Sunday, March 20, 2016

Confederate Emancipation: “Master, set us free and we will fight for you; we had rather fight for you than for the Yankees.”

 p.cleb




"Well, Govan, if we must die, let us die like men."
Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne


'The best men of the South have long desired to do away with the institution and were quite willing to see it abolished.’ –
Robert E. Lee

‘Most informed men realized that slavery was not an institution which would last forever; that soon it would have to be modified, and eventually, relinquished. They knew that the South could not maintain it very long after it ceased to serve a useful economic and social service, and that its utility was nearing an end. They wished, however, to choose the hour and method by which they should decree its gradual extinction. Knowing the complexity of the problem, they did not desire to be whirled into a catastrophic social revolution.’ – Pulitzer-winning historian J. Allan Nevins

The story of Patrick R. Cleburne is well-known among Southerners, but Cleburne was not the first American – nor even the first Confederate – to propose arming and freeing slaves as a means of defense against foreign invasion. In fact, it was no less a figure than George Washington during the War of American Independence. As James Madison suggested, ‘To liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks’ was ‘more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be lost sight of in a contest for liberty.’ Likewise, during the War of Southern Independence, arming and freeing slaves was an idea broached from the very beginning. With the outbreak of war, slaveholders offered to organise their slaves into units while freedmen actually formed units of their own. When the slaves of James Chesnut, Jr., husband of the beloved diarist Mary Chesnut, asked to be armed so that they could fight for him, he devised a plan to reward any who enlisted with freedom and land.

John C. Calhoun Vindicated

 by Charles King Bird

One hundred and forty years ago, Senator Henry Clay proposed a constitutional amendment to limit the veto power of the president of the United States. Senator John C. Calhoun replied to Clay; and that speech in reply is the most succinct version of Calhoun’s famous doctrine of concurrent majorities. Calhoun argued, in effect, that there ought to exist several powers of veto upon the impulses of temporary numerical majorities.

“As the Government approaches nearer and nearer to the one absolute and single power, the will of the greater number, its action will become more and more disturbed and irregular; faction, corruption and anarchy, will more and more abound; patriotism will daily decay, and affection and reverence for the Government grow weaker and weaker until the final shock occurs, when the system will rush to ruin; and the sword take the place of law and Constitution.” So Calhoun said in 1842.

The Responsibility for Suffering Prisoners

 





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Southern men held captive and starving in cold Northern prisons were surrounded by bountiful harvests and plentiful medicines while Northern prisoners shared the meager rations of their guards. Though the South had little medicine and scarce foodstuffs, a lower percentage of Northern prisoners died in the South than the reverse. Below are excerpts from the Joint Select Committee of the Confederate States Congress, investigating the conditions of prisoners after the US Congress issued a report condemning alleged Confederate mistreatment of Northern prisoners.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

The Responsibility for Suffering Prisoners

“[We] deem it proper at this time to make a preliminary report, founded on evidence recently taken, relating to the treatment of prisoners of war by both belligerents. This report is rendered especially important, by reason of persistent efforts lately made by the Government of the United States . . . to asperse the honor of the Confederate authorities, and to charge them with deliberate and willful cruelty to prisoners of war.

The candid reader of [Northern publications claiming Southern cruelties] will not fail to discover that, whether the statements they make are true or not, their spirit is not adapted to promote better feelings between the hostile powers. They are not intended for the humane purpose of ameliorating the condition of the unhappy prisoners held in captivity.

They are designed to inflame the evil passions of the North; to keep up the war spirit among their own people; to present the South as acting under the dominion of a spirit of cruelty, inhumanity and interested malice, and thus to vilify her people in the eyes of all on whom these publications can work.

They are justly characterized by the Hon. James M. Mason as belonging to that class of literature called the “sensational” – a style of writing prevalent for many years at the North, and which, beginning with the writers of newspaper narratives and cheap fiction, has gradually extended itself, until it is now the favored mode adopted by medical professors, judges of courts and reverend clergymen, and is even chosen as the proper style for a report by a committee of [the Northern] Congress.

