George Orwell And Controlling “History”

by Al Benson Jr.

George Orwell said “Who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past.” Someone named Bedaant Stivasten in http://www.linkedin.com commented on Orwell’s quote. He said, in part, “Those who control the way history is recorded and told, have the power to shape people’s understanding of the past and influence their decisions for the present. For example, governments and political leaders often attempt to control the way this history is taught in schools and presented to the public in order to shape public opinion and maintain their power.”

He also noted that media outlets have this same power. They decide what stories are told and how they are told. He also observed: “While the past cannot be completely controlled, those who seek to do so must be careful not to push their narratives too far, and risk undermining their efforts.” I don’t think those trying to control the past have heeded his advice. They may be sure at this point that their brainwashed audience will blindly accept most anything they say.

I don’t know anything about this man, other than he is involved in digital marketing and has a name I can’t pronounce. But wherever he is coming from, his commentary on this subject is pretty accurate. You could almost say, in this context, that the winners in any given struggle get to write the history books dealing with it.

It has also been said on http://www.ennyman.medium.com that “When future historians write about the 20th century it would not surprise me to find it had been nicknamed ‘the century of spin’. Today more than ever we see that the battle for the minds of the people revolves around the manner in which events get interpreted, not necessarily the events themselves.” Thus wrote someone named Ed Newman, and he is also on target.

The comments of these two individuals can readily be applied to most of the “history” we have been taught in the last 150 years. We’ve been taught that the North fought the War of Northern Aggression to free the slaves. They didn’t. They fought it so Lincoln could keep his tariffs and collect his duties in Southern ports because the South was paying most of the expenses for the whole country and Lincoln didn’t want to lose that revenue. Ask almost any youngster (and I’ve done this) what that war was fought over and he will dutifully answer “slavery.” That’s what he/she was taught in school. Most adults will say the same thing because that’s what they were taught. This is a prime example of controlled (and inaccurate) history. And your future decisions about that war and its consequences will be made based on faulty history. That’s how this game works. This is how those in power today control your past–and future.

In the context of the 20th century, it might be an interesting exercise for someone to check out how many newspapers or television or radio programs are controlled or influenced by someone who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The website http://www.thefreethoughtproject.com carried an article on 6/4/2018 about how the Council on Foreign Relations advocated that the U.S. government should propagandize its own people. So typical of an organization that promotes the concept of one world government! Another article about the CFR appeared on http://www.ratherexposethem.org on 5/30/21 by William F. Jasper. This one is especially worth reading as it goes into China Joe Biden–the CFR’s man in the White House. And one final one from http://www.mintpressnews.com from 3/1/2018 by James Carey about how the CFR is pushing for a new cold war with Russia. Trump didn’t fall for this one but China Joe Biden is all in for it. But don’t expect the real story from our “news” media–only the establishment spin on the real story!

The entire intent of the CFR is to influence Americans to jettison their unique history, heritage, and culture and be willing to submerge themselves and their posterity into a socialist one world government. This is what the CFR plans for your future. And George Orwell nailed it. If people don’t understand their past and most today don’t then you can work to design your version of the future for them and they won’t realize how horrendous your plan for their future is.

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Abraham Lincoln–Hero Of The Left–And Unfortunately The Right

by Al Benson Jr.

Those who have done research on Abraham Lincoln and his socialist proclivities realize he has been embraced by socialists, communists, and other left-wing types. This is common knowledge among many people. What is not always common knowledge, though, is that Lincoln, with all his socialist connections, is somehow still an icon of the right. That fact displays the large probability that those on the right have been taught bad history and had their historical understanding tampered with, which weakens their position.

Lincoln’s love affair with the left has been noted in an article on 2/20/23 on http://www.jacobin.com which notes that Abraham Lincoln is a hero of the left. The article states: “From Karl Marx to Eugene Debs to 1930s American Communists, leftists have regarded Lincoln as a pro-labor hero who played a crucial role in vanquishing chattel slavery. We should celebrate him today as part of the great radical democratic tradition.” If what this writer says is true, then Lincoln would have loved China Joe Biden and what he is doing to the country now.

