The Never Ending Battle Over Public School Textbooks

by Al Benson Jr.

In going through books in my research library, some of which I am going to be forced to get rid of, due to severe space limitations in our new living situation, I came across a book I didn’t even remember. It was one written by James C. Hefley called “Textbooks on Trial” and it dealt primarily with the efforts of Mel and Norma Gabler to get decent textbooks approved for kids in Texas public schools way back in the 1960 and 70s. It was published in 1976, while the West Virginia Textbook Protest was still fresh in people’s minds and my family and I were still in West Virginia. I recall my wife and I hearing Norma Gabler speak at a God and Country rally back in the early 70s.

Mr. Hefley told us that the idea for a centralized school system was credited to Horace Mann. Mann was a Massachusetts Unitarian who did not like the influence church schools had on the people in his state and his plan to lessen that influence was a public school system that all children would be compelled to attend. Hefley observed that “In 1837 Mann persuaded the Massachusetts State Legislature to create the first State Board of Education in the U.S. As the first appointed secretary of the board, Mann visited Europe in 1843, where he was favorably impressed by the Prussian system of mass education. Returning home, he persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to establish a similar, tax-supported system. Massachusetts became the model for other state centralized systems.”

The Gablers, in their quest for better books for Texas kids, also noted the influence John Dewey had on public education and the book pointed out that “Dewey and other liberal ideologues built on Mann, but gave religion a lesser place…Religion, Dewey thought, was human in origin and would eventually wither away…The schools were, as Dewey had taught, to be the main tool for shaping behavior and therefore indoctrinating children into a pluralistic, democratic society,” A society that was anti-Christian.

The Gablers, who were devout Christian folks, were justifiably horrified by all this. They started going to meetings of the State Textbook Committee in Texas and lodging their protests against textbooks that were totally unsuitable for the children of Texas to be subjected to.

Since, at that time, Texas was the largest textbook purchaser among the states, the meetings to review textbooks were open to the public so they could comment on possible new books for Texas schools. The Gablers eventually got their commentary process on possible new texts for public schools down to an art. They could look at new textbooks and find lots of problems with and errors in them. And there were lots of problems with and errors in many of them. It got so the textbook people and those on the state textbook committee hated to see the Gablers coming because they knew the Gablers had done the homework on what they were trying to peddle to the schools in Texas and they were going to be forced to make changes in the books they didn’t want to have to make.

So you see, the battle over what the public schools could try to get away with is not new. It has gone on for decades. It is still going on and the situation does not improve. Ask the people in Virginia how they are making out with this problem in regard to things like Critical Race Theory being taught in their public schools.

The one blessing we now have is that there are a lot more options open to parents who want to get their kids out of public schools. There are classical Christian schools, home school co-op programs and all kinds of new home schooling programs. Ron Paul has a home schooling curriculum and so does the John Birch Society to name just a couple.

You will never reform the public schools. They are doing what they were created to do–indoctrinate not educate–so don’t waste your time in futile reformation efforts. Get your kids out of them and check out some of the many other options

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Public Schools–“for the salvation of the state”

by Al Benson Jr.

Often public school officials brag loudly that “they do it all for he kids.” Some of them may honestly believe that. It’s what they have been taught to say and if they just say it long enough it becomes fact in their minds and they just parrot the line to (they hope) believing parents and they come off sounding like paragons of self-sacrificing virtue. If you have ever witnessed striking public school teachers in Chicago marching in the streets asking for more money just a few days before school starts in the Fall you know it’s a lot of horse puckey. If you have ever seen the wage scales of teachers in some cities you realize self-sacrifice has nothing whatever to do with it in many cases.

Samuel Blumenfeld, in his book “NEA–Trojan Horse in American Education” has lowered the boom on all this self-sacrifice twaddle. He has told us, on page 13, that “It was in 1829 that Josiah Holbrook launched the Lyceum Movement to organize the educators of America into a powerful lobby for public education. Was Holbrook a covert Owenite (disciple of socialist Robert Owen)? Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that he was. And if the socialists decided to further their cause by working through the instrument of public education, we can then understand why the system had such appeal to socialist bias for as long as anyone can remember. Indeed, public education was to become the socialists primary instrument for promoting socialism.” Did you get that? Public education was a major vehicle for promoting socialism. Chew on that one awhile and you find that all this self-sacrifice stuff ain’t worth doodly-squat!

