“Complicity—How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery”

By Al Benson Jr.
Recently a friend in Athens, Louisiana lent me a book with the same title as this article. It was written by three writers who worked for a newspaper, the Hartford Courant, in Hartford, Connecticut. I mention that lest anyone accuse me of quoting some “bigoted” Southern source.

From what I can tell the three authors of this book are all quite a bit more liberal than I am and so I am sure there is much we would not agree on. But whatever else they might be, the three authors were honest enough to admit that slavery in this country was never only a “Southern” problem as we have, for so long, been led to believe.

I grew up in New England, went to school in New England, and I have to admit, I never read any of the material they present in any of the so-called “history” books I came across, either in school or anywhere else. We were always taught that all the slaves lived “down South” and that the virtuous New Englanders, among others, had fought to end that evil institution down here.

These folks did a lot of research to put their material together, so the research material is available. It just gets ignored. It’s the identical situation Donnie Kennedy and I found when we wrote Lincoln’s Marxists. The vast majority of the material about socialist and Communist penetration of both the Union armies and the early Republican Party by those people is just never mentioned. It doesn’t fit the current agenda and so it just gets omitted. It’s the same situation with Complicity. The truth about slavery in the North just doesn’t fit the agenda and so it mostly gets left out.

But there is lots of commentary about Northern slavery out there and the three authors of Complicity came up with lots of it. In the introduction it is noted: “Before the Civil War the North grew rich beyond measure by agreeing to live, however uneasily at times, with slavery. Perhaps as a consequence of striking that bargain, Northerners have pushed much of their early history into the deepest shadows of repression.—In the eighteenth century, even after America won its freedom from Great Britain, even after the writing of the Declaration of Independence, tens of thousands of black people were living as slaves in the North. Earlier in that century, enslaved blacks made up nearly one-fifth of the population of New York City.”

And then there was this, which although I lived and worked in Rhode Island, I never heard: “In the century before Congress finally banned the importation of slaves, Rhode Island was America’s leader in the transatlantic trade, launching nearly 1000 voyages to Africa and carrying at least 100,000 captives back across the Atlantic. The captains and crews of these ships were often the veteran seamen of America: New Englanders.” More information that somehow doesn’t make the cut when it comes to our “history” books! The authors note that, in 1760, there were around 41,000 blacks enslaved in the Northern states, which included New England and all the other states down to Delaware.

The authors also observed: “Slaves in the North, like those in the South, served at the whim of their owners and could be sold or traded. They were housed in unheated attics and basements, in outbuildings and barns. They often slept on the floor, wrapped in coarse blankets. They lived under a harsh system of ‘black codes’ that controlled their movements, prohibited their education, and limited their social contacts.” It actually sounds like, in many instances, slaves in the South were better off than those in the North. And “black codes” in the North? All we are ever told about is black codes in the South. They are never mentioned in relation to the North. You can tell that the winners write the history books and don’t hesitate to make themselves look good. The authors made an interesting comment about a man named John Adams, described as “…one of the Founding Fathers who refused to own black people…he paid handsomely for his principles because captive labor (in New England) was widespread, very skilled, and cheap.”

On page 80, in relation to New York City, the authors tell us that “Slavery was the bedrock of the city’s developing economy” in the early 1700s. Census figures showed a population, at one point, of about 4,000 whites and 600 blacks and most of the blacks were slaves.

On pages 97-99 the authors deal in some detail with Newport, Rhode Island and inform us that it was dominant in the state’s first and longest period in the slave trade. The Newport slave traders were mostly involved with the “upper” end of the trade. They owned or bankrolled the slave ships. And they observed that, in the days before the War for Independence the city of Newport was responsible for 70% of all American slave ships. Rev. Samuel Hopkins was one of the few theologians that even dared to preach against the slave trade. Hopkins indicted his own state when he said “The inhabitants of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the greater share of this traffic, of all these United States.”

Hopefully this brief article will give readers some idea of the large part the Northeastern part of the country played in the slave trade, and this went on, to some degree, literally up to the eve of the War of Northern Aggression.
I have seen articles over the years that totally blamed the South for the slave trade and some have even commented that Southerners invented this pernicious trade just so they could keep blacks under their heel. The book these three writers from Connecticut who are, as I said, much more liberal than I, have produced gives the lie to that baseless accusation.

When it came to slavery the North was every bit as guilty as was the South, in some cases even moreso. But then the professional “South-haters” who practice cultural genocide on Southerners and their culture do not want to hear this and so they will probably do their best to ignore this factual book just as they have studiously avoided admitting to much of what Donnie Kennedy and I have written about in Lincoln’s Marxists. Complicity is available at Amazon.com I would encourage folks who are serious about the truth to pick it up and read it. You won’t agree with everything in it. I didn’t. But it is still worth the read.

