“Civil Rights” And Man’s Total Depravity

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The Bible correctly notes the depraved nature of man. There are those who believe that man, left to his own devices, is, somehow “good” enough to choose to follow God of his own “free will.” A short study of the history of communism and its casualties over the years should be enough to disabuse them of man’s “goodness.” Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter 3:10-11 is quite explicit in this area. It says: “As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one:  There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh God.” Lest some think this is merely Paul’s personal opinion,  note that Psalm 14:1-3 says just about the same thing.

One movement, among many others, that has manifested man’s total depravity in its ranks in the last 130 years has been the “civil rights” movement, even though it hasn’t always been called that.

Many were shocked several years ago when Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s book And The Walls Came Tumbling Down came out and in it, Abernathy admitted what many had long known, that Martin Luther King had had adulterous relationships  with various women during his time on the road. In truth, Abernathy, himself, was no paragon of sexual virtue. Many complained that Abernathy never should have written what he did–that he had, somehow, betrayed the civil rights movement with this little bit of truth.

However, let it be also noted that some of the earlier movers and shakers in the civil rights movement were far from being as pure as the driven snow as well.

Thaddeus Stevens, who foisted upon a questionable Congress the iniquitous  14th Amendment was, in regard to virtue, the spiritual grandfather of Martin Luther King.

In reference to Thaddeus Stevens, his biographer, Fawn M. Brodie wrote: “…he was an equalitarian who would pinion the Southerner for his racial bigotry and caste prejudices, but who for twenty years would live with a colored woman as his mistress…” So, what else is new?

Because of his pessimistic view of human nature, Brodie mistakenly tried to portray Stevens as a Calvinist. That Stevens may have, to some degree, recognized man’s depravity did not necessarily qualify him to take up the mantle of John Calvin! No Bible-believing Calvinist should have had a mistress. True Christian faith prohibits such behavior. Whatever Thaddeus Stevens may have professed to believe in, his actions and words were more Jacobin than Calvinist.

Martin Luther King was, over the years, known for his associations with Communists and their sympathizers. A man named Hunter Pitts O’Dell who worked as King’s staff consultant in 1960 had been identified as a Communist organizer. Upon being made “aware” of this, King announced he had discharged O’Dell. In actuality, O’Dell had been promoted and ended up running King’s New York office (sounds like King took lessons from the State Department). King then, supposedly, commenced to give O’Dell his walking papers yet a second time. A later check by UPI discovered that the oft-dismissed Mr. O’Dell was still on King’s payroll. What a surprise!

Wyatt T. (Tee) Walker, a staff aid to MLK was also editorial advisor to the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor Movement. And King was known to have had association with Carl Braden, another identified Communist and his front organization the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF). So some of King’s associates were really Red, while some others were merely deep pink!

But, again, “Saint” Martin may have taken a page from the notebook of his spiritual grandfather, Thaddeus Stevens. Stevens was, in his day, no stranger to revolutionary aims, or acquaintances. Stevens, supposedly opposed to different classes of people, nonetheless, in his efforts at Southern “reconstruction” actually fostered the concept of class struggle. According to Brodie, Stevens was denounced as a “revolutionist, and Jacobin, a constitution-breaker, an American Robespierre.” All things considered, I think these are all accurate descriptions.  And as he sought to reshape the American Republic into his own image with his infamous 14th Amendment, Stevens had some assistance from an interesting source that our history books have said virtually nothing about.

According to the book Statutory History of the United States–Civil Rights, Part One  published by Chelsea House Publishers, one of the people that gave Thaddeus Stevens notable direction in regard to the 14th Amendment was none other than Robert Dale Owen, son of the well-known British socialist, Robert Owen.

The book stated, on page 215, in regard to hearings on the 14th Amendment:  “On April 21st, congressman Stevens reopened the subject with a draft amendment ‘not one of his own framing.’ The draft had actually been submitted to him by Robert Dale Owen, the English reformer (socialist) who had come to this country before the Civil War. The Owen draft covered most of the matters dealt with by the 14th Amendment.” In other words, Thad Stevens had help with the 14th Amendment from an English socialist! Let that little thought begin to sink in.

Robert Dale Owen was a man who totally rejected  the orthodox Christian foundations of this country.  Owen simply hated Christian schools because they were often (horror of horrors) run by clergymen, whom he distrusted and despised. Having rejected God and His Son, Owen put his faith for the “salvation” of America in the founding of public schools. So this anti-Christ collectivist was the man that gave Thaddeus Stevens a literary nudge with his personal draft of the 14th Amendment and its supposed “equal protection” for all under the law. I wonder how some of our Johnny-come-lately patriots would feel if they knew their prized 14th Amendment was, in part, the work of a British socialist. Well, folks, if you read this, you can’t honestly say no one ever told you.

If you look at the 14th Amendment, with its put-down of state citizenship as being inferior to national citizenship, you might almost say that such was a vital first step to relegating the states to the status of territories. In order for the “party of the Union” (Republicans) to begin to deal with the states in a territorial status, states’ rights had to be done away with. When that happens, then power reverts from the states back to the centralized national government. Look at what happened to the South after the War of Northern Aggression.

In our day, we might take this entire process a step further and say that “hate crimes” legislation, the office of “special investigations” the UN Genocide Treaty, and other such One World dinosaurs are nothing more than strides toward a kind of international “civil rights.” These things have all been promoted to gain wide public acceptance for the entire “civil rights” agenda.

Martin Luther King and his spiritual grandfather, Thaddeus Stevens, who had very similar views on sex and revolution,  have both done their part to create a “civil rights” movement that will, undoubtedly, stand as one of the major pillars of the New World Order, the Deep State. And a final thought–though some of you all will know before I even have to mention it, the one group that will have no rights whatever under this Marxian system will be white, Christian, Southerners!

Federal Precedence Over The States

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

A little review of the 14th Amendment shows us that it accomplished certain ends consistent with Yankee/Marxist revolutionary aims for both the War of Northern Aggression and for the period after that revolution.  We ought to get used to referring to it as a revolution for, in truth, it was the first American Revolution.

It was a revolution in which God-given liberties  were exchanged for “privileges and immunities” granted by an all-powerful federal government in Washington.  After the shooting phase of that revolution was over the United States played the part of Esau on a national scale. We traded our God-given birthright for a mess of federal pottage, and now we weep, as did Esau, because we do not have God’s blessing. In fact, if you read Patrick Henry, a case might be made that we did the same thing in 1787 in Philadelphia. At any rate, we don’t have God’s blessing because, in our apostasy, we don’t deserve it.

Instead of enjoying the blessings of God, we now labor under such apostate vehicles as Thaddeus Stevens’ 14th Amendment.

How many even realize that the 14th Amendment redefined citizenship in this country? Up until the War, a man was considered a citizen of the United States due to his first being a citizen of the state he lived in. A man was a United States citizen because he was first a citizen of Texas, or Louisiana, or New Jersey. His state citizenship gave him his status as a U.S. citizen.

After the adoption of the 14th Amendment, however, a man became foremost a citizen of the United States rather than of the state he lived in. His state citizenship was, to all intents and purposes, at best secondary, if even that. This was consistent with Northern revolutionary aims and opened the door for future federal intervention in the various states in areas the federal government  had no business being in.

The Kennedy Brothers, in their book The South Was Right, noted the political gyrations of Thaddeus Stevens and his Yankee/Marxist cohorts. They observed: “To secure enactment of the amendment, the Northern Congress had to accomplish the following: Declare the Southern states outside of the erstwhile indivisible Union. Deny majority rule in the Southern states by the disenfranchisement of large numbers of the white population. Require the Southern states to ratify the amendment as the price of getting back into the Union from which heretofore they had been denied the right to secede.” Did you get all that?