The writer does not claim Lincoln was a socialist, but nonetheless, he grasped the “general concept” of socialism: the primacy of labor over capital and of liberty over property. The article continued: “Proclaiming ‘communism is 20th century Americanism’ leaders increasingly paired Lincoln with black abolitionists including Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, and Sojurner Truth…” If only those people had been aware of Lincoln’s racist turn of mind they might have taken a different tack. Their “hero” would probably have balked at being placed in the company of black abolitionists.

In actuality, Abraham Lincoln never freed a single slave. His “Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves in the Confederate States and it left slaves in slave states still in the Union in bondage. There were five slave states in the Union, including West Virginia, that the proclamation did not apply to. The slaves in those states were technically not freed until the passage of the 13th Amendment, which came months after Lincoln departed this mortal coil. So Lincoln was not really opposed to slavery–unless it was Confederate slavery. He was okay with Union slavery. All the hype about him being the “Great Emancipator” is something we could label as “specious humbug.”

Most on the left, and many on the right, don’t like to hear the truth about Lincoln. In an article on http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org for 3/14/22 Dr. Boyd Cathey observed: “Since then (1981) criticism of Lincoln is not acceptable, not tolerated by mainstream conservatives. Instead the conservative establishment now heralds such neo-Reconstructionist historians as Allen Guelzo or even Marxist Eric Foner (a favorite of Karl Rove). Any dissent from the virtual cannonization of Lincoln with contemporary American society comes from mostly Southern traditionalists and their allies…”

Dr. Cathey is right. When I wrote for the old National Educator newspaper back in the 1980s and 90s I did a series of articles on Lincoln and his socialist connections. The people that complained the loudest were patriotic conservatives who were ticked off at my telling the truth about their patron political saint. They didn’t want to be exposed to the blemishes of their “conservative” hero! They refused to be confronted with the facts! Many staunch conservatives today still think today he actually freed the slaves!

In an article by Claude S. Fischer on 4/5/2011 on http://www.madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com it was noted that “During just one term (plus 45 days) Lincoln managed to do the following, ‘socialist-communist acts: taxed the wealth creators…exploded deficit spending…led a federal takeover of currency and banks…forced people to work for the federal government…indulged in government giveaways to special interests…expropriated private property for redistribution…”

Joe Biden would have loved him except for his party label. But, you have to remember that in the mid 1800s the Republicans were socialists and the Democrats were conservatives. Today, both parties are socialist–Council on Foreign Relations socialists!

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The Great Unanswered Question

by Al Benson Jr.

I and others have asked this question for years now and have yet to even have that acknowledged. Many of us will continued to ask it until we get some sort of answer from the politically correct minions of the viewpoint that the War of Northern Aggression was fought to end slavery. If the War was fought to end slavery then why did the North not start by abolishing slavery in those states that ended up remaining in the Union, some through no fault of their own.

There were four slave states that ended up in the Union–Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware–and when West Virginia seceded from Virginia and ended up back in the Union it did so as a slave state. So that would have been five states in the Union where slavery could have been abolished if that had been the real reason for the War. Yet that didn’t happen. So we have to conclude that because it didn’t happen the real reason for the war was not freeing the slaves but something else.

The tariff question naturally comes to mind, due to the fact that the South paid over 80% of the tariffs for the entire country while the North got most of the benefit from that. The North would have been in pretty sad financial shape without the South to foot most of the bill for all the internal improvements made up north. But the politically correct don’t even want to discuss this. The tariff issue is a “dead letter” to them, meaning they can’t get any traction from that issue to promote their racist agenda to blame the South for slavery. So tariffs are ignored and the slavery issue played up to inflame the passions of black folks who are much better off in this country than they would be had their ancestors remained in Africa. It’s a classic “divide and conquer strategy” to separate the races and prevent them having an honest dialogue with one another. Were they to get together and talk, they would soon discover that the Deep State is screwing everybody in this country and the Establishment can’t have that.