Advertisement

Sherman’s March

by Al Benson Jr.

The internationalist and dictatorial mindset of the Sherman brothers was clearly evident in the statement made by John Sherman, brother of William Tecumseh, when he said “Nationalize as much as possible (and thereby) make men love their country before their states.” This quote was in the book Donnie Kennedy and I wrote Lincoln’s Marxists, on page 127. You have only to compare this quote with the rantings of former presidential candidate John McCain when he ranted about “country first.” It sounds so patriotic until you stop and think about it. Seems that if I recall correctly, that was the same tack that Hitler took.

However, any similarities between General Sherman and Hitler are more than coincidental. They were both endowed with the same mindset.

One thing most noteworthy of Sherman’s barbarian hordes was their attitude toward clergymen and toward Christians in general. In Sherman’s March  Burke Davis noted: “The Reverend Mr. Connor, a Methodist minister whose parsonage was burned, emerged with a sick child wrapped in a blanket. A (Yankee) soldier seized the blanket. ‘No!’ Connor said, ‘he’s sick.’ The soldier tore off the blanket and threw it into the fire. ‘Damn you’ he said. ‘If you say one more word I’ll throw the child after it’.” Now there’s Yankee charity and mercy at its finest! The Yankee/Marxist mindset in it’s finest hour!

Sherman’s bummers treated the Catholics no better than the Protestants. The account is given in Davis’ book about a Catholic convent destroyed when Atlanta was burning. According to Davis: “Father O’Connell led a final benediction. The schoolgirls were kneeling, reciting the rosary, when the chapel door was broken in by ‘the most unearthly battering…like the crash of doom. Drunken soldiers piled over each other, rushing for the sacred gold vessels of the alter,…Father O’Connell led them to a nearby church, from which they saw the burning convent roof collapse into a fiery grid of timbers. The sturdy building endured until long after nearby structures had burned to the ground, but at three in the morning its cross plunged earthward in a cascade of flames and embers. Laughing soldiers taunted the nuns and blew cigar smoke in their faces. ‘Oh holy! Yes, holy! We’re just as holy as you are!…Now, what do you think of God? Ain’t Sherman greater’?” You are forced to wonder how many of the “forty-eighters” marched in Sherman’s columns. Their freethinking mindset would make this sort of abuse of Christians right up their alley. And you can bet that Sherman, who, was at best, an agnostic, would have had no problem with all of this.

It seems that Sherman’s men had a real antipathy toward Christianity and Christians. Davis observed in his book that: “Sergeant Fleharty watched as the village church was attacked: ‘First the pulpit and seats were torn out, then the siding and the blinds were ripped off. Many axes were at work. The corner posts were cut, the building tottered, the beautiful spire, up among the green trees, leaned…vibrating to and fro,…By the use of long poles the men increased the vibratory motion of the building, and soon, with a screeching groan the spire sunk down…and as the structure became a pile of rubbish, some of the most wicked of the raiders yelled out: ‘There goes your damned old gospel shop’.” With some exceptions this seems to have been the mindset of Sherman and those barbarians he commanded.

And in keeping with the Marxist mindset of many in the Union armies Sherman was strongly inclined to a program of “land confiscation.” He wanted to dispossess Confederate leadership from their property. Sherman’s beloved brother, John, mentioned earlier, had said: “If we can’t depend on the loyalty of the white men of the South, I would give the land to the blacks or colonize a new set (of northern whites).” Sherman, himself, since 1862 had threatened to take the land away from Southerners and to redistribute it to Northern white colonists and in 1864 he wrote: “…it may be both politic and right that we should banish them and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population…If they want eternal war, well and good; we will dispossess them and put our friends in their place…” This was Sherman’s mindset, as well as the mindset of his brother in Washington. How different was this from what Karl Marx advocated “Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.” Most historians have yet to deal with the Marxist mindset of many Northern generals and politicians. It’s hard for them to grasp that the sainted Mr. Lincoln was a friend to the Marxists and socialists and had no problem whatever with their mindset or with what they did to the South. Christians have no concept of the depredations perpetrated against churches in the South during the war. That’s another whole subject in itself–another subject that almost never gets touched upon. They have been bemused into thinking Lincoln was a truly godly man because many pastors have told them this. No supporting evidence is necessary, in fact, most of the real primary sources you will run across say exactly the opposite–that Lincoln was really anti-Christian in his outlook. But then, in our day, our Christian brethren are hardly noted for their aggressive search for any truth that conflicts with the “cunningly devised fables” they have been fed, so they just go along to get along and never question anything. Their concern for historical truth is like the Platte River “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

It is rumored that the people of Georgia didn’t forget Sherman’s March for over 100 years after it happened. Who can blame them? I have just touched on a very few incidents here. There were many, many more and some so horrendous as to be beyond description. Until we begin to deal with the penetration of Marxists and socialists into Northern political and military life in the 1860s and before, we will never understand the War of Northern Aggression and the part people like Sherman played in it.