But they continued: “The third point could be turned into a Yankee brain-teaser.  The North, in 1866, removed the Southern states from the Union. This was the same North that in 1861 refused to allow the South to secede from the Union. This same North now declared the Southern states to be non-states. To get back into the Union (that originally the South did not want to be part of anyway,  and from which it had previously been denied the right to secede), it was required to perform the function of a state in that Union, while still  officially no longer a part of that Union, by ratifying an amendment that previously as states in the Union it had legally rejected! Words alone fail to meet the challenge of such pure Yankee logic.” Almost makes you wonder what brand of revolutionary weed Stevens and his pals had been smoking!

Some have, upon reflection, observed that the adoption of the 14th Amendment opened the door for the adoption of the 17th Amendment, the direct election of Senators by popular vote. One can, almost in overview, see an evolutionary process in this, whereby we first lose our state citizenship, then, eventually, even national citizenship, until we all finally become “citizens of the world” much like Karl Marx’s “workers of the world.” Don’t supposed there might be any connection do you?

So Thaddeus Stevens was a moving force in helping to bury the concept of state citizenship in favor of national citizenship. The naïve might be tempted to be charitable and feel that Stevens didn’t fully realize just what he was doing. Sorry, but I have a suspicious mind. Stevens, the professional South-hater, knew exactly what he was doing!

Stevens and his crowd were apostate revolutionaries of the first order. Their main agenda was to alter the American system of government, taking care to maintain the forms while changing the real substance. Unfortunately their revolution succeeded.  We today are living with the results of what they did. Whatever its faults, and they were numerous, the system of government the founders gave us died with the Southern loss of the Marxist/Lincolnist Revolution of 1861. Those who fail to recognize this have missed the boat. We hear so much talk today from sincere folks who have not been on the firing line long enough to know the difference. They shout about  “taking America back.” Back to what??? What most of them fail to realize is that what they want to take us back to is what they grew up with–the “good old days.” Won’t happen, because their “good old days” happened way after the revolution  had been accomplished. They are 150 years too late! You hear the same refrain from them regarding the public school system. They want to take it back to where it was when they grew up, not realizing that it had already been in revolutionary  mode back in the 1830s in his heyday. When something has been bad since day one, what do you “reform” it back to–pre-existence? That might not be a bad idea!

When Stevens introduced the 14th Amendment, some of the more cautious Republicans threatened to remove his third section of it, dealing with the ineligibility of former Confederate leaders to run for Congress until at least 1876. Stevens wasn’t having any of that! Through political maneuvering, at which he was a past master,  he put together a coalition of radicals and Democrats to prevent that change. He pled with them to fully retain that third section. His vindictive anti-Southern nature clearly showed as he pleaded: “It is too lenient for my hard heart. Not only to 1870, but to 18070,  every rebel who shed the blood of loyal men should be prevented from exercising any power in this government.” A true example of Northern charity and forgiveness.  Had Stevens been able to shape his vindictive attitude to conform to Biblical standards the country might have been better off.

However, Stevens lacked such capacity. Long after Stevens’ death, an old political opponent, Jeremiah S. Black, noted of him that: “When he died he was unequaled in this country as a lawyer. He said the smartest things ever said. But his mind, as far as his sense of obligation to God was concerned, was a howling  wilderness.” So noted Fawn Brodie in her biographical work on Stevens.

God stated in both Deuteronomy 32:35 and Romans 12:19 that vengeance belongs to Him, that man is only to execute that which God entrusts to him, and he is to leave vengeance to God. Stevens, in a manner so typical of most revolutionaries and apostates ignored this, as he did most of the rest of Scripture. With his revolutionary mindset, and for his own twisted reasons, he sought vengeance on all whites in the South, the vast majority of whom had never done him any harm.

The 14th Amendment, in its final form, dealt with four different areas. In the first, it made the radical departure of redefining citizenship as a national rather than a state matter. This was an important first step toward making the states mere vassals of the federal deity in Washington. The second section reduced representation in Southern states to a basis of the voting population only. The third section excluded Confederate leaders from office indefinitely, barring a two-thirds vote by Congress. The fourth section repudiated the Confederate debt and upheld the Union’s national debt.

Attempting to explain all the implications of this radical amendment would take more space than I can spare here and if it got too in-depth most would just quit reading. Hopefully these brief comments will give some the incentive to dig into the 14th Amendment, as well as the second 13th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to see what implications these have for us today, especially in regard to our modern “civil rights” movement.

“The Land We Love: The South And Its Heritage”

A book review by Al Benson Jr.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey, retired registrar of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, has written a book that can, and should, be embraced by every Southern patriot no matter where he lives. Its title is the title of this article.

The importance and tenor of Dr. Cathey’s book is described in a brief forward for the book, written by Dr. Clyde Wilson, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History, University of South Carolina. Dr. Wilson has said: “We Southerners are blessed to have a rich story that is still powerful among us and also far beyond our borders. That history is envied and hated by postmodern Americans who have no story of their own and work to destroy the memory of ours. Defending our story is not backward or provincial but is a part of the defense of civilization as we have known it.” In reference to Dr. Cathey’s work he noted: “Herein he has erected a sturdy wall where we can gather to resist the barbarism of our time.” I have to say Amen to that. The anti-Christian and anti-Southern barbarism of our time needs to be resisted–and not only resisted but pushed back against. Dr. Cathey’s book gives us a sense of our history and heritage that will enable us to do that.

Dr. Cathey has divided his book into six parts: a defense of the South and its history; defending the symbols and monuments of our history; what the Nativity says to Southerners; eight Southern heroes and two demons; reviews of films and books; and a final brief part, with a Christian outlook, on the virtue of hope.

At the beginning of part one, Dr. Cathey notes what he called “a new reconstruction.” This is the current assault on Confederate heritage, well, not actually just current. It has been going on for some time now but has recently gotten even more rabid. He notes here, comments by Professor James McPherson, no friend of the South by any stretch of the imagination, and notes McPherson’s commentary in one of his books For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. McPherson, possibly reluctantly, was forced to admit that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers felt they were fighting for liberty. After studying all kinds of manuscripts and thousands of letters, diaries, etc., McPherson wrote: “Southern recruits waxed most eloquently about their intention to fight against slavery than for it…that is, against their own enslavement to the North…Confederates professed to fight for liberty and independence from a tyrannical government.”

Dr. Cathey noted, on page 25, something I have written about several times–the cultural and theological difference between North and South in the 19th century. He says “In the South, orthodox, Trinitarian and Incarnational Christianity, in its various forms, has been and is still central to and pervasive in our society. This fact cannot be emphasized enough. While third and fourth generation Puritans of New England and various groups in New York and Ohio, began to veer into Unitarianism, transcendentalism, and heretical millenarian cults, the South’s popular orthodoxy inhibited deviations and hetrodoxy.”

He noted the tentative truce between North and South that lasted up until the 1950s. He observed “…the triumph of the ‘civil rights’ movement which in some ways was a frontal attack on constitutional republicanism and the rights of property, and the triumph of political correctness and cultural Marxism, all signaled the beginning of a ‘Second War of Northern Aggression’ aimed at totally reshaping and restructuring our culture and at rejecting the principles and beliefs of our ancestors.” He commented about the anti-South indoctrination in public schools and the entertainment media and through “virtual control of both political parties…” He took note of Jefferson Davis’ warning that “conflict between the South’s beliefs and victorious modernism had not ended with Appomattox.”

Dr. Cathey observed, quite astutely, that what passes today in this country for conservatism is actually what many of us refer to as “neo-conservatism” He referred to neo-conservatives as those who “made the pilgrimage from the Left into the conservative movement…” Unfortunately, with a little tweaking to make them sound more “conservative” they retained their Leftist worldview as they infiltrated the real conservative movement in this country. Today, neo-conservatives are closet globalists.