Gene Kizer Jr. in his authoritative book Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States has observed that: “Clearly the North did not instigate a war to end slavery. The focus on slavery as the primary cause of the War Between the States–even indirectly–is a fraud of biblical proportions and it prevents real understanding of American history. Pulitzer Prize winning historian and Lincoln scholar David H. Donald, back in the 1960s, was concerned about the overemphasis of slavery asthe cause of the war. He said the Civil Rights Movement seems to have been the reason for stressing slavery as the cause of the war.”

Given the origins of the Civil Rights Movement that would not be surprising. Years ago now, journalist Alan Stang wrote a book called It’s Very Simple–The True Story of Civil Rights. In that book Mr. Stang delved into the leftist credentials of many in the Civil Rights Movement. Some have concluded that Lincoln didn’t have the authority to free any slaves in the Union states which is probably true. Well if he had no authority to free slaves in the Union, where in heaven’s name did he get the “authority” to free them in the Confederate States??? Lots of questions that need to be answered here and yet the politically correct and minions of Wokeism continue to ignore them because they realize they have no answers that make any kind of sense. So they continue to rant and rail about the War being fought to “end slavery” when they know all that is so much bovine fertilizer. Their fondest hope is that you don’t realize the fertilizer content of their absurdities.

The Faith (or Lack Thereof) of Abraham Lincoln

by Al Benson Jr.

I’ve written about this subject before, but not recently, and people nowadays seem to have a tendency to forget much of what they once learned. Our attention span as a people seems to be about seven minutes–the time between commercials on most television stations. What went on beyond the last commercial we often don’t remember too well. And for something we learned yesterday, forget it. It’s long gone!

What made me think of this was something I saw on the internet while looking for something else. I came across a site that said of Abraham Lincoln that he was the first “republican, Christian president.” Knowing what I know about Lincoln that almost made me choke!

Lincoln was supposedly raised in a strict Baptist family. There has even been some question in some circles about his ancestry. Some have claimed he was born in North Carolina where his mother was a servant of the Enloe family. I saw a short booklet about that once. Don’t know if that’s still among my research material or not.

Be that as it may, Lincoln never joined any church. As a young man he was noted as a skeptic and even noted for ridiculing Christian preachers and revivalists. Many who knew him for years like William Herndon and Ward Lamon rejected the idea that he was a believing Christian. Even his wife also said, at one point, that “Mr. Lincoln was not a technical Christian.”

James Adams 1783-1843, called Lincoln a deist. Lincoln was reported to have authored a manuscript that challenged orthodox Christianity and was taken from the ideas of unbeliever Thomas Paine. Some writers have pooh-poohed this but I have read enough about it to think it may well be true. Supposedly a friend after reading it, took it and threw it into the stove, telling Lincoln it would ruin his political ambitions–and in his day it would have. Today, in our apostate age, he might have gotten by with it, but not back then.

According to http://www.thegospelcoalition.org they say of Lincoln: “Well, the truth of the matter is that he was not. He was exposed to Christian influences all his life. He worked with Christian people…but Lincoln never joined a church, never was actively involved in any kind of Christian organization, in fact, had only most minimal religious profile in his own day.” When someone asked his law partner, William Herndon, about Lincoln’s religious faith, Herndon replied to the man “The less said about that the better.”

Donnie Kennedy and I had a chapter in our book Lincolns Marxists about how a freethinker viewed Lincoln. The freethinker was Col. Robert Ingersoll. This freethinker led the charge in defending Lincoln against the charge of being a Christian and instead argued that he was a freethinker. Freethinkers include atheists and agnostics. Christians they are not. I even read one place, and I did an article on this, where Lincoln was reported to be a Rosicrucian. But, then too, some evangelicals have claimed him. All the research I have done over the years has led me to the conclusion that Lincoln was far removed from the orthodox Christian faith.

Abraham Lincoln The Rosicrucian???

by Al Benson Jr.