But the early socialists in this country readily admitted that.. Also, in 1829, feminist (and socialist) Frances Wright lectured in this country. She spoke in favor of a national system of education–and who would be the beneficiary of that system? The students? Hardly.

In speaking of public education Ms. Wright said, quite forthrightly “That measure–know it. It is national, rational, republican education, free for all at the expense of all; conducted under the guardianship of the state, at the expense of the state, for the honor, the happiness, the virtue, the salvation of the state.” Public education is for “the salvation of the state.” That’s quite a socialist mouthful. Again, go back and read what she said. It was far removed from any concern for individual students, rather it was to promote statism. Wright was at least honest back in 1829. She told it like it was (and is). Karl Marx would have loved it. She promoted public education nineteen years before he did in his “Communist Manifesto.”

Remember now, we are talking about 1829 in this country–not 1929–but 1829–only 42 years after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. That’s pretty early for socialist subversion in this country–when most folks have been taught to believe that we never had any problems with socialism and communism here until FDR got into office. Folks, does, it begin to occur to you that we’ve been lied to? And many of our so-called “historians” are complicit by their sin of omitting this history so we wouldn’t know.

Remember, Frances Wright said public education was formed for the benefit (and salvation) of the state. And it is being used to teach the students to be the servants of the state. Seems to me that we fought a war for independence so we could be a free people under God–not the servants of a socialist Caesar.

Socialist Teachers Unions

by Al Benson Jr.

The National Education Association meets every year in a big convention in some big city and scads of teachers show up for this big event. This is their one big chance every year to tell us peons what we should support, what we should hate, and how we should live.

An agenda is presented showing all the things the NEA is for and against. In the past few years they have presented agendas that the late Communist dictator Hugo Chavez would have loved. Many of the issues they choose to address have little or nothing to do with education but everything to do with the leftist worldview they promote.

Many have heard little about the NEA. They know it is some sort of teachers organization and that’s about the sum total of their knowledge. They don’t know how long it’s been around and they don’t have a clue as to what it really does, only that many of their kid’s teachers belong to it. The NEA likes it that way.

In all fairness to public school teachers, there are some that are not in favor of this teachers union. Some are not in favor of any teachers union–but their opposition is generally ridiculed or ignored.

I knew a man in Indiana several years ago that was a public school teacher but was not in favor of a strike the teacher’s union wanted to engage in, so when they struck he continued to go to the school and try to teach. His fellow teachers–in characteristic union charity, splashed black paint all over his white car. When that failed to keep him away from the classroom, they slashed his four new tires for him. This is the kind of thuggery you read about in the papers, which papers try to paint the teachers unions as champions of liberty and equality–more education (and money) for the young and the downtrodden–unless you happen to disagree with what they want to do. Then it’s a different story!

Samuel Blumenfeld, in his informative book “NEA–Trojan Horse in American Education” has given us a view of the NEA that is seldom presented anywhere and almost never to the American public at large. Blumenfeld noted that, at one point, the president of the New York Teachers Association told a gathering “I trust the time will come when the government will have its education department just as it now has one for agriculture, for the interior, for the navy, etc.” Blumenfeld continued: “Thus it should come as no surprise that the call for a federal department of education was made at the very first organizational meeting”. The educational socialists had this agenda in their sites for a long time before you heard anything about it. The socialists didn’t get what they wanted right away–the country wasn’t ready to accept that–federal control of education–but they were planning for it. They finally got it from Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s as a payback for union teacher support. Ronald Reagan claimed he wanted to disband it but he never did–more conservative talk while the liberals got all the action.