Starting on page 63 and continuing through page 74, Dr. Cathey deals with what he accurately labels “Merchants of hate” the Southern Poverty Law Center. Any Southern historian or patriot should be familiar with this group and its founder, Morris Dees. Dees and his group are infamous across the country and their checkered reputation is more than deserved.

Dr. Cathey demonstrates that he understands our problem when he titles chapter 15 in this book Taking Down Our Monuments is Part of the Marxist Campaign to Transform America. You can’t say it any plainer than that. Unfortunately today, it seems that many Southern patriots can’t seem to wrap their minds around this truth. If they are ever to be effective in standing up for their heritage they need to begin to grasp who their enemies really are!

In the middle of his book, after displaying examples of all the cultural Marxist agendas arrayed against us, lest we become weary in well doing, Dr. Cathey gives us commentary about the true hope of Southern Christian patriots when he notes the Nativity of our Lord. He says: “And although our Lord and Saviour indeed came first to the Jews, and offered them His reparative Grace and Salvation, it was by no means to be limited to them. Indeed, His message was universal (as it had been to Abraham). And those Hebrews who accepted the Messiah–and those gentiles who also joined them–became the Church, the ‘New’ Israel, receptor of God’s Grace and holder of His promises and carrier of His Light unto all the world.” In these often dark days of egregious cultural Marxist offenses against our heritage and culture we need to remember that our Lord is ultimately in control of all history and therefore, our efforts to preserve our culture and present the truth to our people and others are not in vain, even if we do not live to see the results of those efforts.

In part four of his book Dr. Cathey deals with eight Southern heroes and two demons. He presents to us commentary about each of these men, from Nathaniel Macon, who was instrumental in giving us our concept of states’ rights, to James Johnston Pettigrew, who fought at Gettysburg, and who said: “Local attachments are pronounced, by the modern school of social philosophers, to be relics of barbarism, ignorance and prejudice, forgetting that prejudices are given us by the all-wise Deity, as well as reasoning faculties, and equally for some beneficent purpose…Patriotism, an attachment to, a preference for one’s own home, is still a virtue prolific of measureless good, and for its foundation rests upon enlightened prejudice.”

Also included in this section are President Jefferson Davis and Robert Lewis Dabney. Dabney was probably one of the most prescient men of his time. He understood national issues and had the foresight to see where this country would logically go as a result of the Northern victory in the war. After the war he devoted much effort to writing about the problems with public education, the womens’ rights movement and many other controversial issue of that day. Reading Dabney’s comments in many of these critical areas and then checking out where some of those issues are at in our own day, I have to conclude that Dabney had a foresight in his day that few had. He wrote to warn people of where we were headed, but few listened to him. More’s the pity, for he was right on target.

Dr. Cathey continued on with commentary about Mel Bradford and Eugene Genovese, and Senator Sam Ervin. He even had comments about movie actor Randolph Scott, born in Virginia but raised in North Carolina. I recall him from my younger days, having seen many of his Western movies (Westerns have always been my favorites). Scott quit doing movies around 1960 because he saw the new trend in movies with all the nudity and rotten language and didn’t feel he wanted to be part of all that. Who can blame him?

Then, Dr. Cathey dealt with the two demons–Abraham Lincoln and Victor Davis Hanson. I won’t go into the sainted Mr. Lincoln here. Most who will read this already know where he was coming from and over the years I have written lots of stuff about him that was far from complimentary–but then he didn’t deserve any compliments. Victor Davis Hanson doesn’t deserve any either. I remember, years ago now, reading an article someone sent me that Hanson had written explaining how beneficial Sherman’s March had been for the South. I recall reading that and thinking “He’s has to be kidding, right?” I’ve read more than enough about Sherman’s March to know what it did to the South and anyone perverse enough to regard that atrocity as beneficial has to have a very unusual sense of “beneficial” in my estimation.

Included in Dr. Cathey’s book is a section on reviews of books and films contemporary to our day. Some of these were positive, but that was a few years ago. Nowadays anything positive about the South ends up on the “cutting room floor.” I recall reading reviews for Gods and Generals back in 2003. I felt it was a good movie. The reviewers trashed it. I don’t bother doing movies anymore–there is so little I like–but when I used to go I had one criteria I usually followed–if the reviewers all hate it then it’s probably worth going to see.

Dr. Cathey did take note of Dinesh D’Souza’s latest film Death of a Nation. D’Souza is another of those new film makers who seems to believe Lincoln was somewhat of a deity who gave his life to destroy slavery in the “racist” South. I’ve read enough of D’Souza’s tortured renditions of our history to know he doesn’t grasp it, has no feel for what really happened or how folks really felt about slavery or most other questions pertaining to the South and its heritage. So, unless you are one of those folks goes can knowledgeably critique D’Souza’s film work, don’t waste your money!

Dr. Cathey critiques several books in this section, one of them one I reviewed awhile back, Rekilling Lincoln, written by my good friend, and co-author of Lincoln’s Marxists with me, Donnie Kennedy. He points out many of the important points Donnie dealt with in Rekilling Lincoln.

There is so much more important material in Dr. Cathey’s book I cannot begin to cover it all. I had to skip many things I would have loved to have commented on that would have made this review ponderous enough that no one would have read it.
Dr. Cathey’s book is a must read for anyone who sees what goes on today in regard to our heritage and history. He realizes what is happening and yet, as a Christian, he encourages us to persevere and to have hope that what we do is not in vain. This is a message I needed to hear. After almost five decades of doing what I do, with political activism and Southern heritage, often with little positive result that I can see, I tend to get discouraged at times. I need to be reminded that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1).

This very readable book by Dr. Cathey has been published by The Scuppernong Press, P O Box 1724,  Wake Forest, North Carolina  27588 http://www.scuppernongpress.com and sells for $28.00. I heartily recommend it.

The Leftists’ Paranoid Fear Of Southern Heritage

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Way back in 1988 (ancient history now) I had an article published in the National Educator dealing with the extreme efforts of the NAACP to have Confederate flags removed from the capitol buildings in several Southern states. This, just to let you all know, that attacks on Southern culture and heritage have been going on much longer than the last couple years.

Needless to say, this sort of Orwellian activity on the part of the NAACP and other anti-South organizations has continued and steadily increased unabated to this hour. The NAACP  has, for at least the past three decades, been on a prolonged feeding frenzy when it comes to anything Confederate, no matter how small or insignificant it might be.

The NAACP’s checkered history has been a wonderment to behold over the years. They’ve had problems with some of their people in high positions over the years, and during the early 1990s they seemed about to go under until some little leftist bird chirped in their ear about how attacking all things Confederate might just revive their sagging membership roles if the propaganda were presented in the right format. They were quick to pick up on this theme and have literally ridden it to death ever since. And I guess it must have put some long green in the coffers for them, as hard as they’ve pushed it. Here is a group, supposedly formed to help black folks, yet it had all white presidents until at least some time in the late 1960s. That tells you something right there.

An excellent expose of the NAACP can be found in the book Biographical Dictionary of the Left, Volume 1, by Francis X. Gannon. It was published by Western Islands back in 1969, so you might have to hunt around by now to find a copy of it. If it has been reprinted I am not aware of it.

Since the early 1990s I have read literally scores of articles dealing with the ongoing leftists agenda  of removing Confederate flags, monuments, and other symbols from government schools, public  buildings and parks and other places, and since 2015, this campaign from the Left, and other useful idiots as well, has literally reached a fever pitch. It’s like the world will end for those people unless they get every remembrance of anything Confederate removed before Trump’s attempt at a second term–something else they want to do away with!