As far as what they believe, the Rosicrucians seem to be a real mixed bag. One internet sit says “Rosicrucianism contains elements of Christianity, Hermeticism, Mysticism and Kaballah.” And it is claimed they are “a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts purported to announce the existence of a hitherto unknown esoteric order to the world…”

I make note of this because the Rosicrucians are mentioned in Arthur R. Thompson’s authoritative work To the Victor go the Myths and Monuments. Mr. Thompson observes, on page 13, that “The Illuminati influence spread too rapidly to have been an organization that was founded in a vacuum. There had to have been other networks that helped drive the work of the Illuminati. These obviously were of the aforementioned Enlightenment, but had to have a more central source of direction. Some claim it was the Rosicrucians, yet modern Rosicrucians claim they sprang out of the Illuminati. And, it is claimed that Weishaupt was a Rosicrucian. In addition it becomes confusing because the Rosicrucians were the first secret organization to combat the Illuminati. Since the Illuminati had a superior organization, in the long run they may have infiltrated the Rosicrucians. Rosicrucian writings do refer to the illuminati in their degrees, that a Rosicrucian could attain a certain degree that is referred to as ‘Illuminati.’…Of all secret societies the Rosicrucians have been the most elusive to pin down.”

Mr. Thompson noted that: “There is much about them that is deliberately fabricated to throw people off the track. One does not know if their claim on Lincoln’s membership is true, for instance. He is claimed, as well as Jefferson, Franklin, Giuseppe Mazzini and Albert Pike,..The head of the Rosicrucians in his writings in the early 20th century claims that Lincoln was chosen by the Supreme Council as the ‘annointed one’ to carry further the work of what they called ‘freedom.’ They further claim that earlier there existed a Council of Three, composed of Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, and Thomas Paine, then Paine was replaced by Lafayette. Franklin and Lafayette both belonged to the Humanidad Lodge, which allegedly was a Rosicrucian entity. It is rare that anyone refutes these two facts: their membership and that it was a Rosicrucian entity…According to the Rosicrucians, the Council of Three was revitalized in 1842 by George Lippard. It is said by the Rosicrucians themselves that the council consisted of Dr. Paschal Beverly Randolph, Gen. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and Lincoln. This is a recurring ‘fact’ in most Rosicrucian published sources…In all of Randolph’s biographies it is stated that he became such a good friend of Lincoln’s that he was on board the train taking the corpse of Lincoln from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois but was asked to detrain because some of the other personages objected to a man of color being aboard. Randolph was of mixed blood….What is known is that the world headquarters of the Rosicrucians was moved to America in 1848 and they stood for a parliament of the world. They are only one of many key conspiratorial organizations that moved their headquarters to America just before or after the Civil War.”

Interesting that they moved here in 1848. That was an eventful year, what with the communist/socialist revolts in Europe going on and also, here, the beginning of the women’s lib movement occurred in Seneca Falls, New York–an event that was rife with spiritualism. 1848 was not a good year for this country. We were subjected to influences that would eventually change this country–and not for the better.

Mr. Thompson also informed us that: “Of the above list of Rosicrucians, what is known is that Hitchcock was a Swedenborgian and the author of Swedenborgian books, including Christ the Spirit in which he attempted to show that Scriptures were symbolic books written by members of a Jewish secret society. He was a warm personal friend of Lincoln as well as a military advisor. He appears to have been a Rosicrucian, since he is listed as such by every leader of that society in every book written about the Order.”

So it would seem that there were connections between the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati and you had some “interesting” personalities that were Rosicrucians and some rather odd theology came from some of them. Theology that was not good for the country. Whether Lincoln was part of it or not, is hard to say, though the Rosicrucians claim he was. Given Lincoln’s anti-Christian bias and his interest in spiritualism, this all sort of fits our view of the “Great Emancipator.” We’ve been fed 150 years worth of lies about Lincoln that were created to build for us a legendary Lincoln that never really existed except in the minds of those forging the legends. Maybe someday our “history” books will get it right–but don’t hold your breath waiting!

Remembering Sharpsburg

by Al Benson Jr.

Today, September 17th, marks the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Sharpsburg in Maryland during the War of Northern Aggression. General Lee had marched north with an army of 55,000 and ended up confronting General McClellan with an army of 87,000. The idea of Lee moving north was twofold. One was to give Virginia a little respite from the fighting that had gone on there since the war started and another was to try to win a decisive victory in the north that might have resulted in European recognition of the Confederate States.