The Constitution, for all the problems it had, gave the federal government no role whatever to play in education in this country–so they just usurped the power and did it anyway! Come on, now, knowing how the federal government works, is anyone really surprised? One of the big election issues in recent elections in Virginia was who would control what the kids were taught–the state or the parents. The newly elected governor there seems to be in favor of parental control and input but I believe he is getting flack from the teachers, who seem to want the parents kept in the dark. And so this battle continues. As long as you have a system of public education that is ultimately controlled from Washington it will never end. Don’t kid yourselves–local control of public schools is a myth to fool the naive.

Dictatorship In America

by Al Benson Jr.

According to the book “The Lincoln Conspiracy” the United States was perilously close to dictatorship in 1864. The authors noted: “All the elements were in motion: transportation and communication were nationalized, the writ of habeas corpus suspended, military tribunals had replaced civilian trials. Thousands of people were jailed without charge and held without trial. Dictatorship was an evil lurking behind the scenes. The name of the would-be dictator was not discernable to the public.”

Some have claimed the president, Lincoln, was a would-be dictator. Clinton Rossiter wrote a book, “Presidential Dictatorship” in which he pointed to Lincoln as the one that fulfilled that role. While no one can argue that Lincoln usurped power while he was president, it might seem more appropriate to assign the role of true dictator to the one who was in a position to deny Lincoln access to information that came into the War Department. That man was Edwin Stanton.

Lafayette Baker, (another person who will never be a candidate for sainthood), head of the Secret Service (police) said in his cipher-coded manuscript: “I admit my hatred and contempt for Edwin M. Stanton, but I also swear that what I am saying is true. Stanton felt that Lincoln, Johnson and Seward would have to be executed. He told me it would be done quite legally, and in the proper manner for such officials.” Baker was known to be a notorious liar, so whether Stanton ever said this to him is up for grabs. However, you must admit that it does seem to be in keeping with Stanton’s mentality.

When General McClellan pointed out his opinion that emancipation should be accomplished gradually, and that blacks should be prepared for it, via education, recognition of the rights of family, marriage, etc. he ran afoul of the Radical Republicans who had another agenda. When McClellan pointed some of this out to Senator Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts radical, Sumner replied that such points did not concern him and that all this must be left to take care of itself, In other words, let’s just go ahead and do this and kick the can down the road, and let someone else worry about all those nasty little details.

Sumner’s attitude was strongly akin to that of the leftist radicals in the 1960s, who felt that it was perfectly okay to tear down society with no clear picture of what to replace it with. Needless to say, those that financed the leftist radicals and orchestrated their efforts, definitely had an idea of what to replace society with, and they are still working on that. I doubt the public at large would like their solutions–more government and less individual freedom.

Unlike our latter-day radicals, though, Sumner, Stanton, Thaddeus Stevens, and their radical associates did have something in store for a defeated South, almost a kind of reverse slavery as it were, with uneducated blacks being given the immediate vote and white men having all their rights taken away from them. This was a situation guaranteed to produce racial animosity–kind of a sneak preview of Critical Race Theory. That was the name of the game in the South.

Divide the races one from the other so good people in both races can’t see what is being done to them and it’s still at work today. And as for those leftist radicals who are tearing down society, they will find if they are successful, that when their job is done, they are eminently dispensable. When they are no longer needed they will be dispensed with.

Edwin M. Stanton, Would-Be Dictator

by Al Benson Jr.

It would seem, from his commentary about others, that Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, had an inflated concept of his own abilities and a diminished view of the abilities of others. He was definitely not a practitioner of the Christian virtue of having a meek and humble spirit (James 4:6). He quite often spoke abusively of Lincoln and others in the administration. He referred to Lincoln at one point as “the original gorilla.” After becoming Secretary of War his disposition toward Lincoln did not improve. At one point he said to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, “Well, all I have to say is, we’ve got to get rid of that baboon at the White House!”

W. C.Prime, who did a biographical sketch of General McClellan for McClellan’s autobiography, said that the abolition of slavery was really a war measure. McClellan’s success in 1862 would have been disastrous for the Radical Republicans. Should the Union have been restored at that point the issue of slavery would not have been there for them and they would not have had the opportunity to turn ex-slaves in the South into a voting block they could use to bludgeon the Southern states with.

