The Planned Erosion of Civil Liberties–then and now

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The firing on Fort Sumter gave Lincoln what he and other Yankee/Marxist radicals in the North wanted–and up-front reason to call for volunteers to mobilize and prepare to invade the South.

Many current “historians” seek to whitewash Lincoln for his usurpation of civil liberties and for the statist bent his administration took on. What they don’t realize is that the Lincoln administration started the push against civil liberties that we see going on even under Trump today. It was never reversed after Lincoln, but rather grew into the federal Leviathan we see in our own day.

Lincoln, at one point, referred to the “mystic chords” of union, as though the Union were some sort of religious entity. Mark Neely Jr., writing in The Fate of Liberty (Oxford University Press, New York)  has sought, at least in my opinion, to exonerate Lincoln for his miserable record in regard to civil liberties. Like most contemporary historians, Neely seems to think centralized state power was the political messiah for the country. He wrote of Lincoln: “Still lacking a systematic ideology of nationalism to buttress government  power, he grasped at any available practical measure that promised to meet the crisis of dissolution.” As has been noted earlier, Lincoln seems to have had no qualms about dissolution, or secession, when the socialists tried it in Europe in 1848, so why in America in 1860? Could it have been because the South was mainly Christian and not socialist? Could it have been because the South footed over 80% of the tab to keep the country going? Was Mr. Lincoln deathly afraid of losing his cash cow? Lincoln didn’t grapple too long with the problem of “national ideology” for Neely wrote shortly that: “Once he suspended the writ of habeas corpus without suffering dire political consequences,  similar actions grew easier and easier.”

Lincoln depended on Secretary of State William H. Seward for his initial assault on America’s God-given liberties. Later, he would depend on Edwin M. Stanton, but Seward filled the bill for awhile.

It would appear, if we do some research instead of consulting contemporary “history” books, that the Lincoln administration used rather stern measures to insure American “loyalty” to Lincoln’s vaunted “Union.”

In his book The Real Lincoln Charles L. C. Minor quoted the historian Bancroft, who wrote in the Life of William H. Seward: “It is extremely doubtful if Maryland could have been saved from secession and Washington from consequent seizure if the mayor and police commissioners of Baltimore, several members of the legislature, and many prominent citizens of both Maryland and Virginia had not been deprived of their power to do harm.” That was Bancroft’s sanitized way of saying they’d been arrested. The grandson of Francis Scott Key, author of the National Anthem, was the editor of the Exchange newspaper in Baltimore. He was one of those prominent citizens arrested, and, as a prisoner, he was taken to Fort McHenry. There’s irony for you! Minor wrote: “…that a very great number of the most honored men in Maryland, including a large part of the officials of the state government and the Baltimore city government, were in prison and that every man of the least importance who had left it in doubt whether he had meant to support Mr. Lincoln had good reason to expect imprisonment.” That’s one great way to “preserve the Union”–just jail all your opposition!

On September 24, 1862, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in certain kinds of cases across the whole country. The origins of this particular habeas corpus proclamation lay, according to Neely (The Fate of Liberty)  in the Militia Act of July 17, 1862. This act empowered the Secretary of War to “draft for nine months the militiamen of states that failed to upgrade their militias. This rather technical-sounding law that smacked of routine military housekeeping proved to be a disguised conscription law, authorizing the first national military draft in American history. Congressmen, sensing the potentially explosive unpopularity of conscription in the individualistic United States had obscured its real purpose as much as possible. Doesn’t sound much different than Congress today does it? Anyone, even in our day, that thinks these people really get elected and go to Washington to look out for our interests probably still believes in the Tooth Fairy. Some newly elected Congressmen probably start out thinking they are going to look out for our interests but by the time they been there a short while and the Deep State operatives have had a chance to work on them, all that changes.

William Dunning, President of Columbia University wrote in 1898 that Lincoln’s proclamation of September, 1862 was “a perfect plot for a military despotism…the very demonstrative resistance of the people to the government only made the military arrests more frequent.” Some have estimated the number of political prisoners in the North during the War of Northern Aggression to have been as high as 38,000. Others have estimated it as low as 13,000. Even 13,000 political prisoners was a lot for that time period. Almost sounds like the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror! Well, actually, it   was our “French Revolution” and, like France, we have never recovered from it.

Lincoln claimed that editorials and speeches against the war discouraged army enlistments and encouraged desertions, therefore, he had to clamp down on them. Most historians today don’t bother to inform their readers how unpopular this war really was, or how Lincoln had to use Fort Sumter as the lightning rod to rally at least some Northern support. Suppression of rights was never popular, although, increasingly in our day, we see Americans more and more willing to trade liberty for security, not realizing that, in the end, if they do that, they will have neither. The draft also was unpopular, as the draft riots in New York City in 1863 demonstrated.

So we see the pattern continuing. Lincoln and other Northern radicals had to stifle as much dissent as possible, lest their unpopular war become so untenable that it would be impossible to prosecute. Should that have occurred it would have left the way open to put the Confederate States in a position to complete their legal secessions in peace. And that would have destroyed the centralization and  consolidation of national power that Yankee power-brokers and industrialists sought. That could not be permitted to happen.

After the first phase of “reconstruction” was completed in the South, the old Calvinist (Reformed) theology was mostly gone–to be replaced in the early 1880s with the theological phase of “reconstruction”–the Israel-first theology of Dispensationalism, via Cyrus Scofield and his “Reference Bible.” I realize lots of folks don’t want to hear that, but it is something that needs to be considered. It’s doubtful if such would have occurred had not the war and reconstruction paved the way for it. The South needs to again embrace the biblical Reformation faith she was moving toward during the 1830s and afterward.

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The Outworking of the Theology of Political Correctness

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Many think that the theory of political correctness, and the outworking of that theory, also known as cultural Marxism, is a godless theory, based solely on economic determinism the way classic Marxism is supposed to be. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In truth, political correctness contains a theology peopled by a whole host of would-be deities, all seeking to dethrone the God of Scripture so they can “ascend on high” and take His place, at which point they will fight among themselves over which of them is the most qualified to usurp His throne. They all have certain theological premises in common for all their differences.

They all agree that Jesus is not the Christ, the Son of the Living God. They may disagree over who He really is but they are unanimous in their declaration that He is not who the Bible says He is. This should be obvious from the outworking of their theology.

They are totally opposed to any kind of Christian education. They claim it promotes “hate.” They claim Christian schools are “hate factories” and they would shut them all down if they could find a way to do it. They even have some “useful idiots” in Congress spouting this foolishness. They have not found a way to shut them down yet, but not to worry, they are busy at work on that problem, and if you think they aren’t then you are deluding yourself. Do they have a problem with Muslim schools? Heavens no! Muslim schools are Meccas of love and diversity.