I have taken note of this disgusting process and believe me, it’s enough to gag a maggot! It is a classic cultural Marxist exercise in ethnic cleansing.

Many people ignorantly think the federal government never really got into the education field until 1958, when Sputnik supposedly came along. They’ve not read their history. Of course if they attended government schools they were given precious little real history to read, so I suppose you can’t really blame them. If the truth were known, Washington got into public education, at least publicly, as early as 1862. At that time, the real American Revolution, the War of Northern Aggression, was going full blast and the Yankee Empire was not sure it was going to win.

According to an article in Chronicles magazine by author John Chodes several years ago, it was in this questionable atmosphere  that Congress jumped in where angels feared to tread, and passed the Morrill Act. This act just about amounted to direct federal aid for education. The stated objective of the act was to: “fund colleges that teach agriculture and the mechanic arts, via money raised through federal land-grant sales.” According to Mr. Chodes: “The true objective (of the act) was to bring the Northern perspective to the reconquered areas of the South, to teach the rebels’ children respect for national authority–to break their rebellious spirit forever.  The three R’s had absolutely nothing to do with this landmark bill.” Knowing that he who pays the piper calls the tune, is anyone really surprised?

Senator J. P. Wickersham said, in 1865, that the great majority of non-slave-holding whites in the South were “deplorably ignorant” and it was this ignorance  that helped rebel leaders to enlist so many of them in Confederate armies. Wickersham felt that as long as they remained “ignorant” they would remain the pawns of “political demagogues.” In other words, unless the Southern “poor white trash” were properly “educated” with the proper Northern perspective, they would continue to be swayed by such banal considerations as Christianity, states’ rights, constitutional government, and a whole host of other such “unenlightened” doctrines. So, if only you could give them a proper Northern education, they could then become the pawns of “enlightened” Yankee/Marxist demagogues.

Wickersham then went on to state that: “A republican form of government cannot long last without providing a system of free schools.” Read that one again folks, while you choke on it! Anyone gullible enough to swallow that brand of bovine fertilizer deserves the upset stomach he gets from it. The last thing any true republic needs is “free (government) schools” or “free education for all children in public schools” as that vaunted champion of humanity, Karl Marx, so succinctly stated in The Communist Manifesto. I hate to differ with such educational champions as Wickersham and Marx, but I don’t think the average Southerner was nearly as ignorant as these men try to make out.

Senator Morrill, in seeking to justify his authorship of the Morrill Act said: “The role of the national government is to mold the character of the American people.” Wrong, Senator!!! The “role” of the national government, or of any government at any level, is defined in Romans 13. If these politicians in the 1860s had such a statist mindset, do you wonder why we have such problems today? And some naïve people today still think that socialism in America didn’t rear its ugly head until FDR in the 1930s! As my daughter says “wake up and smell the coffee.” You are at least a 100 years off in your thinking.

Government schools will ever continue to pass off abolitionist fables to the unsuspecting as “history.” They dare not inform you of the Christian revivals that took place in the Confederate armies during the war. And they will never inform you about the Christian conviction and dedication of men like Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Davis, and many many others. All you will ever get from today’s “historians” (and I use that term quite loosely here) is tales about how these men were slave-owners and, therefore, all white supremacists. End of discussion!

But not to worry, both the leftist NAACP and the left-leaning government school system have plenty of other help in making sure the average American has no clue as to what Southern heritage and history were and are all about. One who has done yeoman duty in this coverup has been court historian James McPherson. Over the years McPherson has been a favorite of the political left, having been cited numerous times on the World Socialist Website, and having also admitted, quite proudly, that Abraham Lincoln championed the leaders of the 1848 socialist revolts in Europe, and those same socialists, in turn, supported his presidency. If you need more information in this area get a copy of Donnie Kennedy’s and my book Lincoln’s Marxists. After you read it, donate it to your local library so other folks can also learn.

If you don’t think the leftists have been on a mission to trash Southern culture then you obviously have not kept track of the perambulations of outfits like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Now we have to admit that the leftists are really the “up front” guys in this cultural genocide against the South. There are people in back of them that promote and finance their attacks on the South and its heritage, people that want us and our Southern culture destroyed every bit as much as the leftists do. Lots of those people reside in the Swamp in Washington and are denizens of the Deep State. Their vision of a New World Order has no  room in it for the preservation of Southern history, heritage and culture, particularly if any of that relates to Christianity. Shorn of all their sophistry, that’s where their attack on us and our heritage is really headed. In the final analysis, that’s what it’s all about.

Smithsonian Trashes Southern Heritage

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

Many have naively thought for decades that the Smithsonian was a place where you could learn real history about events in this country and the rest of the world as well. A recent article in the Smithsonian Magazine for December of 2018 has given the lie to such foolishness.

The article can be viewed at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/costs-confederacy-special-report-180970731 If you want something to really upset your supper, this is it! It was written by Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler, both of which writers have impeccable reputations with all the liberal journals in the country, the Washington Post, New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation and others.

This article makes no pretense at objectivity. It is a thoroughgoing hit piece with Southern heritage, culture and history squarely in the crosshairs.
Their whole approach to the history of the South and of the War of Northern Aggression is that it was entirely all about slavery and white supremacy and nothing else. They visited Beauvoir, asked a lot of questions about slavery and when they were told the war was not all about slavery they rejected that information. In noting the actions of war re-enactors they saw while they were there, they noted: “Their cannons boomed, muskets cracked, men fell. The Confederates beat back the Federals. An honor guard in gray fired a deafening volley. It may have been a scripted victory for the Rebels, but it was a genuine triumph for the racist ideology known as the Lost Cause…”

From that searing commentary they go on to discuss Confederate monuments. If you understand the mysterious liberal mystique you already know where these two “gentlemen” are going. Regarding Confederate monuments, they say “First, far from simply being markers of historic events and people, as proponents argue, these memorials were created and funded by Jim Crow governments to pay homage to a slave-owning society and to serve as blunt assertions of dominance over African-Americans….A century and a half after the Civil War, American taxpayers are still helping to sustain the defeated Rebels’ racist doctrine, the Lost Cause. First advanced in 1866 by a Confederate partisan named Edward Pollard, it maintains that the Confederacy was based on a noble ideal, the Civil War was not about slavery, and slavery was benign…”

And then these two worthies show where they are really coming from. They quote Heidi Beirich, from the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. Beirich said “Confederate sites play to the white-supremacist imagination. They are treated as sacred by white supremacists and represent what this country should be and what it would have been” if the Civil War had been lost. I hate to burst the racist bubble of these two men, but nowadays, anyone who quotes the Southern Poverty Law Center betrays their ignorance. That organization has such a checkered reputation that quotes coming from it are no longer considered credible, in fact the organization itself is hardly credible. Check them out on the internet sometime. You can really get an eyeful!

One thing I noted in this article, with all their blather about slaveowners all being “white supremacists” they don’t have a word to say about black slaveowners, of which there were a considerable number. or about Native American slaveowners, of which there were also a goodly number. That’s part of the history you are not supposed to be aware of.

They go on to complain about the amount of money spent by states to preserve Confederate monuments. No complaints about how much is spent to preserve Yankee monuments. I guess there is no problem with those expenditures, just the Confederate ones.

They visited several sites in the South where guides explained to them what the war was  all about (not slavery) but the slavery issue was the one thing they continued to harp on no matter where they went. You could tell, that, for these two, whether it was true or no, this was the issue they were going to write about–no matter what. Their minds were made up before they even started–like so much of the liberal (socialist) media in our day.

