“That Which Has Been Is That Which Shall Be”

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The title of this article has one more line in it that would have made it too long for a title. That line is “And there is nothing new under the sun.” This is taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It’s sort of a paraphrase of the 9th verse of chapter one–not an exact rendering, but close enough so you get the idea. Nowhere is this more applicable than in Washington, D.C. the District of Corruption.

Recently, I started working my way through a book by Helen Jones Campbell, which I found at a local library. The book is Confederate Courier and deals with the life of John Surratt Jr., the son of Mary Surratt, who was hung as one of the “co-conspirators” in the Lincoln assassination. I’ve done articles on Mrs. Surratt for this blog but its been a few years ago, and I contended that she was innocent of complicity in Lincoln’s assassination. She may have been complicit in a plan to kidnap Lincoln, but I don’t feel she was part of a scheme to kill him. But Washington being Washington, needed another sacrificial victim–guilty or innocent made no difference as long as someone’s agenda was moved along, in this case probably Edwin Stanton’s.

Campbell makes some interesting observations. She noted, on page 2 that “The war had been over for two years, and the Union preserved after a fashion, but nothing had gone back to being as it had been…” It never would either. The country had gone from being some semblance of a representative republic and was now in its first stages of socialist democracy–a course it has persevered in unto this day. If you think that’s far out, just look at the politicians today who blithely refer to the country as “our democracy.”

In regard to the trial of Surratt and the others Campbell observed: “In spite of protests by many government officials, legal authorities, and newspapers over the world, these civilians were ordered to face a military commission. ‘Unconstitutional’ said the public; civilians could not be tried by the military when established courts were open and available. But they had been….and by the rules of the court dened the right to speak a word in their own defense, such an outburst had shaken the city and nation that Stanton had wavered.” But not much!

However, the fun was only beginning. Campbell stated that “Witnesses had told horrifying tales of Jefferson Davis as instigator of the crime, of a plan to assassinate all the cabinet members, too, to burn New York City, poison its wells, pack explosives in coal cars, infect the North with smallpox….Each day’s testimony had rocked the town anew…No story was too lurid to repeat, no embellishment too wild.”

Campbell noted of Louis Weichman that “Stanton had questioned him, frightened him silly, and then committed him to Old Capitol Prison to think his story over. His testimony had hanged Mrs. Surratt, but after her death he suffered such great remorse that he had confessed to various friends. ‘I didn’t want to hang’ he had said. ‘If they’d let me say what I wanted to, she wouldn’t have hanged’.” When Stanton heard of this he called Weichman on the carpet about it. According to Campbell “Lou denied it and hurried out of town to a job the secretary found for him in Philadelphia….No sooner had this quieted down when a news story broke that a school for perjury had been conducted in the New National Hotel. A New York newsman, paid by Stanton, had written testimony and coached witnesses in its delivery. Eight such witnesses had testified and not one of them, including their tutor, had testified under his own name. This was testimony that linked the Confederate officials and John Surratt to the murder. Without this testimony there could have been no charge against him.”

All this proves one thing. The Deep State. whether 150 years ago or today, has an agenda that is destructive to the truth and they will push that agenda no matter who it hurts or how many lives it destroys. They couldn’t care less about any of that. Anyone thinking you can appeal to their “better nature” is naive in the extreme. These people prostitute themselves and others without hesitation to gain their desired goals. If they thought it would further their agenda they’d call God a liar–something they’ve done indirectly for decades already.

Washington, in the District of Corruption, is a city built on lies, deception, deceit, and hurt. When lives are destroyed its denizens laugh! To them that means they’ve done a good job. Today’s fascist Democrats are no different than yesterday’s radical Republican Yankee/Marxists. They all originated in the same slime.

What’s going on today in Washington is what has gone on before in Washington and even though the names may be different, it’s the same old socialist/Illuminist game that has been going on for a long, long time.

Those that pray imprecatory Psalms regarding many of Washington’s Swamp denizens are not all that much off track, in fact they may have figured out what the game is more than most have.