True Christian education will expose political correctness for the cultural fraud it really is, and they just can’t have that because telling the truth promotes “hatred” don’t you know. Well, it least it promotes hatred of political correctness for the simple reason that political correctness is a fraud.

True Christian education will counteract the idolatry so prevalent in our day. It will expose the false theology of Luciferians like Saul Alinsky that seek to replace God’s Commandments with their own “rules for radicals.” In fact, it seems that, shorn of all the Marxist sophistry, those that accuse Christians of being hateful just might be the real haters in the woodpile. They claim Christians are intolerant, while their total intolerance for anything even remotely Christian is really over the top.

There is no give and take, no live and let live, with the politically correct. It has to be their way or the highway and if you don’t like their way and refuse to go along they will seek to get Congress to pass a law that will force you to go along with it. That is the real outworking of their theology. It is a theology of compulsion.

The politically correct have a zero tolerance for anyone’s ideas but their own. They cannot abide someone with a different viewpoint. That person must be crushed!  All worldviews but their own are either “sexist” or “racist” or otherwise intolerant. If you think differently than they do then you must have a problem because everyone that matters knows the politically correct are always right in all their thought processes. Just ask them. They will tell you. The thought that they could be wrong has never once occurred to them.

Take, for instance, their view of the 2016 presidential election. Hillary should have won and Trump lost because that’s what was supposed to happen. When even vote fraud couldn’t bring about the desired result they realized they would need an extraordinary event to change the result of the election so Hillary could assume her rightful place on the presidential throne. After all, when the wrong thing happens in an election, any election, then the politically correct are completely justified in cheating, fraud, lying, or whatever it takes to reverse the election so the right person gets to where she rightfully should have been.

After all, everyone knows Hillary’s years of devoted (to herself) service to the country entitled her to be president. The fact that the public spurned her effort has nothing whatever to do with it. How often does it need to be said–She’s entitled to whatever she wants and us miserable deplorables who didn’t want to live under her brand of collectivism just don’t matter. We are not important–Hillary, the tin goddess of political correctness is ALL!

And so the politically correct have a plan. Whether it’s legal or not, who cares? It involves impeaching or getting rid of both Trump and Pence so that Comrade Pelosi, the next in line, can get into the office of president, and when she does, she will dutifully (if she knows what’s good for her) appoint Hillary as vice (in more ways than one) president. After which Pelosi will, again dutifully, resign as president and Saint Hillary will assume the reins of power to which she was more than entitled when that usurper, Trump, beat her out. If you look at it, it has to be this way–otherwise Robert Mueller has just wasted over two years investigating the “Russian collusion delusion.” As far as Hillary and the Uranium One debacle, don’t even give that a thought. After all, Mueller hasn’t, nor does he intend to. That’s off limits! And the politically correct media will guarantee that it will stay off limits.

So you can begin to see how the theology of the politically correct is worked out here.

Can’t have those hateful Christians and patriots going around telling people the truth about all this. If enough people listened to them it might still mess things up, so in the name of “liberal love” the Christians and patriotic conservatives  really have to be silenced. Silencing them is really an act of “love” while letting them loose out there to tell the world what’s going on is an act of hate and so it has to be stopped.

Now make sure you’ve got your theological terms straight here. Love is really hate. Truth is really falsehood. Good is really evil. Light is really darkness, and sweet is really bitter. This is how theology works in politically correct circles.

And unless Mr. Trump decides to fight back, this is where we will all end up. Delightful thought isn’t it?

Reinventing the Nation–Lincoln and the Jacobin Republicans

by Al Benson Jr.
A book review of Walter Kirk Wood’s Beyond Slavery

Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina continues to turn out cutting edge books, both large and small that deal with subjects the establishment press would rather leave untouched.

This slim volume by Walter Kirk Wood, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina is the precursor to a three volume work to be entitled Beyond Slavery: A New History for a New Nation and the Northern Romantic-Nationalist Origins of America’s Civil War, 1776-1865.

Dr. Wood covers material in this little book that I have seldom seen anywhere else. Dr. Clyde Wilson, in a brief forward, notes the main thrust of Dr. Wood’s work. Of Dr. Wood he says: “He will show how the war became inevitable only because Northern society was infected by the revolutionary romantic nationalism that rocked Europe in the mid-19th century. The South remained loyal to the old American dispensation of classical republicanism, and thus had to be eliminated. It was not the South’s defense of slavery but the dominant North’s determination to redefine America that made conflict ‘irrepressible’.”

The North, in order to be able to work its agenda against the South had to create a “new history for a new nation in the making.” Wood notes: “Toward this end, did abolitionists, and later Republicans including Lincoln, reinterpret the principles of 1776 and 1787 to be more democratic, abolitionist, and nationalist than they really were? At the same time, did the South’s defense of original intentions–politically, economically, and culturally–have to be overcome to make the Declaration more about equality than independence and the Constitution and the union it formed less limited and more national? Thus, the Republican propaganda identification of the South and its Northern allies with the defense of slavery alone to the exclusion of other beliefs and values not slavery-related.”

Dr. Wood notes a letter from Lincoln to Henry L Pierce in April of 1859 where he referred to Jefferson as the man who introduced “national independency by a single people” and who introduced “into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men at all times…” Now I hate to burst Mr. Lincoln’s bubble (well, not really) but the last thing Jefferson had in mind was “a single people.” In Jefferson’s day, and for the next eighty-odd years, Americans didn’t think of themselves in those terms. You thought of yourself first as a citizen of the state you lived in and, only by dint of your state citizenship were you a United States citizen. State citizenship had pre-eminence.

It was noted by Dr. Wood, that, in the North, between 1815 and 1860 what he refers to as Romantic Revolution started to take place. In the North “There did newer and foreign ideas or ‘isms’ from Germanic idealistic philosophy emerge, seeking to perfect America. Manifested in Unitarianism, abolitionism, Transcendentalism, and evangelical-Arminian-latitudinarian-non-Trinitarian theology, the Northern perfectionist impulse was intent on making America anew, more egalitarian and democratic than previously.”

So what we had here was basically an effort to remake the country and to reinterpret its founding documents in such a way as to make them say something they were never intended to say and to mean something they were never intended to mean

On page 15 reference is made to Francis Lieber. Lieber was a German revolutionary who ended up as a law professor at Columbia at the start of the war and as an advisor to Lincoln on the laws of war. Dr Wood observes that: “Lieber’s view of French liberty accurately describes Lincoln’s own reinterpretation of American government as being ‘of the people’ and as embodying Rousseau’s notion of the national ‘General Will’.” In other words, both Lieber’s and Lincoln’s views were influenced by French revolutionary thinking. In noting Lincoln’s “new Nation” Wood observed, quite accurately that it “delivered more to the Republican Party than to freedmen, white Southerners or American Indians during and after America’s Civil War.”