Truths About Slavery

By Al Benson Jr.
If you listen to the current and recent stories about slavery and the slave trade you will be led to think of it as an entirely Southern institution. You will think it was created by Southerners for the benefit of Southerners and that no one else had anything to do with it. This is how you are supposed to think. This is how your public school “education” has programmed you to think. Truth has little or nothing to do with it. You are “educated” to believe “Marxist” truth whether you realize it or not. However, those who have educated your teachers realize it even if the teachers don’t.

Most of the time, though, Marxist truth (whatever supports the current agenda) will be a far cry from reality. This is one more reason to remove your kids from public school.

One small example here, from Donnie Kennedy’s book Myths of American Slavery: “On April 21, 1861, the American slaver Nightengale, affectionately known as the ‘Prince of Slavers” was built in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, fitted out for the slave trade in Salem, Massachusetts, and its captain was from New York. When captured by the USS Saratoga, the Nightengale was flying the United States flag, and had more than nine hundred slaves on board. One of the last American vessels to be captured in the slave trade was the Erie, Nathaniel Gordon of Portland, Maine, commander. It should be noted that these vessels were not bringing slaves into the South.” How come, you might ask? Well, for a couple good reasons—one was that the Constitution of the Confederate States did not allow the importation of African slaves. Another reason was that the Union blockage had pretty much curtailed any importation of slaves into the South. Don’t expect to find this kind of information in your history books. They are usually so full of the “Uncle Toms’ Cabin” sort of fables they frequently have no room for the truth.

You are never told that, in much of the North, slavery was abolished to protect the white population from having to compete with slave labor. Lincoln, contrary to the popular myths about his fondness for black people and how he “grew” into this cherished position, felt that blacks were inferior and he was strongly in favor of moving them out of the country once they became free. He never changed that opinion. Donnie Kennedy’s book states, on page 165,: “Add to these the state of Illinois, which, in 1862 (while its sons were pillaging the South) by an overwhelming vote of the people, passed an amendment to the state constitution declaring that ‘no negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state.” If you ever noticed, the “underground railway” to free slaves ran all the way from different places in the South up into Canada. It didn’t end in New York or Michigan or wherever, and part of the reason for this was that most Northern folks did not want the blacks living too close to them.

Recently an article by Donald W. Livingston appeared on http://lewrockwell.com which dealt, to some degree, with the slavery issue. The name of the article was Lincoln’s Inversion of the American Union. Dr. Livingston made several interesting points. He noted: “Only around fiteeen percent of southerners even owned slaves, and the great majority of those had holdings of one to six. Jefferson Davis was an enlightened slave holder who said that once the Confederacy gained its independence, it would mean the end of slavery. The Confederate Cabinet agreed to abolish slavery within five years after the cessation of hostilities in exchange for recognition by Britain and France. Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery, but simply and solely because they were being invaded. And the North certainly did not invade to abolish slavery. Nor should this be surprising considering the Negrophobia that prevailed everywhere in the North. It was assumed by the vast majority of Americans, North and South, that America was a white European polity, and that the Indian and African populations were not—and were never to be—full participants in that polity.“ Dr. Livingston cited a passage from the Oregon state constitution to prove this. Again, where have you read this in your “history” books? Dr. Livingston noted that free blacks in Northern states were “severely regulated.” All you ever see in the “history” books are comments about how Jim Crow laws were enacted in the South. You are never told they had the same thing in the North. That part is just omitted.

And why did the northern states emancipate the blacks who had been slaves there? Dr. Livingston observed: “Emancipation laws in the antebellum North were designed to rid the North of its African population. They typically declared that the children of slaves born after a certain date would, upon reaching a certain age, be emancipated. This meant the adult slaves were not freed and that families could be sold South before the children reached the age of emancipation. Emancipation led to a reduction of the African population in the North, not to an increase, as it did in the South.” And that was the sole reason, in most cases, for African emancipation up North. Sell the slaves South and then complain about Southern slaver holders and the “sin”of slavery. If it was a sin for Southerners to own them wasn’t it also a sin for Northerners to own them? Hush! You ain’t supposed to ask that question! Livingston pointed out that: “Even abolitionists were careful to point out that it was not the slave they loved but the slaveholder they hated, and that emancipation did not at all mean social and political equality with whites.” This is the part you are never told about.

