SC Short Stories, Book One. He married his last ex- by sneaking into Fort Johnson and saying vows on the exact ground from where the first shot of the War Between the States was fired, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. He lives on James Island where he is also broker-in-charge of Charleston Saltwater Realty . Please contact him through Charleston Athenaeum Press.

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