At Gettysburg, as Dr. Wood stated, Lincoln “did not refer to the ‘Union’ at all but used the word ‘nation’ five times to invoke a new birth of freedom and nationalism for the United States.” This reminds one of George Bush when he gave that famous (or infamous) speech in which he used the term “New World Order” for the first time in his push for world government. Bush had to push his agenda verbally at some point. So did Lincoln.

It would seem that Lincoln realized he was not going to get his wish for “national identity” without a war. Dr. Wood noted that: “Yet by resorting to warfare to compel a national identity that was clearly not going to be established by voluntary means, the North found itself in the paradoxical position of breaking the original contract of the Declaration of Independence in the process of defending it.”

Wood noted the Age of Revolution both in this country and in Europe. He observes how, in Europe, they “…experienced their own contest of ideas and struggle for power among competing political and social groups. On one side were the conservatives (monarchs, aristocrats, and capitalists) seeking to maintain the status quo against the liberal and radical demands of democrats, republicans, and socialists. In Europe, the forces for and against change clashed dramatically in the attempted revolutions of 1848.” Whether most will ever realize it or not, those European socialist revolts had a direct impact on this country.

The “Forty-Eighters” were centralizers. So was Lincoln. Wood says, on page 33, that “…America’s Civil War of 1861-65 was inevitable. It had to happen because Romantic Nationalism in the North demanded political unification. The creation of the states united was a first step toward the Reconstruction of America itself.” You have to wonder if this is what Karl Marx was talking about when, in regard to our South, he mentioned “the reconstruction of a social world.” Wood notes that “With the defeat of the South in 1865, the old republic and federal union of the states were no more.” In other words, as historian and theologian Rev. Steve Wilkins has so accurately stated: “Everything after Reconstruction is post-America.”

Wood noted comments by Timothy Roberts in Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism  University of Virginia Press, 2009 where Roberts said, in part, “the 1848 revolutions undermined faith in American ‘exemplarism’–the belief that America should merely preserve its status as a global model…The 1848 revolutions did not by themselves cause the Civil War, but they did contribute to its timing and meaning for many Americans.” And Dr. Wood notes, as if in conclusion: “Thus, I maintain that the role of revolutionary events in Europe directed Americans’ path to the Civil War. America’s ultimate response to the 1848 revolutions.” And he further states that: “The Southern view of Republicans as ‘fanatics,’ ‘Jacobins,’ and ‘black republicans’ was by no means an exaggeration in the context of world history since 1789…Far from preserving the Union as they claimed to be doing, Lincoln and the Republicans were very much about remaking it anew. Although couched in the language of the founders and framers, their principles of 1776 and 1787 now embodies not original intentions but very different ones informed by 19th century Romantic-nationalist philosophy. It was not the South that changed but the North (or a dominant part of it)…Revolutions have to be justified, of course, and this is what Lincoln and the Republicans accomplished with their new history for a new nation in the making between 1815 and 1865.”

In other words, they kept the old forms but ate out the real substance. Dr. Wood’s little book gives more than a little food for thought to what has actually happened in our history, a history we have really been told precious little about in our day, thanks to establishment “historians.” I can imagine that when his three volume set on this material comes out it will be a real block-buster.

The Consummate Marxist

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

The first time I ever heard of Joseph Weydemeyer was back in 1978. A good friend and mentor who was a pastor and who followed history closely sent me a picture from the Communist newspaper, the Daily World. It was an old photograph of well-known Marxist Joseph Weydemeyer in his Yankee uniform. The short commentary with the photo listed some of Weydemeyer’s Marxist accomplishments as well as his being an “officer in the Union army.” That information in the Communist newspaper was my introduction to the fact that there had been communists and socialists that had infiltrated the ranks of Mr. Lincoln’s armies. I was later to find out they had infiltrated with Mr. Lincoln’s blessing.

What passes for “history” education in the Humanist seminaries we still call public schools had never prepared me for that fact and I doubt that the vast majority of youngsters even in this day have the remotest clue that Lincoln welcomes communists and socialists into his military or that the Republican Party of that day was full of them also.

My first thought back in 1978 when I read that was “What’s the communist doing in the Union army?” Little did I know back then! I had no clue that Weydemeyer was far from being the only communist there. It was a decade before I came up with any great amount of information about this and when I finally did, what I found was the beginning of the book that Donnie Kennedy and I co-authored, Lincoln’s Marxists.
There had been a couple books written about some of this way back in the 1950s but they were pretty much out of print by the time I came along. So Donnie and I had to do lots of digging for information about this, and about the people called “the Forty-Eighters” who were the socialist and communist revolutionaries that sought to make shipwreck of Europe in 1848. It turned out that when the couldn’t do that to Europe after the good old college try, they came over here. They, unfortunately, had more success here than they did in Europe. The research for the book took us a little over two years.

Since Weydemeyer was the earliest Marxist I’d learned about I thought an article about him might be worthwhile because it would demonstrate how dedicated to the principles of Marxism those people really were (and still are). Our book noted of Weydemeyer that “Some of Weydemeyer’s more notable accomplishments in New York were the publication of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, assisting in organizing the New York Communist Club, and publishing a German-language newspaper, Die Revolution. Moving to St. Louis, Missouri in 1860, Weydemeyer soon thereafter offered his service to the darling of the Forty-Eighters, Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont, when war broke out.” All of these activities would have taken lots of time and effort. Weydemeyer was into Marxism for the long haul. He wasn’t just tinkering around like so many do. He was actively into promoting Marxist change for America. But, then, most of the Forty-Eighters who came over here before the War of Northern Aggression were, and Weydemeyer was willing to do “whatever it took to get the coon.”

The Communist Club that Weydemeyer helped organize had as one of its main goals what it called “nationalizing the means of production.” What this amounted to, shorn of all the Marxist sophistry was the abolition of all private property and taking that property and claiming its true ownership in the name of “the people.” Doing this is supposed to automatically create heaven on earth for everyone–if you are naive enough to believe the Marxist doublespeak. Actually all it really does is create a lot of extremely well-off Marxist dictators while ordinary people go begging. Stealing private property is forbidden in the biblical commandments.

There is another book out there, if you can still locate copies of it, called Joseph Weydemeyer: Pioneer of American Socialism written by Karl Obermann and published back in 1947 by International Publishers, which was the outfit controlled by the Communist Party in this country.