They noted that W.E.B. DuBois, one of the movers and shakers in the early NAACP was quoted as saying: “The truth of the matter would be an inscription something like this: sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.” Here they are quoting a man, a dedicated leftist, who, before he passed from this mortal coil, joined the Communist Party, that great Marxist organization we all know has promoted freedom and liberty for all, right?

About two thirds of the way thorough the article they note someone else that compares the Confederacy to Nazi Germany. I could have quoted lots more of this, but reading some of their diatribe, quite frankly, was making me sick to my stomach! If people like these two display the level of what has been taught for history in our high schools and universities in this country, then no wonder we have major problems. Some kind of major study needs to be done as to what our young people are being taught for history.

If this obvious propaganda piece is the best that the Smithsonian can do then they should hang their heads in shame!

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction–or do you love Big Brother?

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Many Southern folks were, quite naturally, bitter after the War of Northern Aggression was formerly (if not actually) over and the Marxist/Abolitionist cultural pogrom called “reconstruction” was foisted upon them. They’d seen their country pillaged and burned by Yankee/Marxists during the war and now they were seeing the last ounce of blood being wrung from it via “reconstruction.” Although I’ve mentioned it before it’s worth noting again–the term “reconstruction” is really a Marxist term. When Karl Marx lavished praise on Abraham Lincoln, one of the things he praised him for  was that he was fighting for “…the reconstruction of a social world.” So please, get it fixed in your minds that “reconstruction” in the South was really nothing more than Marxism in living color.

One bitter Southerner was a man named Innes Randolph, who penned the words to a song many of us unreconstructed folks know and enjoy, entitled Oh I’m a Good Old Rebel. After mentioning his hate for “the Yankee nation” and its flag and founding documents, Randolph closed his song with: I can’t take up my musket and fight ’em (the Yankees) now no more, but I ain’t gonna love ’em now, that is certain sure. I don’t want no pardon for what I was and am. I won’t be reconstructed and I don’t care a damn.

Whether you totally agree with all of Randolph’s comments and sentiments (some Southern folks don’t completely) is not the real  He expressed a viewpoint that was, at least partially, natural to many after the war’s end. The wounds were not healed yet, it was way too soon for that–and “reconstruction”  was never intended to heal them–then or today!

“Reconstruction” was put in place to do two things. First, it was to teach the Southerners that you don’t mess with the central, collectivist regime in Washington, because, from here on, that’s where the real power is for the forseeable future–the power we today refer to as The Deep State. This was the very dubious benefit of the North having won the war–they gave us the Deep State that all Swamp Creatures today know and love.

Second, it was to do exactly as Marx said–to reconstruct the social order of the Old South, their culture and their total worldview, and to remake it over into something in accord with the gosh-awful collectivist mentality of the North. The Marxist/abolitionist/reconstructionists realized they would have a problem doing that to any extent with the Southern soldiers who had just opposed them in the war, and so they didn’t spend much time trying to preach the gospel of Northern collectivism to them. Rather, they imported government schools in from the North and mentally savaged the “rebels’ children.”

That those movers and shakers in Sodom on the Potomac felt that centralized government was now the order of the day is evident from some of their comments. Just look at Thaddeus Stevens remarks about the “perpetual ascendency of the party of the Union.” If that wasn’t a call for a one party state then no one ever heard one. And then there was the comment by Senator Justin Morrill where he said: “The role of the national government is to mold the character of the American people.” You have to wonder whoever told him that! Comments such as those of Stevens and Morrill would make any Marxist, even today, just drool with anticipation–why these men though along the exact same lines as good old Uncle Karl (Marx). The Washington Establishment was, so it appeared, already heavily addicted to the heady wine of totalitarian centralized governance, that would spread its tentacles across the country, east to west, and run everyone’s life from one seat of central power. You can see why the concept of real states’ rights was anathema to those disciples of Marx, and why Reformed or orthodox Christianity was too. Those men totally embraced the Unitarian concept of the highest power belonging not to God, but to the State (nation). So if you wonder where the concept of today’s Deep State came from, look no further!

In 1866 the Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction held hearings. Mind you, in many cases, these hearings were conducted within a year or less after the shooting part of the War was over. As with most congressional committees, much of what went on was an exercise in irrelevance. I have read a fair bit of the testimony presented in these hearings, though I probably need to go over some of it again–but at some point when I have a stronger stomach!

If you’ve ever wondered why some congressmen sound like perpetual candidates for a home in la-la land you can learn why from reading The Report Of The Joint Committee On Reconstruction.  My copy is a reprint, printed in 1969, by Negro Universities Press, a division of Greenwood Publishing Corp. in New York. Some of the questions those august legislators asked might lead you to believe they were George Orwell’s spiritual grandfathers.

On February 7, 1866, the committee took testimony from one Charles Douglas Gray of August County, Virginia. Mr. Gray was examined by a Mr. Howard, who asked, among other questions: “Do you think that those persons in the county who took up arms against the United States are beginning to regret that they stuck at Uncle Sam?” Talk about leading questions! As for who “struck” at who first, the Southern perception of that would be much different than the standard abolitionist rhetoric that passes today for history. But,  then, that difference was part of the reason for implementing “reconstruction” wasn’t it?

Howard then further questioned Mr. Gray: “How do rebels that have been pardoned there generally speak of the government of the United States–in terms of respect, or of contumely and defiance?” Come on now, how did Howard expect ex-Confederates to feel only ten month after hostilities had, in the main, ceased, warm and fuzzy toward their conquerors?

On February 8th, this same Mr. Howard examined  M. D. Corse of Alexandria, Virginia. He put to Mr. Corse this question: “To use a common expression, do you think the secessionists generally love the government of the United States?” Folks, that had to be the dumbest question of the decade! Did Howard really expect that secessionists were going to have fallen in love with the U.S. government by early 1866? That unhappy result wouldn’t come for decades yet and when it did come, it would be the result of “reconstruction’s” mandated government school system in the South. When Dr. J. B. Johnson was asked by Howard: “Does the secession part of the people generally feel kindly toward the government of the United States” Johnson replied “They manifest no opposition.” Such an understated reply was remarkable for its restraint.

As you read through this testimony you find, again and again, that one of the basic questions these “reconstruction” inquisitors asked Southerners was “Do you love (Big Brother) the government of the United States?” Some of these Southern folks thusly questioned have to have laughed up their coatsleeves at being touted with such inane questions. This was the 19th century version of “Hey, the federal government has  just shafted you and your family–don’t you just love us for it?”

However, some Southern replies to some of these questions were serious and more than a bit revealing–if you know the real history. A Jaquelin M. Wood was examined by Mr. Howard on February 9th and was asked the question: “How do they regard Robert E. Lee?” The answer was “They look upon him as the greatest man of the nation, and the best man…They often say they were conquered by numbers, by the influence of foreigners.” The question was also asked, and it was a leading question,–how did Southerners feel about the number of Yankee troops in the field. And the reply was “Yes; there was more than they calculated upon in the first place. They account for it by saying that Foreigners reinforced the Yankees…” Now where do you suppose those foreigners all were, and where did they come from? You don’t supposed some of them could have been the Marxist/socialist Forty-Eighters from Europe do you? Oh probably not–after all, our current “historians” hardly even mention “those people.”

The Hypocrisy of “Reconstruction”

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

There were several reasons for the post-war “reconstruction” imposed upon the South that are seldom, if ever, mentioned in the “history” books in those government indoctrination centers we charitably continue to refer to as public schools.

One over-riding reason for reconstruction that is never mentioned was the almost fanatical hatred for the South, its culture and its institutions, especially the white South, among Northern Yankee/Marxist radicals, both political and religious. Hatred for the white South motivated the majority of those people much more than did their supposed and pretended “love” for the black man, which was, in most cases, a complete charade.