Prime’s assessment of Stanton was interesting. He said: “Mr. Stanton was a lawyer of moderate abilitiies, a man of peculiar mental constitution. Without moral principle or sense of personal honor, he was equally ready to change front in public politics and to betray a friendship, and was, therefore, eminently suited for the purposes for which he was selected by the men with whom he had formed a secret alliance…Those who knew him were in the habit of describing him as one of those who ‘always kick down the ladder by which they have climbed.’ His ambition was unbounded and his self-reliance absolute.”

Part of Stanton’s problem with McClellan may well have been McClellan’s view of government, which was probably built on McClellan’s Christiam faith. According to McClellan: “The only safe policy is that the general government be strictly confined to the general powers and duties vested in it by the old constitution, while the individual states preserve all the sovereign rights and powers retained by them when the constitutional compact was formed.” This view was hardly entertained by the Lincoln administration and may well explain why McClellan would have to go–and not too far down the road. Now I realize that McClellan was not the most vigorous general on the battlefield and that Lincoln had problems with that. But his view of government was definitely out of step with that of the Lincoln establishment.

Needless to say, McClellan’s worldview was anathema to someone like Stanton. According to the book “The Lincoln Conspiracy”, by David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, Stanton, as Secretary of War, controlled the nation’s military news through nationalization of the telegraph wires. He controlled the transportation system. His control over the lives of private citizens was said to be almost complete. Even President Lincoln was denied the right to see telegrams that came to the War Department. Bear in mind that Stanton was not even an elected official. He was appointed. Which means he could do whatever he wanted with no public accountability whatever. Sort of sounds like today, doesn’t it?

Communism In America Happened Before You Were Told It Did

by Al Benson Jr.

Many who have written histories of this country have never mentioned communism and/or socialism until some time in the 1930s. It’s interesting that this subject seldom comes up for them until that time period when research has shown that we had a problem with socialism and communism starting back as early as the 1850s. You have to wonder what happened to those historians that, somehow, missed over 80 years of communist and socialist activity in their historical scribblings. Somehow, when these historians do deign to write about the revolts in Europe in 1848-49 they seem to forget to make mention of the communist and socialist aspects of them. Somehow that part of those revolts seldom comes to the fore.

One small example–One notable European communist from that period was Major Robert Rosa, an early member of the New York Communist Club and later, like so many Forty-Eighters, an officer in the Union army. Never heard anything about a Communist Club in New York in the 1850s? Join the club! Most of us didn’t until we did the homework and found out about it. This kind of information has been deemed by historians to be something the public does not need to be aware of. So they make sure, with truncated histories, that we are not.

One thing about those early socialists/communists, they staunchly rejected orthodox religion. No followers of Calvin, Knox, or Moody in their ranks! Their religious faith was in their socialist dream of power and control. Although they’d never admit to it, their faith in communism and/or socialism was (and still is) a theological belief.

The very foundation of the rank socialism and liberalism we have today was laid by the socialist and communist ideologues of the 19th century. The fact that these communists and socialists found Abraham Lincoln and the early Republican Party worthy of their efforts and support speaks volumes as to why this country seems to have adopted most, if not all, of the early American communist and socialist agenda and goals.

One example of this is universal suffrage, where everyone living here gets to vote whether he or she is a citizen or not. You should notice that just such an agenda is the heart and soul of Biden’s “Voting Rights” bill. A couple states have already acknowledged that they plan to let non-citizens vote in the next election.

Socialism didn’t come to this country from the Soviet Union. Socialist concepts were already familiar and well-known by leftists in this country during the 19th century. Leftist endeavors like Brook Farm that I mentioned in an earlier article were located in many places in the Northern states–and they were trying to move south.

Look at it this way–with socialist support for Lincoln and the Union, Lincoln’s victory over the South gave the socialist dreamers and planners a major victory for big government–which only got bigger as it went along. Today we live in a country that is far, far removed from the vision of the Founding Fathers–another fact the court historians have continued to neglect to mention. Do you wonder why???

Lincoln’s Deep Pink Assistant Secretary of War–Part Two

by Al Benson Jr.