Some have noted that Lee’s original destination was probably Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which if he could have made it, would have put him in a good position to keep federal help from getting to Washington. At one point he had to send a force to Harpers Ferry to capture that so he would have a way to get supplies for his army from Virginia and he could not leave a federal force there on his flank.

Lee and McClellan finally collided near Sharpsburg on September 17th and fought a battle there that lasted all day, with around 12,000 Union casualties and 10,000 Confederate casualties. The battle ended around 5:30 in the afternoon, with Lee preparing his defensive line to receive another attack from McClellan the next day. That attack never came, and so the next night, Lee moved his army back toward Virginia.

I’ve read articles that said the Union won this battle. Wishful thinking! At best, the battle was a draw, and Lee only retreated after waiting for an attack from McClellan that never came. Just a few personal observations here. McClellan had 30,000 more men than Lee did and yet was still not able to defeat him. Not only that, McClellan had gotten a copy of Lee’s orders to his generals and so should have known how to use that intelligence to defeat Lee, yet he did not. So Lee, with 30,000 less men fought him to a draw.

Though the North won the war, it took overwhelming numbers of troops, many of whom were foreigners, to defeat the South. Had the numbers been somewhere near equal on both sides the results may have been dramatically different and the South may well have been able to resist Northern aggression. I never forgot the story I heard years ago about the Union soldier who asked the Confederate soldier “Why are you fighting this war anyway?” To which the Southern soldier replied “Because you’re here.”

Most Southerners didn’t own slaves and so that’s not what they fought over, but they had a bad attitude about being invaded. They didn’t like it. I realize there were people and groups that wanted North and South to fight because no matter who won they planned to put the entire country into political bondage. It was easier to do if the North won, and they are still working at it today. They have destroyed state sovereignty throughout the country and kept people asleep with their federal education establishment and now they feel they are about to put the finishing touches on their agenda. However, they realize people are starting to wake up and so they are in a big hurry to complete their task before enough of us wake up to give them serious resistance.

Actually Lincoln and the Northern Republican Establishment didn’t fight a war to abolish slavery. They fought a war to institutionalize it on the national level. Biden’s crew of internationalists are working on that as I write this. Whether they are successful or not will depend on how many people are willing to resist being slaves to the Establishment.

Abolitionists, Spiritualists, And Women’s Libbers–Our “history” Books Glamorize The Wrong People

by Al Benson jr.

The radical Abolitionist Movement in this country in the years from the 1830s through “reconstruction” at the end of the War of Northern Aggression caused many problems we still deal with today. And yet the people responsible for these radical movements are often the ones our “history” books choose to glamorize today.

If you look at the scribblings of Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison you have to recognize that this man was a rank internationalist whose agenda went way beyond freeing slaves. That was supposedly part of it, but not the whole of it by any means. Although there were undoubtedly some Christians in the Abolitionist Movement, by and large, it was an experiment in rank apostasy. Many of its adherents had become enamored of the strange doctrines of spiritualism that so permeated mid-nineteenth century America. Others had become devotees of Unitarianism–yet another form of apostasy from the Christian faith. Others, like John Brown, had become terrorists.

Ann Braude, in her book Radical Spirits told us that: “Every notably progressive family of the nineteenth century had its advocate of Spiritualism, some of them more than one…The ubiquitous Beecher family contributed Charles Beecher and Isabella Beecher to its ranks, while Harriet Beecher Stowe became a serious investigator…As already noted, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was an early convert and remained loyal to the movement until his death. The famous Grimke sisters, Sarah and Agelina talked to spirits.” All of these people were abolitionists–and all, according to Braude, involved in Spiritualism. Undoubtedly your “history” books mention some of these worthies in glowing terms–but do they tell you anything about their Spiritualist connections? I’m willing to bet that is hardly, if ever, mentioned.