So basically the abolitionists hated the South and Southerners and they used the slaves as a wedge to pry the South apart from its foundations. If you look at the theological underpinnings of many of the abolitionists the reason for this is apparent. Their agenda called for much more than freeing slaves. That was the foot in the Southern door and that’s all it was.

I have never forgotten the story my father told me years ago. When he was a boy he knew an ex-slave. They used to fish in the same river and got talking. The old slave talked about what life had been like before he was free. He told my Dad that the family that owned them always treated them well and they had grown to love them. After the 13th Amendment was passed freeing them, many of the slaves did not want to leave what, to them, was home. One day the Yankee soldiers came and to them they were free and so they should pack up whatever they could carry on their backs and go. One of the slaves, with a little presence of mind asked the soldier “If we free then why can’t we stay if we want to?” My Dad never forgot the soldier’s reply. He told the slave “You’re free to go but not to stay.” How typical of Yankee/Marxist “freedom.” You’re free to do what we tell you to do but not what you might want to do. How different is our “freedom” today? “Reconstruction” still marches on! But, with our public school “educations” we still don’t get the message.

We Don’t Grasp the Yankee/Marxist Mindset

By Al Benson Jr.

There were some leaders in the South during the War of Northern Aggression that watched Northern armies get defeated again and again and they wondered why the Northern government just didn’t give up and let them go and end all the carnage on both sides. As sincere as these men were, they did not grasp the Yankee/Marxist mindset, just as many do not in our day.

They did not realize (and still do not) that the prime agenda of the Yankee/Marxist is to remake the world and all its people in his own image. He can never stop until he completes this task. His combat against those who deviate from his holy agenda is ongoing and never-ending. He seeks to get his own way and push his own agenda—no matter what—and no matter how long it takes. This is the Yankee/Marxist’s “holy” calling—all must be remade in his image and for that to happen all memory of Almighty God must be done away with so that all anyone ever remembers is the Yankee/Marxist “deity.”

He’s not there yet and in God’s economy he never will be, but that doesn’t keep him from continually trying.

That was true during the War of Northern Aggression and it is still true today. If he can’t accomplish his ends one way, he will seek to use another, but he will not quit—not ever. We need to grasp this and we mostly don’t.
The current Marxist administration has sought to remove our Second Amendment rights. In a recent senate vote they lost on all three attempts to do away with those rights. Many pro-gun folks think that was the end of it and our Second Amendment rights are now safe because the Senate voted to keep them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In a recent article on http://www.infowars.com Obama vowed to continue pushing his gun control agenda, no matter how he has to do it The article said: “…he called the recent failures to pass gun control legislation the ‘first round’ and pledged to keep pushing his agenda” So don’t think we are off the hook because he lost the first round.

While Obama has hinted that he’d like to pass gun control legislation, he’s not above trying to issue an executive decree if legislation doesn’t work. So don’t think you are home free. The gun grabbers will be back, one way or another, by hook or by crook. They mean to dismantle the Second Amendment and if we do not stay continually alert they will do it—anyway they have to.

After all, the world has to be remade in the image of the Beast, er, I mean the Yankee/Marxist and his minions in Washington are not about to deviate from that agenda. The Christians and patriots that seek to oppose this need the same tenacity. Will we have it?

Some Good News Among All the Bad

by Al Benson Jr.

This blog spot has been rather quiet for the month of April. I went into the hospital on April 2nd and was there for 21 days, which pretty much shot April. I am home now and receiving therapy and hope to be a bit more vocal this month, Lord willing.

I did not get much news in hospital. What you see on tv hardly qualifies as news. Mostly it is someone’s spin on the news.

However I did hear, while in hospital that all three of Mr. Obama’s gun control bills had been defeated–all three. I was slightly amazed. I knew that the one banning “assault rifles” would probably not make it and even the one limiting magazine capacity was in trouble. However, most informed folks felt these bills would not make it anyway. All they were out there for was to give the anti-gun senators something to vote for so they could appear to be “pro-2nd Amendment.” What Obama really wanted was to get the one mandating background checks and registration passed. That way he’ d have all the names of the gun owners (he hoped). That one didn’t make it either. I’m told it failed by six votes. I can only applaud the 2nd Amendment groups, like Gun Owners of America, who must have done some really good work in this area and made certain senators feel the heat.

However, the pro-2nd Amendment folks cannot rest of their laurels. Mr. Obama and his gun grabbers do not intend to let folks keep their firearms and their scheme to eviscerate the 2nd Amendment is still in place in spite of this temporary setback.

One wonders how this will all play out. Will we have yet another “lone, crazed gunman”  kill more kids in another gun free zone, with the resultant political rhetoric that guns must be banned? I would not be surprised if such occurred. But if that one is getting a bit stale the anti-gunners may be forced to come up with a new tactic.

Stay tuned. You just never know.