Charles Dana and Horace Greeley parted company in 1862 over some dispute, at which point Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a rather dubious character, stepped in and snatched Dana up. Stanton made him a “Special Investigating Agent” for the War Department. Dana spent a lot of time with Grant’s army and ended up recommending that Grant be placed in command of all the Union armies–something which eventually happened. I have often wondered what Dana, a socialist, saw in Grant that made him recommend him to command all the Union armies. I have never seen any indication that Grant was involved with any socialist actions so it makes me wonder. Needless to say, the “historians” don’t tell us.

As Walter Kennedy and I noted in our book “Lincoln’s Marxists” …we have a New York newspaper owned by a socialist (Greeley) publishing articles written by the father of modern communism (Marx) who had been hired to write for Greeley’s paper by still another man with socialist leanings (Dana). What an interesting mix !” And you ,ean to tell me we had no problems with socialism and communism in this country until Roosevelt in the 1930s? Hogwash! Anyone trying to tell you that is gypping you out of almost a hundred years of real history! And you are not supposed to realize that.

According to http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org Dana was named as Assistant Secretary of War in 1864 and served in that capacity until 1865. James Harrison Wilson, who wrote a biography of Dana, wrote that Lincoln “appears to have taken Dana into his utmost confidence…and to have consulted with him fully about the amendment to the Constitution to legalize the abolition of slavery…” Which means that the Emancipation Proclamation was little more than war propaganda and Lincoln knew it. Too bad he couldn’t have told this to our present day “historians.” So we had a man who was a socialist and friend of Karl Marx who had Lincoln’s “utmost confidence.” If something bothers you about this situation, you ain’t alone. But don’t look to our present day “historians” for support because these facts don’t fit their agenda.

We’ve had lots of socialist and communist influence in this country long before we were supposed to have had it according to the historians. For instance, we had Forty-Eighter socialist Carl Schurz who ended up being the Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes administration, and we had Robert Dale Owen, the son of socialist Robert Owen, who helped to craft the infamous 14th Amendment. Have you ever stopped to wonder why your public school history books never bothered to mention any of this? How much have the socialists and communists helped to influence the direction this country has gone in since the Lincoln administration? More than you are supposed to be aware of!

With this sort of thing going on since the 1860s and most historians and writers not bothering to expose it, do you wonder why we had an Obama administration and are now mired in the middle of a Biden administration? Stop and think about all this a bit. Wake up and smell the historic coffee before inflation gets so high you can no longer afford it.

Start demanding that the schools start putting out accurate history for your kids instead of propaganda. They probably won’t, but at least they will know that you are aware of what they are doing–and when they refuse to do that, take your kids out!

Abraham Lincoln’s Deep Pink Assistant Secretary of War

by Al Benson Jr.

Should you happen to run across the name of Charles A. Dana in a “history” book somewhere it will probably tell you that he was assistant secretary of war in the Lincoln administration–and that’s probably all it will tell you. Or you may find, in an exceptional “history” book that he was associated with Horace Greeley in the publication of Greeley’s newspaper, the “New York Tribune.” Again, they probably won’t tell you anymore than that. The educational rationale seems to be, in our day, that people don’t really need to know this stuff–it’s only old history and who needs old history? The educational elites would rather have you remain ignorant of old history. That way you can’t connect too many of the dots and figure out what really went on.

The fly in that buttermilk, though, is that old history comes back to haunt us–even today. Admittedly we can’t go back and change it, but if we are aware of what really happened we can work to make sure we don’t repeat the same stupid errors.

Walter Kenedy and I, in our book “Lincoln’s Marxists, last published in 2011, showed conclusively that socialism and communism has been alive and well in this country long before anyone believed it was.

Charles A. Dana, Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war is a prime example of this. In his earlier years Dana had been associated with Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Brook Farm was a communistic endeavor in this country (one of several) in the 1840s that didn’t make it. It folded in 1847. However, one of Brook Farm’s projects had been a left-of-center publication called “The Harbinger.” Among those leftist luminaries that wrote for that periodicle were George Ripley and Charles,A. Dana.