According to https://www.liquisearch.com “As the country moved toward a civil war, German Americans played in important part in the emergence of the Republican Party, so did Weydemeyer, who was one of the men who drew the German community toward the Republicans and the antislavery cause…While doing his military duty, he distributed copies of the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s Association, exchanged letters with Engels on military and political issues, contributed to local papers…”

So, as you can see, Joseph Weydemeyer was the consummate Marxist of the mid-19th century, both in Europe and in this country. Unfortunately, there were a lot more like him out there, doing what he did in this country and this country is much the worse off for them having been here. So those people that try to tell you that we never had a communist problem in this country until FDR came along in the 1930s are just about 100 years off the mark.

Another book you might want to check out that showed we had a communist problem before Roosevelt is one by Benjamin Gitlow called The Whole Of Their Lives which deals with Communist activity in this country starting around the time of the First World War. Gitlow had been a Communist and broke with them and wrote this book telling what they were doing in this country in the early 1900s. The title of this book gives you some idea of the life of Weydemeyer in the 1800s, even though it has nothing to do with him personally. Communists literally gave “the whole of their lives” in service to their failed Humanist deity in their efforts to enslave the world–all in the name of “freedom”–freedom for them and slavery for the rest of us.

When I look today at some of these would-be socialists this country’s electorate has just foisted on Congress, I think they must surely be the biggest “useful idiots” the Deep State could possibly hope for.

Socialists and Marxists Wanted a Northern Victory in the War of Northern Aggression

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

It has been over a decade now since Donnie Kennedy and I got the first edition of our book Lincoln’s Marxists published and over six years since the second edition was published by Pelican Publishing. Doesn’t really seem that long, but, then, time flies when you are having fun. Anyway, it has been long enough that I thought it might not hurt to do a little recap of some of what we covered because unless some things are repeated, folks tend to forget.

Given the far-Left tilt of much of our current House of Representatives we might be approaching the point where some will say “Well, communists and socialists supported Lincoln and the North? So what? It’s no different today.” Well, it is and it isn’t. The problem today is that so many of our younger generation have been “educated” in government schools that they don’t properly understand the true nature of communism. “Our” schools have taught them that socialism is a worthy goal where everyone shares equally in big slices of the American pie. Pardon my being so blunt, but that is a damned lie.” Socialism and communism have never worked that way except in the febrile minds of those professors that teach how great it is.

So I am going to go back and recover a little of our history that those professors would rather you were ignorant of.

Many today would be surprised to learn how deeply  concerned Karl Marx was regarding the War of Northern Aggression. Marx was an avid supporter of the North in that revolution–yes, that’s right–I said the War of Northern Aggression was a revolution, a revolution that had overwhelming Leftist support.

And what better way to promote the agenda of the Leftists than to have one of their chief propagandists writing for one of the major establishment newspapers in the country before the war commenced? That’s exactly what happened. It should be common knowledge, if it isn’t, that Karl Marx was a regular contributor of articles to Horace Greeley’s paper, the New York Tribune. I can count on the fingers of one hand the history books I have even seen this mentioned in. And, with the exception of one, I have never seen a history book that told us that Horace Greeley was a utopian socialist. But he was. In the book Karl Marx–Biographical Memoirs by Wilhelm Liebknecht (Charles H. Kerr Co., 1904) the author stated: “For the New York Tribune he (Marx) wrote as a regular contributor a long series of brilliant articles on political conditions and economic questions…”

The book Friedrich Engels by Gustav Mayer (Alfred A. Knopf,  1936) amplified this even further. On page 143 Mayer stated: “It must have been a welcome stroke of good luck for Marx, when in 1851, the ‘New York Tribune” (through its managing editor, C. A. dana) offered him the post of regular correspondent.” The question should arise (but don’t wait for the “historians” to ask it) why should an American newspaper in 1851 be willing to hire this communist revolutionary to write articles for consumption by the American public? Take a look at Greeley’s background and you may begin to get a hint. Then take a look at Dana’s background and you will be doubly sure!

As the “Revolution of Northern Aggression” clamped its vice-grip on an unsuspecting American public, both North and South, Karl Marx and his sidekick, Friedrich Engels, literally panted for a Union victory. In Mayer’s book on Engels, a hint is subtly dropped for us as to the make-up of a significant part of the Union army at that period. Marx and Engels were both sorely distressed that it seemed to be taking the North so very long to get organized militarily.

But then Engels pointed out (and get this folks, don’t miss it) that “Had it not been for the experienced soldiers  who had entered America after the European revolution (1848)–especially from Germany–the organization of the Union army would have taken still longer than it did.” Do you realize just what Engels is intimating here? The real backbone of the Union army just before the start of the War of Northern Aggression  was, according to Engels, the 1848 socialist revolutionaries from Europe! If he was accurate, and if such is true, how come our so-called “history” books have never seen fit to mention this fact? Engels was saying that without the socialist revolutionaries from Europe,  the North would not have gotten their military act together as quickly as they did.

Northern defeats disturbed Engels.  He didn’t feel the North pressed toward its goal with sufficient “revolutionary energy.”  At the same time he lamented the “deadly earnestness” of the South. He informed Marx in 1862 that until the North put on its “revolutionary colours” it would continue to be beaten. Marx blamed the North for attempting to carry on constitutionally a war that should have been waged in a revolutionary manner. And while Marx was more than a little bit off on the so-called “constitutionality” of the Northern war effort, he and Engels both viewed Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” as a truly revolutionary act. Although that action made them both deliriously happy, Engels continued to be pessimistic about the war’s outcome until Ulysses S. Grant became more prominent. Mayer did not inform his readers as to the reason Engels had such confidence in Grant, only that he did. But you have to wonder why. What did Engels know about Grant that no one else seemed to?

Two other socialist revolutionaries we mentioned in Lincoln’s Marxists were  Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel. The conditions of their coming to America were very similar. Schurz ended up commanding a division under the radical Leftist abolitionist John Fremont, the so-called “pathfinder.” Actually, Fremont’s scout, Kit Carson did most of the pathfinding. And Schurz ended up in Sigel’s corps. So the two served in close proximity to one another.

After the War, Schurz was also a correspondent for the New York Tribune, as his acquaintance, Marx, had been before the War. Greeley’s newspaper could almost be said to have been a major drawing card for European revolutionaries.

And then there was Greeley’s managing editor, Charles A. Dana (a Leftist luminary if ever there was one), the man that hired Marx to write for the paper. He was fired by Greeley in 1862. Whereupon he was hired by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as a “special investigating agent” whatever that meant. According to a little newspaper, The Councilor, published in Shreveport, Louisiana, the August 1979 issue stated: “It was Dana, the friend of Karl Marx, who urged placement of General Grant in supreme command  of all armies in the field.” Why did these socialist revolutionaries want Grant so badly? Again, what did they know about him that we don’t?

Also, reading General George McClellan’s autobiography, we are told that a group  of New York bankers wanted Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War instead of Simon Cameron.  What did the New York bankers know about Stanton that our history books have forgotten to mention? By now interested readers should have begun to realize that our “Civil War” was never what the history books  have told us it was.