The intent and spirit of this [Northern congressional] report may be gathered from the following extract: “The evidence proves, beyond all manner of doubt, a determination on the part of rebel authorities, deliberately and persistently practiced for a long time past, to subject those of our soldiers who have been so unfortunate to fall into their hands, to a system of treatment which has resulted in reducing many of those who have survived and been permitted to return to us, to a condition both physically and mentally, which no language we can use can adequately describe.”

The evidence proves that the rations furnished to prisoners of war in Richmond and on Belle Isle, have been never less than those furnished to the Confederate soldiers who guarded them, and have at some seasons been larger in quantity and better in quality than those furnished to Confederate troops in the field. How often the gallant men composing the Confederate army have been without meat, for even long intervals, your [US Congressional] committee does not deem it necessary to say.

Once and only once, for a few weeks, the prisoners were without meat, but a larger quantity of bread and vegetable food was in consequence supplied to them.

The scarcity of meat and of bread stuffs in the South in certain places has been the result of the savage policy of our enemies in burning barns, filled with wheat or corn, destroying agricultural implements, and driving off or wantonly butchering hogs or cattle. Yet amid all these privations, we have given to their prisoners the rations above mentioned.

But the question forces itself upon us why have these sufferings been so long continued? Why have not the prisoners of war been exchanged, and thus some of the darkest pages of history spared to the world. In the answer to this question must be found the test of responsibility for all the sufferings, sickness and heart-broken sorrow that have visited more than eighty thousand prisoners within the past two years. On this question, your committee can only say that that the Confederate authorities have always desired a prompt and fair exchange of prisoners.

Soon after [a] cartel was established, the policy of the enemy in seducing Negro slaves from their masters, arming them and putting white officers over them to lead them against us, gave rise to a few cases in which questions of crime under the internal laws of the Confederate States appeared. Whether men who encouraged insurrection and murder could be held entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war under the cartel, was a grave question.

But these cases were few in number, and ought not to have interrupted the general exchange. We were always ready and anxious to carry out the cartel in its true meaning . . . but the fortunes of war threw the larger number into the hands of our enemies. Then they refused further exchanges – and for twenty-two months this policy has continued.

Secretary Stanton, who has unjustly charged the Confederate authorities with inhumanity, is open to the charge of having done all in his power to prevent a fair exchange and thus prolong the sufferings [of Northern prisoners in the South]. [Gen. Benjamin Butler] has declared that in April 1864, the Federal Lieut. General Grant forbade him to deliver to the Rebels a single able-bodied man” . . .

These facts abundantly show that the responsibility of refusing to exchange prisoners of war rests with the Government of the United States, and the people who have sustained that government; and every sigh of captivity, every groan of suffering, every heart broken by hope deferred among these eighty thousand prisoners, will accuse them in the judgement of the just.

Their own savage warfare has wrought all the evil. They have blockaded our ports; have excluded from us food, clothing and medicines; have even declared medicines contraband of war, and have repeatedly destroyed the contents of drug stores and the supplies of private physicians in the country; have ravaged our country, burned our houses, and destroyed the growing crops and farming implements. These desolations have been repeated again and again in different parts of the South. Thousands of our families have been driven from their homes as helpless and destitute refugees.

While thus desolating our country, in violation of the usages of civilized warfare, they have refused to exchange prisoners; have forced us to keep fifty thousand of their men in captivity, and yet have attempted to attribute to us the sufferings and privations caused by their own acts. We cannot doubt that, in the view of civilization, we shall stand acquitted, while they must be condemned.”