Another reason for reconstruction was their fervent desire to reshape the South into their own image, to completely revolutionize it, to change the theological outlook of the South. This is almost never mentioned, as the theological reasons for the War are never mentioned. And while seldom mentioned, it was a major goal. One of their first steps was the introduction of government schools into the South. These nefarious institutions had existed in the North for decades, but were hardly known in the South except on the most local levels where parental control was a major factor, and where state control was not even a factor.

Still more was accomplished later on with the introduction of new theologies into the South, starting shortly after the supposed climax of reconstruction. These theologies were intended to replace the Reformed, or orthodox theology of the South with something that would theologically neutralize the people-both with a pro-Zionist outlook and an altered worldview. If you care to learn more in this area I would suggest Joseph Canfield’s book The Incredible Scofield and his Book, published by Ross House Books, http://www.rosshousebooks.org  Mr. Canfield, now deceased, spent years digging into all this, traveling all around the country to come up with evidence. This was before the internet. Yet he came up with some very interesting and informative information.

Another reason for reconstruction was to entrench the Republican Party into “perpetual ascendency” in the South, something that seems to have finally occurred in our own day. This was done by disenfranchising white voters who were Democrats and enfranchising black voters. This was supposed to ensure perpetual Republican Party control–a virtual one-party state! That was back when the Democratic Party still had some men of principle in it. In years following, a collectivist clique managed to do the exact same thing by taking control of both major political parties and guaranteeing that no third party candidates would have any real chance of doing anything. George Wallace almost scared them silly in 1968 with his American Independent Party. In 1972 they made darn sure he never had a chance to do that again!

Interestingly enough, Thaddeus Stevens and Abraham Lincoln actually saw eye to eye on some points of reconstruction. In regard to Lincoln’s reconstruction plan, Stevens said it: “proposes to treat the Rebel territory as a conqueror alone would treat it. His plan is wholly outside of and unknown to the Constitution. But it is within the legitimate province of the laws of war…with his usual shrewdness and caution he (Lincoln) is picking out the mortar from the joints until eventually the whole tower must fall.” Lincoln never admitted that the Southern states had seceded. He said they only tried to. To have admitted that they were actually outside of the Union would have been to admit their right to secede. Stevens disagreed with Lincoln here.

The radical/abolitionist Republicans were a bit embarrassed by the fact that, in spite of all their flowery bovine fertilizer about emancipation and equality, only six Northern states permitted blacks to vote. Yet when, after the War, Louisiana sent new congressmen to Washington, Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner worked to block their admission to Congress on the grounds that the  Louisiana constitution did not permit Negro suffrage. So you couldn’t seat a congressman from a Southern state where blacks could not vote, but it seems it was perfectly okay to seat congressmen from Northern states that didn’t allow blacks to vote. This was the typical double standard for most of “those people”–a sneak preview of the cultural Marxism that was to burst upon the scene in the twentieth century! The Northern radicals worked mightily at concentrating on the moat in their brother’s eye while studiously ignoring the beam in their own eye (Matthew 7:1-5).

In regard to voting rights for blacks, the Northern states had, shall we say, a slightly less than spotless reputation. Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Minnesota all rejected Negro suffrage in 1865! One can hardly claim that any of these states were part and parcel of the “heart of Dixie!”

In arguing over the illegal 14th Amendment and the future reconstruction of the South in Congress, one man asked Stevens if he could build a penitentiary big enough to hold 8 million people in the South.  “Yes” shouted Stevens–“a penitentiary which is built at the point of the bayonet down below, and if they undertake to come here we will shoot them down.” Don’t  you get the subtle impression that Thaddeus Stevens were really a nice guy at heart? He had the soul of Marx and the conscience of Robespierre!

Claude Bowers wrote, as we have noted previously and quoted from, The Tragic Era.  It was written in 1929. You may still be able to locate a copy in some used book store that the thought police have somehow missed. I got my copy in a little used book store up in Northern Indiana, which I am sure the thought police must have missed due to its Northern locale. Although I’ve been told it has been reprinted, so the thought police may have to again start making their rounds. You just never know where this “subversive” literature will turn up.

If you do a little digging you will find that Bowers’ book has been pooh-poohed by many of our current crop of Marxist “historians.” Marxist professor Eric Foner has also written a book on reconstruction and, needless to say, he attempts to shred Bowers’ book in his tome. If you want the truth about reconstruction, get Bowers’ book if you can and ignore Foner’s Marxist diatribe.

In the preface of his book Bowers  wrote the following in regard to Washington politicians: “”Never have  American public men in reasonable positions, directing the destiny of the nation, been so brutal, hypocritical, and corrupt. The Constitution was treated as a doormat on which politicians and army officers wiped their feet after wading in the muck.” Sounds like he was describing “the Swamp” of the 1860s. You have to admit, though, he described the politicians accurately. And he labeled reconstruction as a revolution. He said: “The story of this revolution (reconstruction) is one of desperate enterprises by daring and unscrupulous men, some of whom had genius of a high order. In these no American can take pride. The evil that they did lives after them. They changed the course of history…” The evil that those men did does, indeed, live after them, right down to our own day! The “reconstruction” those people perpetrated, using the South as a guinea pig, was eventually spread nationwide, thanks to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. This tainted era  spawned a massive increase in federal bureaucracy into the lives of all Americans, something that many of us realize has never been reversed!

Thus they paved the way for their spiritual grandchildren to return in the 1960s with more federal troops under the guise of promoting “civil rights” which was really only the next  phase of the continuing reconstruction.

The Foundation of “Civil Rights” (that you will never get from the “history” books)

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

After the Confederate States of America succumbed to Yankee/Marxist might in 1865 (the Confederacy never officially surrendered) there arose a mighty clamour  for “civil rights” for blacks in the South. Notice that there was no similar clamour for them in the North–only in the South! With the returning remnants of the Confederate army came yet another “army”–the Yankee/Marxist rabble, er, pardon me, I meant the Yankee army of occupation–composed of Northern public education proponents, slick politicians, carpetbagger fortune hunters, and the ever-present Freedmen’s Bureau.

After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (and even today, the jury is still out on who was ultimately responsible for that) the radical abolitionists in Congress repudiated Lincoln’s “reconstruction” policies and substituted their own instead. There had been notable differences in what Lincoln wanted to do, which would have gained him additional patronage and what the radicals wanted to  do which would have gained them more patronage. I am surprised  that this particular situation has not been more explored as a possible reason for the assassination. But, then, that wouldn’t have gone along with the game plan, would it?

Needless to say, the complete hatred of the abolitionist radicals for anything Southern was pathological. In March of 1867 they forced the South under martial law,  deprived the white population of voting rights, redress in courts and representation. Carpetbagger politicians and just-freed ex-slaves were handed the power to govern the South. Author Thomas DiLorenzo wrote: “The so-called Reconstruction only poured salt into ‘the nation’s wounds,’ an inevitable consequence of the precedents established by Lincoln in disregarding constitutional liberties and international laws for the sake of politics…The primary effect, if not the intent, of the ‘Reconstruction’ policies of 1865-77 was to centralize and consolidate state power in Washington, D.C., and to establish Republican Party political hegemony that would last for some seventy years.” Lincoln had a view of “reconstruction” that would have allowed him to retain most of the power. The radical Congress had yet another view of “reconstruction” that would have given Congress the power to administer it rather than the president. Mr. Lincoln’s assassination conveniently settled that little question in favor of the radical Congress.

The war’s end marked the beginning of our modern “civil rights” movement, what has been termed a “socio-political experiment  with the freed slaves–by Northern interests–which has left  an indelible impression in the Southern mind with regard to the negro in politics.” The  point has been made that, had the Yankee/Marxist mentalities in Washington handled “reconstruction” differently the results would have been much better for all concerned. That’s probably true, but, unfortunately, the collectivists in Washington did exactly what they wanted to do. It was all part of an ongoing agenda lasting down into our own day. It was not done by accident, but by design–the design of class struggle–black against white in the South–and it worked!