The Union army was hardly the selfless body it has been  portrayed as in the Unitarian “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” That’s not to say there were not good men in the Union army. There were good men in both armies, sincere men who believed in what they were doing. But, I have to ask, to what degree did the radicals and revolutionaries from Europe use the Union army as a vehicle for class struggle against a basically orthodox Christian South?

European Socialists Identified With The Northern Cause. They Still Do

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Over the years, in many articles, I have documented the support Karl Marx and his friend Engels had for and gave to the glorious Union during the War of Northern Aggression. By now if should be no secret (except to students reading government school “history” books) that these two radical leftist revolutionaries strongly favored the Union cause. Even court historian James McPherson has to admit as much, although he does such with pride.

It was mentioned in the book Karl Marx by Franz Mehring that the English branch of the Communist International, when Lincoln was re-elected in 1864, sent him a message of greetings and congratulations.

Marx was the one that drew the message up, addressing it to the “son of the working class” that had been given the job of leading his country “in a noble struggle to emancipate an enchained race.” That had to be a huge pile of 19th century cow chips because both Lincoln and Marx knew better. Neither of them gave a tinker’s damn for the “enchained race” except as an excuse to beat down the South.

According to Mehring, Marx put maximum effort into the message to Lincoln. Marx wanted the  congratulatory message to be “different from the usual vulgar democratic phraseology which was the usual stock-in-trade of such documents. Lincoln did not fail to observe the difference.” Much to the surprise of a London newspaper… “he (Lincoln)  answered the address in a warm and friendly tone.” It was what I have previously stated–a mutual admiration society consisting of Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, needless to say, was not the country bumpkin, hayseed lawyer that our “history” books carefully portray for us.

But, Marx and Engels were far from being alone. Other European radicals and socialists also strongly supported the Union cause. The well-known Russian revolutionary Michael Bakunin, with whom Marx had some notable differences, was also a partisan of the Union cause. According to the book Russian Radicals Look to America by David Hecht,  Bakunin was a keen observer of social conditions in the United States.

According to Hecht: “As has already been recorded, Bakunin was a firm opponent of American slavery and unwaveringly supported the North during the Civil War.  This attitude was shared by Herzen (also by Belinski, Chernyshevski, and Lavros), was to be expected…in view of his specifically Russian experience of opposition to serfdom.” So, not only Bakunin, but all these revolutionaries of various stripes supported the Northern position. Many of these European socialists hated each others guts but one thing they could all agree together on was their hated of the American South. The same situation exists in this country today. The various leftist groups in this country may disagree on much with one another but they are ready, willing and able to work together to totally dismantle our heritage, history and culture, most notably in the South.

While in America, Bakunin wrote to Herzen and Ogarev that “in the struggle between the Northern and Southern  United States…of course…the North…has all my sympathies.” So Bakunin visited America. You have to wonder where these leftist agitators got the money to travel all around the world. Passage to America wasn’t cheap. Where did Bakunin get the bread to pay to come here?

Like Marx, Bakunin berated the North for its slow start in the War. After the war was over, Bakunin was strongly in favor of the radical “reconstruction” policies of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner and Edwin Stanton and their crowd. He must have talked to all the “right” people while he was here. Bakunin wanted the North to impose revolutionary measures on the South (he got his wish).

Bakunin said that for “popular self-government” (really communism) to become a true reality, that “another revolution…far more profound…” would be a necessity.  Stop and analyze what Bakunin said for a moment.  He recognized the War of Northern Aggression as a revolution. By his use of the term “another revolution” he referred to a revolution BEYOND the War, which could only be the emergence of the beginnings of the “civil rights” movement that started with the adoption of the second 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Think about that for awhile.

Alexander Herzen, another of the Russian revolutionary socialists was an ardent foe of the Confederacy during the war. To him, Jefferson Davis was “the greatest political criminal of our time.” That seems to have been the prevalent opinion of the contemporary Russian radicals of that day.

So, from Marx and Engels to Bakunin and Herzen, the prevailing communist/socialist sentiment in Europe was overwhelmingly in favor of a Northern victory, contrary to the desires of ordinary working folks in Europe. The communists saw something in the Union cause they loved (apostasy and anti-Christianity) and they saw something in the Southern cause they hated, (orthodox, Reformed Christianity)! While this may seem over-simplified to some, it is the root  from which the theology of socialism grows.

Considering the wide influence held in the North by abolitionists, Unitarians, and European communists and other radicals, I think we strongly need to reassess what our “Civil War” was really all about. The communist influence on, and tint to the Northern position, has only grown stronger as research has continued. “Those people” sought a revolution against a basically Christian South, and to put it in the right light,  they dredged up slavery as their noble pretext for revolution. Had the slavery issue not been there, some other reason would have been used to justify their revolutionary intent.

Hopefully, with some of our most recent articles on this blog, you will have grasped the fact that our “Civil War” was little more than a pretext for socialist revolution in America. It was our French Revolution, and as France has not, to this day, recovered from her revolution so we have never fully recovered from ours, the real one, the “Civil War.” We live with the results of it still today. No one born after 1865 has ever lived under the system bequeathed  to us by the Founders. Since the end of the War of Northern Aggression we have all been living in post-America.

Radicals Supported the North While Working People Supported the South

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Over the years it has been noted, at least in some quarters, how strongly the communist  and socialist radicals in Europe supported the Northern  cause  during the War of Northern Aggression. Marx, Engels, and all their socialist ilk literally drooled with their desire for a Yankee victory. Marx warmly congratulated Lincoln on his re-election in 1864 to a second term. Lincoln warmly thanked him. It was almost as if there was a Marx-Lincoln Mutual Admiration Society at work.  Bakunin, the Russian revolutionary,  as well as other European socialists of various stripes, all supported the Northern cause. In fact they supported Lincoln and the Northern cause just as much as some Southern folks do today that have been taught to feel guilty about their Southern heritage. You may have known some folks like that. I have.

Socialists that took part in the socialist revolts in Europe in 1848 flocked to this country from 1849 on through the 1850s after they were run out of their own countries as well as other European countries that did not want revolutionaries on their soil. Many of these jointed the Union armies, thousands of them, in fact.  There is ample documentation for that which has been studiously ignored for decades by our establishment (Deep State) “historians.” Oh they will mention one or two of these  people briefly in articles or books but never give you enough information to tell you what they were really all about and why they were over here. Donnie Kennedy and I dealt with this in our book Lincoln’s Marxists. Judging by some of the book reviews we’ve gotten from the supporters of the establishment they have been less than enthused by our exposure of their favored icons. All I can say is that if some of them hate our book that much then we must have done something right!