(The Treatment of Prisoners During the War Between the States, compiled by the Secretary of the Southern Historical Society, Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume One, excerpts, pp. 132- 148)

Bolton: FBI Will ‘Explode’ If Hillary Not Indicted Over Email Scandal Due to Politics

Via Billy

email

Speaking in a radio interview on Sunday, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stated he believes the FBI will “explode” if Hillary Clinton ultimately is not indicted for her email infractions due to what he described as politics triumphing over the legal system.

Bolton was being interviewed for “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia’s NewsTalk 990 AM.

Klein, who doubles as Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter, asked Bolton whether he thinks Clinton will ultimately be indicted for allegedly sending classified information over her private email server.

“I think that the pressure is definitely building,” Bolton responded. “And just take the politics out of this for a second. What Hillary Clinton and her top aides did is not just make a few small violations of laws to protect classified information. They made wholesale violations and they did it for a sustained, indeed for a four-year period.”

He continued:

More @ Breitbart

NEW YORK, SOUTH CAROLINA consider special registry for Muslim ‘refugees’

Via Billy

Syrian-Refugees
 
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — While Republican front-runner Donald Trump continues to make waves nationally for his comments about banning Muslims from traveling to the country, lawmakers in two very different states are proposing that all refugees register with the government.

Registration bills are being proposed in both New York State and in South Carolina, where if refugees commit an act of terrorism, their sponsors, under the bill, could be held liable.

More @ AP

Death is Mercy to Secessionists

 http://www.ncwbts150.com/images/ForagingYankees_000.jpg

Sherman viewed Southerners as he later viewed American Indians, to be exterminated or banished to reservations as punishment for having resisted government power. They were subjects and merely temporary occupants of land belonging to his government whom they served. The revealing excerpts below are taken from “Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama,” published in 1872.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

Death is Mercy to Secessionists

Headquarters, Department of Tennessee, Vicksburg, January 1, 1863.

[To] Major R. M. Sawyer, AAG Army of Tennessee, Huntsville:

“Dear Sawyer — In my former letter I have answered all your questions save one, and that relates to the treatment of inhabitants known, or suspected to be, hostile or “secesh.”  The war which prevails in our land is essentially a war of races. The Southern people entered into a clear compact of government, but still maintained a species of separate interests, history and prejudices. These latter became stronger and stronger, till they have led to war, which has developed the fruits of the bitterest kind.

We of the North are, beyond all question, right in our lawful cause, but we are not bound to ignore the fact that the people of the South have prejudices that form part of their nature, and which they cannot throw off without an effort of reason or the slower process of natural change.

Now, the question arises, should we treat as absolute enemies all in the South who differ with us in opinions or prejudices . . . [and] kill or banish them? Or should we give them time to think and gradually change their conduct so as to conform to the new order of things which is slowly and gradually creeping into their country?

When men take arms to resist our rightful authority, we are compelled to use force because all reason and argument ceases when arms are resorted to.

If the people, or any of them, keep up a correspondence with parties in hostility, they are spies, and can be punished with death or minor punishment. These are well established principles of war, and the people of the South having appealed to war, are barred from appealing to our Constitution, which they have practically and publicly defied. They have appealed to war and must abide its rules and laws.

The United States, as a belligerent party claiming right in the soil as the ultimate sovereign, have a right to change the population, and it may be and it, both politic and best, that we should do so in certain districts. When the inhabitants persist too long in hostility, it may be both politic and right that we should banish them and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population.

No man would deny that the United States would be benefited by dispossessing a single prejudiced, hard-headed and disloyal planter and substitute in his place a dozen or more patient, industrious, good families, even if they be of foreign birth.

It is all idle nonsense for these Southern planters to say that they made the South, that they own it, and that they can do as they please — even to break up our government, and to shut up the natural avenues of trade, intercourse and commerce.

We know, and they know if they are intelligent beings, that, as compared with the whole world they are but as five millions are to one thousand millions — that they did not create the land — that their only title to its use and enjoyment is the deed of the United States, and if they appeal to war they hold their all by a very insecure tenure.