Booker T. Washington, the well-known black educator, had some telling thoughts on “reconstruction.”  Having avoided the propaganda of Yankee/Marxist agitators, his thinking was clear on this issue. Washington, in his autobiography Up From Slavery wrote the following: “Though I was but little more than a youth during the period of reconstruction, I had the feeling that mistakes were being made, and that things could not remain in the condition that they were in very long. I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was in large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced. In many ways it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office, and that there was an element in the North that wanted to punish Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of the Southern whites. I felt the Negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end.”

It’s interesting that, in a North, supposedly so cognizant of “civil rights” and black opinions, that Washington’s opinions and thoughts on this subject were not given more serious consideration. But, then, that would not have fit the radical agenda! Mr. Washington later wrote: “I saw colored men who were members of the state legislatures, and county officers,  who, in some cases, could not read or write, and whose morals were as weak as their education.” That’s exactly what the radicals wanted.

Realizing the statist mindset of these Northern “reconstructors” it is highly doubtful that they sought results other than what they got.  They desired a “reconstruction” that would, first of all, rub the South’s nose in the mud for even daring to resist the collectivist “power from on high” in Washington, D.C. Secondly, they wanted a South purged of all its theological leanings toward Reformed doctrine and the biblical concept of local self-government.

One clique of Northern troublemakers that was largely responsible for the early shaping of the civil rights movement in the South was the Union League. According to Kent Steffgen, in his book The Bondage of the Free: “The League was an organization started in Ohio in 1862 when it appeared the South might be on its way to victory. Raising troops within the states for the Union army, the league paid their expenses, sent supplies to the front, and distributed political literature. Within a year after its birth, the League had established itself in 18 Northern states and transferred its headquarters to New York City.” We might wonder, why New York City, and who ran the organization there? Of course there was severe opposition to the war in New York City, which may have had something to do with that.

During wartime one can understand the formation of such a group. Perhaps, sensing the reluctance in much of the North to wage active aggression against the South, particularly in the Midwest, the group’s founders wanted to do something to counter pro-Southern sentiment. The Union League was their effort in that direction.

However, once the war was officially over, the Union League should have been disbanded. But it’s so hard to abolish what you have promoted that the organization just hung in there–and moved South! It then became the promotional arm of the Republican Party, the supposed “party of small government.” The research Donnie Kennedy and I did for our book Lincoln’s Marxists has given the lie to that “small government” fable.

The League went about setting up local Union League Clubs throughout the South, especially in the areas of the heaviest black population (all the better to manipulate you, my dear). The Union League or “Loyal League” as it was known in some areas, at once became a semi-secret organization for white Northern radicals and Southern blacks. Does that trend sound much different than the way the “civil rights” movement operated in this country in more recent decades, and even today to some extent?

According to Kent Steffgen: “The Union League henceforth worked for radical reconstruction of the Southern states, punishment of Southern leaders, confiscation of property for equal distribution among the Negroes, and for Negro suffrage…Each unit operated as a secret oath-bound order  with a constitution, a ritual, passwords, obligations, etc., all of which was designed to appeal to the freed Negro…the Loyal or Union Leagues were administered by carpetbaggers who wasted no time setting out to build a political force for themselves.” So this was the true foundation of “civil rights.” It was not a movement begun out of any real desire to better the lot of ex-slaves, or to help them to adapt to a new life in a changed environment, but rather a movement to ensure that Northern power brokers in the South could hang onto their new positions.

It was a political tool for Northern radicals, through which they could use the blacks to perpetuate themselves in power. Their whole scheme of property confiscation was thoroughly Marxist in sentiment, as were its perpetrators.  Their entire program was carefully thought out and planned–because it is still working today, with few people the wiser, after 150 years!

“Yankee Empire”

A book review by Al Benson Jr.

Well, the Kennedy Brothers have done it again! Their latest book, complements of Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina is Yankee Empire. The title is self-explanatory and demonstrates that the Yankees, both yesterday and today were and are not satisfied with their own country–they want as many countries as they can control. In other words they want a world empire, undoubtedly to be the seat of the New World Order. Their quest for empire began with their conquest of the Confederate States of America and with that conquest they set a pattern for how they would henceforth attack and eventually control any country they set their sights on.

The Kennedy’s explain how they did this, not only in the South, but also in Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines and how, since the end of the 19th century, they have done it all over the world.

When you look at how they did it you see a definite pattern to their conquests. I have never seen anyone else explain it quite the way the Kennedy Brothers do, but what they say makes sense.

On page 17, they start to explain: “After the conquest of the Confederate States, a new system of government, both in the Southern States and the federal government was imposed upon the South. These post-war governments which were imposed upon the South, both federal and state, were created not with the consent of the governed but by the compulsion of the occupying imperialistic power–the victorious Yankee Empire. These “new” governments were, both then and now, illegitimate governments. All governments exercising power in the South, subsequent to the conquest of the Confederate States of America, were and still are illegitimate.

The Kennedys noted that apologists for the Yankee position argue that the Southern States were not “true democracies” because they didn’t allows blacks, free or slave, to vote. They conveniently ignore the fact that the United States was in the exact same position–their blacks, free and slave, couldn’t vote either.

After the War was over the Yankee Empire installed puppet governments in each Southern State and then withdrew, leaving these illegitimate puppet governments to control the conquered Southern territory. The Yankee Empire then followed this same scenario in the places they started taking over at the end of the 19th century. By the early 1900s the U.S. had had troops in Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, China, and Panama and even though the troops eventually left, the Empire maintained invisible control. Over the years the U.S. has stuck its nose into just about all the Central American countries as well as several in the Middle East. All you have to do to see that the U.S. is indeed a world empire is to check today to see how many countries we have troops stationed in. Last time I checked it was well over a hundred!

On pages 52 and 53 they note the parallels between the conquest of the Confederate States and the Kingdom of Hawaii. They note that “In the case of Hawaii, the United States used two excuses to invade and conquer the Kingdom of Hawaii: protect American property and protect the ‘rights’ of Americans. Another technique to hide the raw fact of invasion and conquest is to demonize the invaded people as backward, barbarian, and subhuman. The Yankee invader of Hawaii had honed his skills in demonizing the people to be subjugated during the War for Southern Independence.. In 1862, upon the floor of the United States House of Representatives, Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham noted how radicals in the North had ‘taught the people of the North and West not only to hate but to despise’ Southerners. This ‘teaching’ of hate and/or loathing of a soon-to-be-invaded and conquered people is always indispensable in paving the way for one people to psychologically prepare themselves to engage in immoral or criminal acts against ‘the others,’ those who do not deserve the usual respect given to normal people.” You have to admit, in today’s cultural Marxist society, this is more and more the way Southerners and their history and culture are being treated by the “enlightened” Yankee/Marxists of our day.

The Kennedys observe, accurately, on page 66, that “As harsh as it may sound, Imperial America was born with the death of the Confederate States of America. With the death of REAL States’ Rights, the federal government became an authority unto itself–just like all other empires.” This is where it has been ever since. They accurately describe the new “American” mindset as “a merger of Yankee commercial/financial nationalism and Yankee secularized religion that produced a new Manifest Destiny–as God’s elect–the Yankee Empire would reconstruct the world.” Yankee preachers felt that “the free North…must one day carry liberty all over the world…We are its divinely appointed representatives and defenders…Our influence will renew and unite the world.” Sounds like these people were even ahead of George Bush in the promotion of a “New World Order” only they just didn’t call it that yet.