However, putting aside the radicals and 19th century pinkos, we might ask if there was any support in Europe for the Confederate cause. There was indeed. And at least in England, that support came from ordinary, everyday working folks.

Mary Ellison, who has been a lecturer in the Department of American Studies at Keele University, wrote a book called Support For Secession–Lancashire And The American Civil War (University of Chicago Press). In this book she demolished the myths that have persisted for well over a hundred years, that, during the War of Northern Aggression, the British working class, and in particular, the Lancashire cotton workers, dutifully supported the Northern cause. In most cases the exact opposite was true. The fact that most working people, at least in Lancashire,  supported the Confederacy has been very carefully muffled. Ellison wrote: “The war was unquestionably shattering in its impact on the country (Great Britain). The combustible mixture of ideological complexities and tough economic repercussions detonated an explosion of sympathy for the Southern cause wherever unemployment was extensive.”

All across Lancashire there were meetings, held mostly by pro-Confederate groups, though the pro-Unionists did hold some, but with little success. Ellison continued: “The actual evidence proves that the cotton interests of the country were united in seeking official British assistance for the abortive struggle of the Confederacy for independent life…Demands for pro-Confederate intervention were encased in orderly public meetings and carefully worded petitions that were sent to the government…Simultaneously the national press overlooked the massive number of spontaneous meetings in support of the South and noted only the organized few that were attended by such noted Northern sympathizers as Cobden and Bright.” Does that sort of media blind spot sound rather familiar in our own day? The gentleman, Richard Cobden, here mentioned, had some interesting reasons for supporting the North. Turns out he was one of the prominent foreign stockholders of the Illinois Central Railroad, and he also had irons in the fire in other Northern companies. So his support for the North was hardly charitable–unless charity begins at home!

When it was issued, the Emancipation Proclamation was viewed by British working people with somewhat less charity than we may have been led to believe. Ellison noted: “The Emancipation Proclamation was rejected as nothing more than a military maneuver that hypocritically and ineffectually freed the Southern slaves while leaving those in the North in bondage.” Ellison, noting that British pro-Confederate supporters seemed unable to exert influence on the British government, stated that this did not mean that pro-Southern support wasn’t there, but rather, that it lacked political clout. It was somewhat akin to an earlier version of our “silent majority” of recent years. And it’s not that the silent majority is really so silent in many instances, but rather our prostitute press makes sure they get almost no notice. And when they get to the point they have recently where they are really starting to be noticed then those that control our media seek to censor them and de-platform them so they can’t reach a public that, for all these efforts, is starting to wake up.

Even English clergymen, speaking at meetings, recognized that Northern military strategy  was really what dictated emancipation measures. Emancipation, contrary to popular, contemporary propaganda, was NOT the humanitarian gesture we have been told it was.

It should be noted that many of the British, while personally opposed to slavery, felt that an independent South would eventually free the slaves, and that slaves would be better off that way than being used as political pawns by the North. One British newspaper editorialized on “the whole Northern attitude that saw Negroes as ‘catspaws and cannon fodder’.” That was not too inaccurate an assessment.

One speaker in England maintained that, to save the Union, the North “would rivet the chains of the Negro still faster, and bind the slaves in chains of eternal bondage to gain their purpose.” Almost sounds as if he had read The Corwin Amendment!  He was totally correct. That was, and is, the real reason for all the “civil rights” legislation we’ve seen in the years since the War of Northern Aggression. The real name of the game was not emancipation, but rather the transferal of control–from the private ownership of the plantation to the  public control and oversight of Washington, D.C.

In conclusion, bear in mind that support for the Yankees came from European radicals and socialists and other assorted anti-Christ types. Support for the Confederacy came from ordinary working people. That fact is seldom mentioned. And for good reason–at least good for the media and their fake news promoters. It should tell us a little something about whose cause was (and is) worthy of support and whose cause was (and is) open to suspicion. Think about that.

Continuing Establishment (and Media) Deceit

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Anyone thinking what passes for the “news” media doesn’t flat out lie and try to deceive the public has not been living in the real world. Just look at what the media has done since President Trump got into office. They have bent over backwards trying to make him look bad, often times with contradictory lies about him both on the same page.

That being the case, it should surprise no one at all that, as much bad as they say about Donald Trump, they say that much good about Abraham Lincoln. Just about every year, usually at the start of the year, a “news” paper somewhere, usually part of the establishment press, carries some sort of survey asking people to name their favorite American president and asks the public that responds to explain, in a few words, why he is their favorite.

Not surprisingly, the president that usually garners most of the votes in this little propaganda ploy is Abraham Lincoln–and the reason given is that he “freed the slaves.” It seems that this type of old wives tale is what passes for history in most government school history classes around the country. Even the high school and college students mostly don’t know the truth, and they are not to be blamed. It’s not your fault you are dumb if you have never been taught. Many of their history teachers may not even be to blame, but the authors of those “history” texts they learned their history from are most certainly culpable.

The history texts rave about the Emancipation Proclamation as though it were the ultimate freedom document, at least on a par with the Magna Carta. If you want to discover what the Emancipation Proclamation was really all about, just read it in its entirety. When Lincoln issued the Proclamation it was nothing more than a war measure. It freed not a single slave in any territory controlled by the glorious Union. And there were lots of slaves in territory controlled by the Union–around 400,000 of them! Their bondage was totally unaffected by the Emancipation Proclamation. Most people, when they read it, don’t seem to grasp that. Years ago I wrote a little booklet called Emancipation as Propaganda. It was part of a series of booklets I wrote and self-published for home school students that had to do with the War of Northern Aggression and related history. In the booklet I noted all the areas in the Union that the  Proclamation did not apply to. I got a letter from someone up in New England who had gotten one of the booklets and he proceeded to try to take me to the literary woodshed because he felt the Proclamation did, indeed, free all slaves everywhere and he felt I should not have doubted that. Rather than argue with him, which would have been an exercise in futility, I told him to go back one more time and read the whole thing carefully and then write back  and tell me what it said. He must have done that because I never heard from him again.

For those who may have read corrupted or shortened versions of the Proclamation, the kind often used in public school workbooks, you need to realize that the Proclamation only “freed” those slaves in Confederate territory while freeing none in Union-held territory. It didn’t even free the slaves in those parts of the Confederate States that had been captured back by the Union. Slaves in Union territory were not technically “freed” until the second 13th Amendment, which was not ratified until December, 1865, several months after Lincoln had passed on to his eternal reward–done in by the hand of a man who may have had indirect ties to some in Lincoln’s cabinet!