After Brook Farm had folded, Dana went to work for Horace Greeley’s “New York Tribune”. As part of his work for Greeley, Dana went to Europe in 1848, where he covered the socialist and communist revolts, not only for the Tribune but for other papersas well. At that time he became well acquainted with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and who knows who else in the Forty-Eighter movement. Upon his return to this country in 1849 he was made managing editor under Greeley. Should you wonder why a friend of Karl Marx was made managing editor for Greeley’s paper you could do a bit of digging and learn that Horace Greeley was also a socialist–another little fact your history books probably didn’t pass along to you. I remember seeing Greeley’s name in history books all through my growing up years and nowhere was there ever a mention of his socialist proclivities.

Arthur Thompson, in his informative history book “To the Victors Go the Myths and Monuments” deals with Dana in some detail as I recall and points out his extreme leftist leanings.

As proof of his affinity for Marx and his worldview Dana hired Karl Marx to write columns for Greeley’s paper in 1851. Marx was to be a regular correspondent. Now Marx’s command of the English language wasn’t the greatest and so his friend, Engels, ended up writing many of his columns for him. Marx, however, was the one that got paid for them. So typical of the Marxist mindset in general–you do the work and I get the rewards! Since Greeley’s newspaper was one of the most influential in this country, what Dana had done was to give Karl Marx an open pipeline to reach the people of America with Marxist propaganda.

To be continued.

“The Reddist of the Red”–More Ignored History

by Al Benson Jr.

Most of the Forty-Eighter socialists and communists that infested this country after the failed socialist revolts in Europe in 1848-49 are people we are told precious little about. Their influence on and in this country during and after the War Between the States is a subject that is mostly ignored by historians, or downplayed by those few that do give it a passing comment.

The man this article is about is one of those mostly ignored by those who peddle histories of that time period. The title of this article is what August von Willich was called by many in Cincinnati, Ohio where he was the editor of a radical, far-left newspaper. He had settled in this country, like many other Forty-Eighters,in 1853 after fleeing Europe because of his part in the socialist revolts there in 1848-49.

Willich was an officer in the Prussian army when he chanced to meet that beneficent reformer, Karl Marx. Shortly after that Willich became what one web site called a Marxian socialist. When the War Between the States broke out Willich, who by then had dropped the “von” from his name rushed to join the Union cause. In 1861 he was made a colonel in the 32nd Indiana–a German-American regiment.

Another web site listed him as a “convinced republican.” That seems a bit contradictory until you understand how the term “republican” is used in Communist circles. By Communist definition a republic is “a collectivist totalitarian state dependent on and subservient to the Soviet Union, Red China, or some Communist power center,” Admittedly that is a modern definition but it would have fit the communist mindset in the 19th century.

Like most leftists, Willich had a rather condescending view of Americans. He once stated that “…in this republic a beginning is possible only through the German element…” In other words, this country just would not make it without German socialist influence and help and Willich and his Forty-Eighter friends who had fled their own countries after their revolutions has failed were now here–and more than ready to help in the formation of a socialist United States. In fact, that was their main goal here.

In our book “Lincoln’s Marxists” published in 2011, Walter Kennedy and I deal with this very subject–the socialist desire to import their revolution to this country. Until we had published our first edition of this way back in 2007 and then a second edition in 2011, almost no one had touched this subject in over 50 years and our current crop of “Civil War historians” were not about to awaken the reading public with any of this information. It was better just to write books about battles and generals and ignore the reasons many of them fought–except for the slavery issue–which was blown out of all proportions and made the sole cause of the war–a proposition that is ludicrous if you really study the issues.

We noted in “Lincoln’s Marxists” on page 180 that “Willich was impatient with Americans because they did not share his ‘communist’ vision for their country and for their future. It is not uncommon for radicals, especially those on the left to be impatient with those who do not share their ideology.”

Willich was a dogmatic socialist, eventually becoming a general, who “did not hesitate to sermonize on the merits of the communist/socialist system.” One of the few who even noted this was William L. Burton in his book “Melting Pot Soldiers.” Burton observed that Willich lectured his soldiers about the virtues of socialism. This in this country in the 1860s–Union soldiers being prepped on the greatness of socialism! You have to wonder–if Willich was doing this, how many other socialist or communist officers were doing the same thing that we are never told about. The “history” books are silent regarding any of this.