Susan B. Anthony, from a Quaker family, became a partner to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the promotion of what has today become the Women’s Lib Movement. Anthony, at the beginning, had a hard time giving speeches in public. She lacked confidence as a public speaker and so she read most of her speeches to her audiences. Braude has written of Anthony that she wrote to her colleague, Stanton, and stated that: “You can’t think of how earnestly I have prayed to be a speaking medium for a whole week. If they would only come to me thus, I’d give them a hearty welcome.” She was referring to the spirits. Braude has stated, then, that for the sake of the Women’s Lib Movement (they didn’t call it that back then) she was willing to open herself up to being used by spirits.

Another author, Kathleen Barry, in her book Susan B. Anthony took a little different tack on Anthony’s spiritual worldview. She observed that: “In her autobiography, Elizabeth Cady Stanton described Susan’s spirituality as that of an agnostic. Susan never denied the existence of God, but her beliefs were secularized and lodged in the world around her.” So, whichever way you take it–Spiritualist or Unitarian–Anthony’s beliefs were a radical departure from orthodox Christianity–and this is the foundation for Women’s Lib!

Braude, in Radical Spirits identified spiritualism as being present at the Women’s Rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. She noted: “From this time on, Spiritualism and women’s rights intertwined repeatedly as both became mass movements that challenged the existing norms of American life. The two movements shared many leaders and activists.” Again, your history books probably don’t touch on any of this.

It is worth observing in passing that the Spiritualist Movement began to make inroads in this country right around 1848, the same year the communist and socialist revolts began in Europe. In fact, one of the female Forty-Eighters, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, the wife of socialist agitator Fritz Anneke, once she came to America, became one of the leading lights in the Women’s Rights Movement. She worked closely with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and even lobbied in Washington in behalf of women’s rights. So you see there were connections between the Forty-Eighters and the Feminists.

Another family influenced by spiritualism were the Lincolns, both Abraham and Mary. I have read several books mentioning that Mary Lincoln attended seances after the death of their son. But none of these books mentioned that Lincoln attended seances without his wife on trips to New York before he was elected. Arthur R. Thompson mentioned this in his authoritative book To the Victor go the Myths and Monuments on page 201. Mr. Thompson told us that: “J. B. Conklin was a medium. Upon Lincoln’s election, he recognized Lincoln as a frequent guest at seances in New York prior to his election. Conklin stated in the Cleveland Plainview that Lincoln was a spiritualist. Lincoln was shown the article and instead of contradicting it, said, ‘The only falsehood in the statement is that the half of it has not been told. This article does not begin to tell the wonderful things I have witnessed.’ On four successive Sundays prior to the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, Conklin was a guest at the White House and tried to take credit for the proclamation. Accurate or not, and there were many other influences, a number of spiritualists urged Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation…Mary Lincoln attended many seances with three different mediums after moving to Washington, and Lincoln accompanied her on occasion in and out of the White House.”

There is a lot more that could be told but it will have to do for another time.

Conspiracy, Assassination, And Reconstruction

by Al Benson Jr.

Karl Marx, in his commentary about Lincoln claimed that Lincoln was fighting for “the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.” Anyone who has studied Lincoln knows he was a racist and really did not care about the slavery issue except as a crutch he could use to beat the South over the head with. The last part of Marx’s statement is the really critical part–“the reconstruction of a social world.” I always found it interesting that when the Union was going to govern the South after the war they called it “reconstruction.” What the Union did to the South was exactly what Marx advocated.

There was lots of conspiratorial activity in the background, going all the way back beyond the Lincoln assassination. As background, Arthur R. Thompson, in his book To the Victor Go the Myths and Monuments, deals with the Lincoln assassination. He notes: “There was a great deal of evidence that the Confederate Secret Service was involved in the plot against Lincoln, at least the original plan, which was to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for some kind of ransom to either free Confederate prisoners or to end the war under favorable terms. Apparently the original idea of the Confederacy was to kidnap the president and hold him for ransoming tens of thousands of Confederate prisoners . Booth initially attempted such a plot, but circumstances made the attempt impossible. Abduction would have helped the Confederacy and their cause. Assassination helped the Conspiracy.” The conspiracy he refers to here is the one started in Germany in the 1700s, the Illuminati, and which, under a variety of names, continued into the 1800s and still continues to this day. It should be noted here that in the 1800s the abduction of an enemy head of state was considered a legitimate tactic of war, whereas assassination was beyond the pale.