However, the media continues to propagate, even today, the total myth that the North only fought the “Civil War” to free the slaves. No other reasons, at least not the really important ones, need be listed, just ignore all those and concentrate on the slavery issue. This myth is a most convenient peg for establishment “historians” to hang their radical hats on and it provides many of them with a good living via books and speeches and whatever else they can make money with while bemusing the public with their fables. The fact that the South could have kept whatever slaves she had simply by remaining in the Union is never mentioned. After all, why bring up the truth when you have an agenda to promote. If truth doesn’t agree with the agenda, then it just gets in the way–so why confuse people with the facts?

Some of you may remember this. Back in the Fall of 1990 public television started showing Ken Burns’ “Civil War” series. It was a five part series and you had to watch all of it to get the “whole picture” so to speak. So that I could comment on it, I sat through all five miserable episodes. Had they ceased  at that point it would have been bad enough,  but it seemed like in the next two or three years they showed it so many times I was afraid they’d wear the film out! It seemed like this abomination was on at least three times a year for about the next six years! Ken Burns is a modern New Hampshire abolitionist who spent five years and untold thousands of dollars in foundation money “exhaustively” researching, so we were told, the period of the War and the reasons for it. And after all that time and foundation money, Burns came up with a major breakthrough–the War was fought over slavery!!! What a surprise! Guess I was just too jaded to be properly impressed. With all the establishment cash spent on this project to beguile the public would Burns dared to have come up with any other conclusion? Had he really presented some independent research instead of the propaganda he dished up it is doubtful if he vaunted series would ever have seen the light of day. It would probably have disappeared on the cutting room floor.

After the series was aired it was widely criticized, and justifiably so. It wasn’t complete truth or history. In fact it may have indirectly helped to contribute to the rise of the Southern Heritage Movement, which was surely not its intent.

However, the establishment “historians” keep right on trying. They persist in pouring out reams of literary fertilizer and labeling it all as history. In recent years, however, they have been getting a little pushback. In 1993 the Kennedy Brothers came out with their book The South Was Right. Later they did Was Jefferson Davis Right?  Since then they have done many more, their latest being Yankee Empire. And a few years ago Donnie Kennedy and I did Lincoln’s Marxists.

Other authors have given us much accurate information for those who are willing to read and learn. Thomas DiLorenzo gave us The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked. Gene Kizer Jr. has written Slavery Was Not The Cause Of The War Between The States and Dr. Boyd Cathey has just recently had published The Land We Love–The South and Its Heritage. There are many others, so many I can’t begin to list them all and they all deal with the real truth about the War, the reasons for it and many of the personalities involved and suffice it to say, their accounts differ significantly from the duplicitous narratives we still continue to see pushed as part of the continuous establishment and media deceit. For those who want the truth there is now a large body of literature out there you can go to in order to get it.

Revolution After The Twelfth

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

When Patrick Henry forcefully argued against Virginia’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution he made several prescient observations. In her book Patrick Henry: Patriot and Statesman Norine Dickson Campbell noted a statement made by Patrick Henry regarding the different sections of the country. Henry said: “The Northern states will never assent to regulation promotive of Southern aggrandizement…There is a striking difference, and great contrariety of interest between the States…This government subjects everything to the Northern majority. Is there not then a settled purpose to check the Southern interest?” Now that was a good question. How long has it been since anyone asked it? You can bet the farm your “history” books are not about to deal with it.

Miss Campbell noted, on page 367 of her book, Henry’s almost prophetic assertions, when she said: “His discernment in the Virginia Convention 180 years ago is astonishing and merits singular praise in light of the events of today. He prophesied the fate of the agricultural South at the hands of the industrial North. He foretold the baneful effects of a supreme judiciary beholden to no one. Patrick Henry declared that this government would not last a century. He had not been in his grave 65 years before his predictions came to pass…” The advent of the War of Northern Aggression proved conclusively what Henry had stated. Virginia should have listened. Henry also argued that, should this Constitution be adopted, then more of a “Bill of Rights” than ten amendments should be adopted. It has been stated that Henry favored nineteen amendments, but we only ended  up with ten, most of which are just plain ignored by government today at any level.

Be that as it may, if we read the first ten amendments we find that power was supposed to reside with the states and that these amendments seem to be written in a way that restricted the federal government. From the First Amendment that starts out “Congress shall make no law…” to the Tenth Amendment stating the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution …”are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.” The intent would seem to be one that limits federal power over the states and over individuals.

However, in this context, we must remember that, in 1776 we did NOT fight an “American Revolution.” We fought a War for Independence. Then, in 1861,  the real American Revolution occurred–a revolution that God-fearing and patriotic Americans in both North and South lost! Unless and until we begin to slice through some of the bovine fertilizer they forced on us in most of those Unitarian seminaries we refer to as “public (really government) schools” we will never be able to grasp that sad fact.  Consequently, most people are utterly unable to even begin to think about dealing with the mess we find ourselves in today. By 1865 FEDERAL DICTATORSHIP had won the day and the fatal seeds of the federal oppression we find ourselves beset with today had been sown. I don’t think even Mr. Trump totally apprehends the true depth of what we refer to as the Deep State.  The reason for this state of affairs was American apostasy, pure and simple. After Northern Unitarian apostasy had denied the truth of Scripture and repudiated the Holy Trinity, and done it quite successfully for over two generations, something had to give. They sowed the wind and we are living to reap the whirlwind.

So, taking apostasy into account, let’s take a look at our constitutional amendments. The first ten sought to restrict federal power except in certain specific areas. But by the time the second version of the 13th Amendment came along the American Revolution was nearly over. Debates on the second Thirteenth Amendment were taking place in 1864, just before the shooting phase of the revolution was over.

So look at the wording contained in the second 13th Amendment–“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” You have the same exact wording in the infamous 14th and 15th Amendments. In fact you have basically the same wording in the 16th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments. Can you observe the fundamental shift in thinking here? Please note that, by 1865, we had degenerated  from the concept of “Congress shall make no law” to the concept of  “Congress shall have the power to enforce.” Consider that for awhile.

There is a not-very-subtle shift after the War of Northern Aggression from state power to federal power–where we are today. This is proof of the success of the shooting phase of the revolution which started in 1861, but it is also proof of the cultural shift in the North, which started decades earlier.

Some of those who took part in the debates concerning the second 13th Amendment  could see the revolutionary nature of  the amendment in its wording and they sought to warn their colleagues of its revolutionary intent–to no avail. Many who partook of the debate were the usual suspects in the abolitionist/reconstruction/19th century Deep State camp. Others were not. Fernando Wood, Democrat of New York stated: “The control over slavery,  and the domestic and social relations of the people of the respective states, was not and never intended to be delegated to the United States…”

According to Wood,  the proposal of the amendment “arraigns the President as having violated the Constitution in his Emancipation Proclamation, and stamps it as a nullity and void.” Wood contended that the war was not fought to preserve the Union, “but was directed against the sovereignties of the states,  and to destroy such of their domestic institutions as were obnoxious to the views of the party controlling the government for the time.” The slavery question aside, there was a concerted effort on the part of the federal government  to destroy the rights of the individual states and to replace those rights with national power. And if we are still naïve enough to think that such did not succeed, then we have no real grasp of our history.