If the Forty-Eighter socialists were the backbone of the early Union army as Friedrich Engels, Marx’s close associate contended, how much socialist indoctrination went on at that time that we were never told about–and what effect did some of that have in the army later on?

It would seem that this country has been on the road to communism much longer than anyone wants to believe. And maybe many of the “historians” love to have it so.

Karl Marx’s Buddy Joseph Weydemeyer–History You Never Learned In School

by Al Benson Jr.

Years ago (over 40 now), a friend and Mentor, Rev. Ennio Cugini, who was the pastor of a church in New England, sent me a picture right out of the Communist Daily World newspaper of a man named Joseph Weydemeyer. Rev. Cugini kept track of Communist activities and history and read their newspapers so he could keep track of their current party line and agendas. He had a radio broadcast for many years and he exposed Communist activities and how they effected not only the media but also politics and education for his listening audience. In other words, he connected the dots for those who listened to his program.

The picture he sent me of Comrade Weydemeyer was informative, in that Weydemeyer, in that old photo, was dressed in a Union Army officer’s uniform. The caption under the photo listed many of Weydemeyer’s communist accomplishments, taking care to note that he had been an officer in the Union army. My first reaction to this was “What was this Communist doing in the Yankee army?” Little did I know at that time! And I wondered if there had been any other Communists in the Union armies. Subsequent research would reveal that there had been quite a few, not that any history books I had ever read mentioned that fact. They were all mute on this issue.

Weydemeyer was unique, though, in that he had been a close personal associate of Karl Marx. This had been noted by writer Joseph Sullivan in an article in “Columbiad” magazine back in 1997. Weydemeyer was a tireless advocate of communism and had left Europe (just ahead of the authorities) and arrived in New York in 1851. While in New York he was able to oversee the first printing of the “Communist Manifesto” in this country and he also assisted in organizing the New York Communist Club, in addition to publishing a German language newspaper. Mind you, this was in the 1850s, not the 1950s.

Weydemeyer formed the firsr Marxist organization, the Proletarian League of New York in 1852 and started yet another leftist newspaper in 1853. So as you can see, this close friend of Marx was a decisive force for the spread of Marxism in this country in the 1850s–almost a hundred years earlier than most history books even mention the subject of communism.

He moved to St. Louis in 1860, just as the War Between the States was about to commense. When that war broke out he volunteered to serve under one of the most leftist-oriented native-born Yankee generals ever known–John C. Fremont. Fremont just loved the Forty-Eighter socialists from Europe and had several of them in his command. To this day Weydemeyer is lauded as a pioneer of modern American communism–one reason his photograph was in the Daily World newspaper.

Starting with Weydemeyer, I began, in the 1990s to research to see how many communists, socialists, and others of a leftist ilk had fled from Europe after the failure of the 1848-49 revolts there and ended up in this country. As research progressed I found a whole batch of them, somewhere in the neighborhood of over 4,000, and many of them became generals and other officers in Mr. Lincoln’s armies. Others became politicians. Some even helped write the Republican Party Platform in 1860. Others became journalists and “educators” and you can guess what point of view they “educated” from. It was the wife of one of these Forty-Eighter socialists, Carl Schurz, that established the first kindergarten in this country. Don’t forget, in the Communist Manifesto (that Karl Marx wrote for the League of the Just–it was really not his brainchild) he advocated “free education for all children in public schools.”

Anyone giving us the history of communism in this country and not dealing with all this either has not done the homework or he hopes you haven’t and won’t. There was much leftist influence in the early Republican Party and we are never informed of this. The first Republican presidential candidate in 1856 was, guess who, the socialist-loving John C. Fremont. In the 1860s and 70s the real leftist radicals in this country were Republicans–not Democrats and Republicans like today.

We have so much faulty history in this country we need to throw out and replace with accurate history that we need to be about doing that so we will have a correct perception of where we should be going.