On pages 114-118 they deal with “reconstruction” both active and passive. They describe active reconstruction as what went on while the Yankee troops were down here for twelves years, part of which was the “divide and conquer” strategy they used to divide blacks and whites into opposing groups–the old Marxist class struggle technique. They describe passive reconstruction as what “…was enforced by puppet state governments–the leaders of which knew that if they did anything that appeared to be an attempt to reassert the South’s right of self-determination–the Yankee Empire would re-impose Active Reconstruction.” In reference to these puppet governments, they again asserted, on page 122, that “Because these governments violate the principle of ‘consent of the governed,’ they were and still are illegitimate governments.” Another thing they note is that empires (and those who run them) have “no spiritual connection to the land.” This is something that separates the rulers of empire from most of those they have conquered. I’ve lived in the South, both in West Virginia, Louisiana, and briefly in Oklahoma, long enough to realize that Southern folks have a feel for their land and their place on it that exists in few other places, except maybe still some places in the far West.

The Kennedys go on to detail cultural differences between North and South, and they are notable. This I can vouch for personally. Having grown up in the North, but having spent considerable time as an adult in the South and West, I have seen the cultural differences firsthand, which is one reason we now live in the South.
On pages 134-135 they note:: “During the debates in the various states over the possible ratification of the proposed constitution, many notable Southerners warned their countrymen about the dangers associated with joining a union with people in the North (New England and New York, especially Wall Street) who had radically different economic and social interests than the people of the South.”

We realize that no real empire can tolerate a republican form of government where its citizens have any kind of a vote that really makes any difference. Therefore, once the United States turned toward the path of empire the old norms had to be done away with, but they retained the forms, however the real substance was eaten out. Even some Northern folks realized this. On page 163 the Kennedys note the commentary of a citizen of Philadelphia, one William B. Reed who warned that “…if the United States were successful in its war against the South it would result in ‘some new form of consolidated government, alien to our habits and education.’..Many in the North recognized that Lincoln and his cronies were actively engaged in an illegal (unconstitutional) destruction of America’s original Republic of Republics.”

On page 181 the difference between abolitionists is noted. There were abolitionists who sincerely wanted to do away with slavery but they realized with such a momentous issue you had to find a rational way to do it and they worked toward that. Then there were the radical abolitionists of the William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown stripes who wanted the slavery issue settled immediately if not sooner and they were willing to countenance any and all actions, no matter how bloody, to get the slaves freed yesterday! The Kennedys observe that “According to radical abolitionist propaganda, the massacre of all white men, women, and children in the South was justifiable if the end result was the abolition of slavery.” You have to wonder if these modern “hate whitey” types are really nothing more than modern abolitionists who seek to abolish the white race.

There are several chapter in this book that detail what the Yankee Empire did to the South after the War. Chapter 10 notes “Yankee Empire plunders a conquered South. Chapter 11 deals with the “occupation of a once free people, and chapter 12 goes into something we today are too familiar with–“Cultural genocide–the destruction of a proud heritage.” This chapter takes us from the cultural genocide of the 19th century right up until and including today. On page 283 it is stated that: “Yankee efforts to slander the South are not new. The Empire’s prior and ongoing efforts to slander its first victim are necessary for the Yankee Empire’s survival. The ongoing campaign of anti-South bigotry must be maintained IF the Yankee Empire is to maintain its facade of legitimacy! Worldwide recognition of the truth about the War for Southern Independence would destroy the Yankee Empire.” Think about that for awhile!…The Yankee Empire’s campaign of cultural genocide is not new, it did not develop in our lifetime or in response to the horrific act of a lone, crazed gunman in Charleston, South Carolina who had no direct or indirect connection to the Southern Heritage Movement. The Yankee Empire’s campaign of anti-South cultural genocide is a permanent part of its continuing efforts to pacify rising generations of Southerners…Every empire must dehumanize the people of the invaded nation. This is made easy in modern America in which the mainline media, educational institutions and political parties are all supporters of the Yankee Empire…For instance, they constantly imply that any Southerner flying a Confederate flag is an evil racist and/or a neo-Nazi.” Most who will read this know what the drill is by now.

The title of chapter 15 is “The will to be free?” and it is posed as a question rather than a statement. Page 323 states: “While there are certainly a fair number of Southerners who would vote to form a separate Southern Republic, their percentage out of the total population would be less than a majority. Several recent polls have demonstrated that a significant minority of American, including those living in non-Southern states, still believe that a state has the right to secede from the United States and form an independent country.” I have to say that, overall, the percentage of people that feel this way is stronger now than it was when I was younger. People that used to laugh at the idea of secession years ago are not laughing now.

There is much more in this latest book of the Kennedy Brothers than I can’t deal with here. All I have done is to hit some of the high spots. This is a book that needs to be read, and not lightly. There needs to be sober reflection on what the Kennedys have put together in this book. It will not all be fun reading, and some of it will make you angry. If so, that’s good! That means you still have the capacity to get mad when you read about evils and injustices that have been committed against Southern folk. At that point, you need to ask the Lord what your response to that should be.

The Rural South We Love Is Being Removed

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Just today a friend from church sent me a link to The Abbeville Blog that had an interesting article by Nicole Williams on it. Its title was The Tragedy of Land Use in the South. It got my attention because it is something I have been concerned about in the small town we live in here in North Louisiana.

Ms. Williams made several statements I could identify with. She said: “For all the pontificating of the virtues of the South, we have increasingly seen our agrarian landscape polluted by strip malls and environmental contamination. I make the case that neither of these things are inherently Southern in character, and as I believe, are contributing negatives to the soul and character of our region….Our once beautiful towns, villages, and farms have been cheapened by outside influencers and investors determined to exact profits whilst contributing as little as possible to maintaining our communities and the Southern landscape.” I am forced to agree with her.

When we moved to North Louisiana sixteen years ago the small town we located in had an inherent small-town, Southern charm. There was one main street through town, with a hardware store, three restaurants, one of which served a good and inexpensive catfish dinner, and there was an auto parts store, a small market, a gas station, and a couple other businesses. It’s all gone now but the gas station. I used to be able to walk from our house to check our mail, go to  the bank, and do a bit of grocery shopping. Now all that has moved 5-6 miles away and the new businesses coming in, none of which are on the town’s main street anymore, are mostly chain stores. There used to be cotton fields all around and even in the town limits. Some of the fields are still there, but housing developments are rapidly eating up much of the agricultural land.

The town has considerable new debt and there seems to be a big rush to get new businesses in town so there will be more available tax money for the town and business like new video bingo parlors seem to be getting the nod to open up. There was a time when the town would not have considered something like that, but those days seem to be gone. Now, whatever will bring in more tax money is okay.

I have questioned what all this will do to the cultural atmosphere of our town, but nobody in authority here seems to want to hear it. Whatever brings revenue in is now okay. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t want to see the small town in North Louisiana that we moved into and loved end up turning into what looks like a suburb of Chicago, and we seem slowly (but not slowly enough) headed in that direction. This was the kind of thing we came here to get away from.

I realize that some folks here will say that I am just not “progressive” enough, and they are probably right in that I am not progressive. As far as I am concerned, “progressive” is just another word for “socialist.”  And if there’s one thing I ain’t, it’s that! Ask those who know me!

It seems to me that the town’s government is no longer, if they ever were, interested in preserving our small town atmosphere and Southern culture. Now it’s all about the almighty buck and how many new businesses and housing developments we can get in here to expand the tax base.

We are about to get a new administration in town, starting in January. We will see how that works out and what happens. I hate to see a big city atmosphere work its way in here because not only will it destroy our small town Southern distinctives but it will not be good for our young folks here. I hate to see the South, especially the rural and small town South end up turning into what we came here to get away from.