For my part, I believe that this war is the result of false political doctrine, for which we are all as a people responsible, viz:  That any and every people has a right to self-government . . . In this belief, while I assert for our Government the highest military prerogatives, I am willing to bear in patience that political nonsense of . . . State Rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of press, and other such trash as have deluded the Southern people into war, anarchy, bloodshed, and the foulest crimes that have disgraced any time or any people.

I would advise the commanding officers at Huntsville and such other towns as are occupied by our troops, to assemble the inhabitants and explain to them these plain, self-evident propositions, and tell them that it is for them now to say whether they and their children shall inherit their share.

The Government of the United States has in North-Alabama any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war — to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . and war is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact. If they want eternal warfare, well and good; we will accept the issue and dispossess them, and put our friends in possession. Many, many people, with less pertinacity than the South, have been wiped out of national existence.

To those who submit to the rightful law and authority, all gentleness and forbearance; but to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better. Satan and the rebellious saints of heaven were allowed a continuance of existence in hell merely to swell their just punishment.”

W.T. Sherman, Major General Commanding

(Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama, William Garrett, Plantation Printing Company’s Press, 1872, pp. 486-488)

Tomorrow Belongs to Mí

Via comment  by Quartermain on A Hard Case, For Trump":

https://fiskeharrison.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/image3.jpg

The factually challenged (and largely plagiarized) 1977 TV miniseries Roots had an undeniable influence on how millions of Americans, black and white, view the era of slavery. A standout moment in this well-made piece of historical hooey occurs shortly after Kunta Kinte, the proud African (is there any other kind?), is brought to America and sold into slavery. Kinte is strung up and whipped within an inch of his life by a cruel overseer who is determined to force the kidnapped Mandinka to adopt his “slave name,” Toby. Again and again, the whip cracks, flaying the young warrior’s back. “Toby! Your name is Toby!” After what seems like an eternity of abuse, Kinte finally gives in. “Toby,” he whispers in defeat. “My name is Toby.” He’s cut down and left in the care of wise house negro Fiddler, who cradles the boy, promising him that even though everything seems bleak now, another day, a better day—the day of the black man—will come.

More @ TAKI'S

VIDEO: BLACK COP Shocked by ‘Evil’ Behavior of Trump Protesters; Praises Restraint of Trump, Tucson Supporters

Via Billy

 
Brandon Tatum Twitter Avatar

Tucson police officer Brandon Tatum attended Saturday’s Donald Trump rally in Tucson on Saturday as a curious civilian.
 
What he witnessed shocked his conscience so much he recorded a video to describe his experience as a Black man at a Trump rally. Tatum described violent protesters tackling Trump supporters, getting in Trump supporter’s faces, loudly yelling ‘Black lives matter!’ and swearing such that parents had to shield their children from the protesters. He also said the Trump supporters were not racist toward him as an African-American man, contrary to media portrayals of Trump rallies.

Trump, Cruz Delegates in TN Join Forces Again to Stop GOP Establishment

Via Billy

Convention Delegates AFP

Former radio talk show host Steve Gill, an elected Cruz delegate, and State Senator Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet), an elected Trump delegate, tell Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon that along with former State Rep Joe Carr, a Cruz delegate, they are inviting their 49 fellow Trump and Cruz delegates in Tennessee to meet later this month to fend off the GOP establishment’s efforts to “broker” the party’s convention and hand the nomination to someone other than Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Beavers was elected as an at-large delegate committed to Trump and received more votes than any other Trump delegate in the state’s March 1 primary. Carr and Gill finished in first and second place, respectively, in votes cast for Cruz delegates elected at-large across the state in that primary.

“I think this is truly grassroots. That’s what’s so interesting about this. When I started talking to Joe Carr, who’s a Cruz delegate, and Senator Mae Beavers, who’s a Trump delegate, and other Trump and Cruz delegates, we all were kind of having the same thought at the same time,” Gill told Bannon.