With the adoption of the second 13th Amendment, Congress began to usurp the rights of the states and began to exercise unconstitutional power to enforce “appropriate legislation” to back up its new national decrees. This was, in essence, the beginning of our modern “civil rights” movement. It was also the beginning of the eventual repeal of the Bill of Rights. The “Patriot Act” passed hurriedly after the 9/11 situation finished that repeal almost completely.

Now admittedly, you may not like them apples–I can’t say that I’m overly fond of them myself. But let’s face facts.  Departure from God’s Truth (apostasy)  paved the way for forty years for the 1861-65 American Revolution. Unless we are willing to repudiate that apostasy  and return to “the faith once delivered unto the saints” the revolution, in its more revolting states, will continue unabated until God judges an apostate and corrupt America.

Until we realign our thinking in regard to apostasy and revolution and start trying to act biblically in regard to our present dismal situation, we are only spinning our wheels and getting deeper into the mud of chaos and confusion. Either we will accept God as our Ruler, or tyrants will rule us. There is no middle ground.

A Second Phase Of Reconstruction

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The so-called “reconstruction” period in the South after the shooting phase of the War of Northern Aggression ceased set in motion an insidious trend that has yet to be reversed in this country. That avoidable war brought monstrous federal intrusion into the private lives of individuals on a heretofore undreamed of level. Reconstruction in the South set up virtual military dictatorships in all the (still un-surrendered) Confederate States. The banner of what today is referred to as “reverse racism”  was raised atop the federal flag pole and flown on  high. It has yet to be taken down, in fact they are building a higher pole for it.

This trend toward centralized pre-eminence  has never been reversed, nor will it be until the country either wakes up or folds up, and if it folds up it won’t make any difference.

Several years ago my family and I took a (one of many) trip. On the way back home we visited the National Historical Park at Harpers Ferry (West) Virginia. At that site the town has been in the process of being reconstructed so that it will eventually appear as it did when abolitionist/terrorist John Brown first visited it. They filmed part of the movie Gods and Generals there. Many claim that Harpers Ferry has now been turned into a secular shrine for John Brown. Apparently those that have done this must approve of his terrorist tactics.

While on our visit there we chanced to visit the building that had housed the Provost Marshall’s office. A lady there, dressed in the costume of that period explained to the tourists that, during most of the War of Northern Aggression (she didn’t use that term) Harpers Ferry was under federal jurisdiction, and was, therefore, under the control of the Provost Marshall. When the lady explained what powers this man had, I could not help thinking that the Provost Marshall  was, for all intents and purposes, the local federal dictator. As I pondered how the War had paved the way for future federal dictatorships, a picture of the Supreme Court suddenly flashed through my mind.

Court watchers have noted with some apprehension over the years, some of the “interesting” decisions of the Court. The decisions that Comrade Obama’s forcing everyone to buy his “health insurance” or be fined was little more than judicial quackery, but the court seemed to have no problem with it. There was a decision back in 2005, I think it was, in the state of Connecticut that allowed a city to use eminent domain to attempt to seize property of several homeowners. Apparently some cities in Connecticut felt they could  make better use of some people’s property than the owners could and so property was taken under the eminent domain clause. This is something I have never agreed with. It seems to be one of those weak spots the Constitution is famous for.

George Will has never been one of my favorite columnists, but on occasion he comes up with an article that shows some insight. Several years ago he did a column dealing with a decision of the Supreme Court. He noted: “The Court bestowed, prospectively, its constitutional imprimatur on virtually any racial spoils system Congress enacts. The court selectively overturned a series of precedents that had at least limited the proliferation of what are euphemistically called ‘race-conscious policies’.”

In this particular instance Will observed that the court, by a 5-4 majority ruled that Congress “may assign special benefits to particular government-preferred minorities (to the detriment of all who do not make the ‘preferred’ list) and Congress may do so without regard to any injury resulting from discrimination. Reverse discrimination is now cut loose from the pretense that it is merely a remedial measure.” Take another look at Will’s comment. Doesn’t it make you feel good if you happen to belong to some group that hasn’t made the governments’ “preferred” list–like white, Christian Southerners for example?

Some have taken exception to court rulings of this nature, arguing that they violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. Sorry, folks, but that one was thrown out a long time ago! According to Will: “Equal protection is not violated if the injury done by reverse discrimination serves ‘an important government objective’.” Did you get that? Equal protection is not violated by unequal treatment as long as “important government objectives” are being served. Question–Where is this situation any different than what occurred during the first phase of “reconstruction” after the Marxist/Lincolnist Revolution of 1861?

C. Gregg Singer aptly pointed out in his book A Theological Interpretation of American History that the real aim of Thaddeus Stevens and his fellow Northern revolutionaries  was a program of “reconstruction” that would start in the South and would be handled in such a way as to eventually include the entire country. The entire fabric of American life, North and South  was to be “reconstructed” according to their revolutionary aims. And guess what, folks, due to the advent of the government school system, first in the North, and then in the South, it has mostly worked.

So let’s summarize. The “reconstruction” in the South set forth a policy of reverse discrimination where there was no equal protection under the law for Southern whites because it had been determined that reverse discrimination in regard to freed slaves served “an  important government objective” of working to ensure the “perpetual ascendancy of the party of the Union” (the Republican Party).

Both North and South lived through that first phase of “reconstruction” until both became “reconstructed”  enough so that most memories of a truly Christian America were obliterated.

That having been accomplished  it is now time for us to begin to realize that we are, at present, and for the discernable future, in the midst of a second phase of “reconstruction”.  The perpetually-ascending  federal government (the secular deity) via its court system, is busily enacting quotas and racial preference agendas, and telling local school districts that they have power to raise taxes on their own, even if voters have voted down the proposed tax increase. Supposedly with Mr. Trump in office we will have a more conservative Supreme Court, and I think he is trying, but he’s only one man and he gets precious little support or good advice from the Deep State moles in his administration.

It would seem that the chickens of American apostasy, turned loose in the 1820s, have now come home to roost. Years ago, Rev. R. L. Dabney in his Defense of Virginia and the South, wrote: “A righteous God, for our sins toward Him, has permitted us to be overthrown by our enemies and His.” Although he was speaking at that time to Southerners, the commentary is appropriate for the entire country.  One of the fruits of apostasy is more and ever repressive government.  Until apostasy is repudiated and a Christian culture is sought after and worked for, things will only get worse.