And there was evidence to believe that some in the Union were involved in Lincoln’s assassination. Mr. Thompson observed that: “The movements of Lincoln and those surrounding him were well known to Booth, demonstrating that Booth had to have had a number of people working to feed the information to him through some organization that extended inside the Union government. For instance, Booth knowing the countersign at the Anacostia Bridge over which he made his escape. Another indication Booth had inside information relative to the movement and schedule of Lincoln was that Booth seemed to know which people were invited to attend events with Lincoln…In George Atzerodt’s confession, he mentions that Booth told him that if he did not get Lincoln the ‘New York crowd’ would. Booth also stated more than once that there were between 50 and 100 people involved in the plot. This is not as implausible as it may sound. Recall that the John Brown conspiracy involved scores of people that were never brought to justice. Booth, as is the case with most assassins, also kept a diary…” But that is yet another story. In the John Brown situation some of the conspirators were a group known as “the Secret Six” who were mostly Unitarian bigwigs. None of this group paid for their part in Brown’s debacle at Harpers Ferry.

We often forget, with the apotheosis of Lincoln, that Andrew Johnson and William Seward were also scheduled to be assassinated, which of course did not work out. Mr. Thompson reminds us that “Had all of the assassinations been carried out, America would be a very different place today. Not only would those who assumed power–either legally or de facto–have been different, but the feelings against the Southern people would have been even more broad, deep and vituperative. Wiping out the top three in the federal government would have been used to justify anything the Radicals desired–not only over the South, but over the North as well. Radicals in power never allow a crisis to go unused in building power.” One of Obama’s good buddies, Rahm Emanuel, reminded people “Never let a crisis go to waste.” if you will remember.

Mr. Thompson also reiterated that: “Those who were not immediately exposed among the small, insignificant group surrounding Booth were allowed to walk free. One has to ask why, and what these people knew that the authorities did not want exposed to the public by open trial.”

I have often wondered over the years why the government was soon keen on making sure Mary Surrat was among those hanged for Lincoln’s killing. I’ve even written about it and others have written books proclaiming her innocence, yet someone in the government wanted to make sure she hung rather than just going to prison. So I have often wondered–what did Mary Surrat know and when did she know it? And then there was Assistant Secretary of War Thomas Eckert who visited conspirator Lewis Powell in prison and questioned him. Afterward Eckert said: “All I can say about this is, that you have not got the one half of them.” So what did Eckert know? Alot of conspiracy went on at this time that will never make it into the “history” books because those who control much of the Deep State conspiracy going on in this country also control what makes it into our history books and what gets left out that they think they are better off if we don’t know about most of what really happened. So much for educational objectivity.

The South As The Usual Whipping Boy

by Al Benson Jr.

A friend of mine from Alabama recently sent a letter to the editor of a “news” paper in his area. I don’t know if it got printed or will get printed but in it he made some very appropriate comments that I thought deserved some attention.

He stated, quite accurately, that: “Since 1865 the South has been made America’s whipping boy when it comes to the issue of slavery. Politicians today still use the ‘victimhood’ of slavery on their black constituents to get their votes and gain or hold power over them…I intend to point out a few of the many instances where the North shares guilt over slavery,…The Triangle Trade was about New England shipping companies buying black slaves from their black captors on the coast of the present day African country of Ghana, transporting them back to New England ports and selling them to buyers in both the north and south. The Province of Rhode Island was officially referred to as Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and for good reason, because that is exactly what it was–a plantation.” Your “history” books naturally left this out, but I know a little about it because I grew up in nearby Massachusetts, about a mile from the Rhode Island state line.

I think the state of Rhode Island changed the official name a few years back and took the “plantations” part of the state title out because it sounded too much like what the state had actually been–a big plantation–and that was not politically correct.

I read a book a few years ago written by three reporters from a Hartford, Connecticut newspaper that was about how the north actually profited from and promoted slavery. I don’t imagine that book made them too many friends among the politically correct, but it told the truth.