More @ Breitbart

Burns Chronicles No 14 – Which Came First, the Rooster or the Egg?

Via Gary

http://outpost-of-freedom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rooster-and-egg.jpg

Sorry about the play on words, however, in looking for a title for this article, it seemed appropriate to choose the rooster instead of the chicken, as the rooster has a specific role in the relationship.  The egg, however, is a birth, a creation of something new — that will continue to grow, eventually replacing both the rooster and the chicken, in the scheme of things.

Perhaps a few words from the Father of the Constitution might be appropriate:

[The government] can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.  This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together.  It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.  If it be asked, what is to restrain the [Government] from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society?  I answer:

the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America- a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the [Government], as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.
James Madison, Federalist No. 57

Now, the original, and then only, charge against those in Oregon that participated in the opening of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to the public, was 18 US Code § 372.  This law was first enacted during the Civil War.  It was the 1st Session of the 37th Congress Lincoln had already called for 75,000 and suspended habeas corpus {page 1 of pdf}, before the law was enacted.
The law was first introduced on July 17, 1861 {2}, just over three months after the war had begun), and:

Racist, definition of: One Who Doesn't Approve of Illegal Aliens

Via comment by Quartermain on A Hard Case, For Trump":


Every week I read "The Week That Perished" over at Takimag [link]. I usually don't refer to it, because it's just a compendium of news items, though a very good and well-written such compendium, as you can see from the quote,  and doesn't lend itself to reprinting or excerpts, but today's quibcag comes from it, and I want to refer you all to it. This particular quote particularly grabs me, because I'm originally from Indiana, and it also exposes the "hate" thing once again. Most Americans and most of us on the right don't hate anybody, but we're constantly accused of it. Why?

Simply because it's much easier to accuse someone of hate than it is to refute their arguments.

More @ Ex-Army

Soros Board Member Chairs Firm Running Online Voting for Tuesday’s Utah Caucuses

Via sauced07

george soros

Smartmatic Group, an electronic voting firm whose worldwide headquarters is located in the United Kingdom, will be running the online balloting process in the Utah Republican Open Caucuses on Tuesday.

The chairman of Smartmatic’s board, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, currently serves on the board of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and has close ties to the billionaire.

The Wall Street Journal dubbed the Republican party’s online adventure on Tuesday as “one of the biggest online votes conducted so far in the U.S.” and the “largest experiment with online presidential voting since 2004, when Michigan allowed Democrats to vote in a party caucus via the Internet.”

The Journal further reported:

More @ Breitbart

BLACK TRUMP SUPPORTER – STOMPS Anti-Trump Protester

Via Billy

trump supporter beat down
At least one of the anti-Trump supporters was wearing a KKK hood when they were escorted from the rally.

That’s when an African-American Trump supporter STOMPED On one of the protesters.

A Hard Case, For Trump

Via WRSA

Gage Skidmore/Flickr

As Peter would say, read it all.

The Washington Post‘s great Stephanie McCrummen profiles Ralph Case, a struggling small-town Ohio businessman who has placed all his chips on Trump. Excerpts:
It was in so many ways the moment that 38-year-old Ralph Case had been waiting for, one building since June, when the single father with a one-truck renovation business was watching TV in his living room. A breaking news alert flashed on the screen, followed by the scene in a brassy lobby in New York City. “Rockin’ in the Free World” was blasting. A crowd was facing an escalator. And then, gliding down it, came the man Ralph recognized as the “great builder” and reality-show host Donald J. Trump, who was announcing his bid for president.
“Oh. My. God,” is what Ralph remembers thinking. As Trump spoke of an America that doesn’t “have any victories anymore,” he felt something stirring inside — “like something hit me in my gut.”
“I’m thinking, it’s time,” Ralph recalled. “Like, this is big. This is bigger than big.”
He became a Trump supersupporter. McCrummen details the hardscrabble life Ralph Case has.