No one condones slavery. However, when passing around the usual liberal guilt trip for it there is more than enough guilt to go around both in the north and the south. So why don’t the “history” books mention that? You know why. The North won the War of Northern Aggression so naturally their complicity in the slavery question has been expunged from the record. Out of sight out of mind.

I’ve been asking a question for years now that has been studiously been ignored and I expect others have asked it as well. If the North fought the war to abolish slavery as many so-called “history” books inform us then why didn’t the North abolish slavery first in those slave states that remained, for one reason or another, tied to the Union? If abolition was the North’s true intent, shouldn’t they have done that? Yet they didn’t. When West Virginia seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union she entered the Union as a slave state, not a free state.

There were 429,000 slaves in states in Lincoln’s indestructible Union who were kept in bondage until the 15th Amendment freed them after Lincoln’s death. I’m still waiting for an answer as to why they were not freed first if freeing the slaves was the reason for fighting the war. Guess I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting for an answer because that is another of those questions the politically correct will ignore, right?

When a Socialist Became the Secretary of the Interior

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

I have noted in recent articles the impact that socialists and communists had in the history of this country well before the twentieth century–going all the way back to the 1840s. Lots of historians–so called–will seldom, if ever, acknowledge this. Even less will they make mention of the basic socialist foundations of the “conservative” Republican Party. This is history we are not supposed to be taught. And mostly, we aren’t. We have to find this out for ourselves by doing the homework.

One thing that does aid us is that more and more, the socialists are not bashful in admitting their impact on our earlier history. Where the historians ignore it, the socialists brag about it. Donnie Kennedy and I, when we wrote our book Lincoln’s Marxists, the first edition of which was called Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists found this to be true. Incidentally, the first edition of our book is still available.

I just recently came across an article entitled https://worldhistory.us/american-history/impact-of-the-forty-eightors-on-the-amer… that was quite frank in what it admitted. It was published in August of 2018. In part it noted: “For the German-American Forty-Eighters, the best political instrument to ply their revolutionary ideals was the new Republican Party…As a result, the German Forty-Eighters became a significant voting bloc in the Republican Party.

Another German Forty-Eighter, Carl Schurz, a farmer and abolitionist from Wisconsin, helped pave the way for Lincoln’s presidential victory…Schurz mobilized a large part of the German-American vote for Lincoln in the general election…Unfortunately, the German-American reputation as fighters suffered during the course of the war. Schurz, who was awarded with a command by Lincoln, led German-speaking units at the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. His soldiers retreated pell-mell in those battles.” Germans supplied around 750,000 of the Union’s 2.5 million soldiers. That was in the neighborhood of 30%. Not all of those were Forty-Eighters, but a fair number were.

The article opines that the War of Northern Aggression would have happened whether the Forty-Eighters were there or not but it says “…the outcome might have been a bit different.

As for Carl Schurz, his propensities for socialist activities continued and he ended up becoming the Secretary of the Interior in the Hays administration. Pretty lofty position for a German socialist to occupy in the federal government. In our book Lincoln’s Marxists we provided a bit of information about Schurz and his time in the Interior Department. It was not Schurz at his best.

But even more harm was done by his wife, Margarethe Meyer Schurz. It was she who introduced the idea of kindergartens into America. She was a disciple of Friedrich Frobel, the founder of the Kindergarten movement. It is worth noting that, when the socialist revolutionaries were driven out of Germany and legitimate government was restored, kindergarten were banned in that country. When I first started this blog back in November of 2011 I did an article dealing with the socialist origins of the kindergarten movement. Like so many other socialist agendas it came into existence in the 1800s, not the 1900s in this country. And our children are not the better off for it. Yet, along with the rest of the public school movement we seem to have embraced it.

Now, with Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project, along with the whole transgender movement some are beginning to see what the public schools have been doing to their children and lots of them don’t like it. Let us hope they realize they need to get their kids out of those indoctrination centers we call public schools.

It should, by now, have begun to dawn on people that a lot of the problems we have in this country were introduced here by European socialists of one stripe or another. And when they arrived they found home-grown American socialists who were more than willing to aid them in the destruction of our God-given liberties. That’s what socialism is really all about.