National Education–It Has Always Been About “Reconstructing” Southern Culture

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

In his book Segregation–Federal Policy or Racism? (Shotwell Publishing, Columbia, South Carolina) author John Chodes noted, on page 53 that: “In 1867, a small agency was created by Congress. It was called the Bureau of Education. It consisted of only five employees: a supervisor and four clerks, ‘to collect such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several states and territories…as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country.’ From this miniscule beginning, over time, the Bureau of Education became a gigantic department, nationalizing, controlling, and separating black and white primary and secondary schools by administering the Morrill colleges and absorbing the Freedmen’s Bureau schools into its own bureaucracy.” And we have all been led to believe that the federal Department of Education  didn’t happen until Jimmy Carter brought it in during his one-term presidency as payback to the National Education Association for their support of him. Actually,  it seems that all Carter did was to support the most recent manifestation of something that had really been around, in one form or another, for a very long time.

It seems that the educational messiahs in Washington at that time (ever read about them in your history books?) felt that one of the leading causes of Southern secession was that Southern folks had existed for all those years without the dubious “benefit” of a nationalized school system, and therefore, they were easy prey for “Southern demagogues” to con into helping their states secede from our “indivisible” Union.

Republican demagogue James P. Wickersham of Pennsylvania observed that: “It was this ignorance that enabled the rebel leaders to create a prejudice in the minds of this class of persons against the North and to induce them to enlist in their armies…As long as they are ignorant they will remain tools of political demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government. They must be educated;…No state that has passed an act of secession should be allowed to take its former place in the Union without having first incorporated into its constitution a provision for the establishment of a free school system.” Do you begin to see where this has all been going?

What the honorable Mr. Wickersham is really saying here, in his own unique way, is that most Southern folks have just been paying attention to the wrong set of demagogues. They’ve been listening to Southern ones when they really should have been embracing Northern ones. It seems the Northern demagogues have the (politically) correct slant on all the current issues of the day and, therefore, any state that embraced secession should have to have some sort of Yankee/Marxist public school system firmly in place to brainwash the kiddies before it even dreams of unification with the glorious Union. In other words–“teach your kids to think the same way we’ve taught ours to think–or else!”

This Yankee/Marxist mindset portrays secession as some sort of evil, traitorous act that has to be “educated” out of Southern kids so they will never again be tempted to think along those lines. It would seem, if you look at some of today’s headlines, that the government educational system has been somewhat less than spectacularly successful  in obliterating  the idea of secession. There are some small blessings we can be thankful for!

Contrary to what the promoters of public education have told us for over 150 years now,  secession is not (was not) treason. The Declaration of Independence was a secession document, and three of the states that ratified the Constitution did so with the proviso that, if this new government ended up being detrimental to their states, they reserved the right to remove themselves. Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York all said that, in one form or another, in their ratification ordinances. So if secession had been treasonous then the ratification ordinances of those states should not have been accepted–but they were, and that fact alone, which most of your “history” books leave out, speaks volumes.

National (and it’s never really been local) education has always been about the restructuring of American society and culture and making it into something the Founders would not have recognized, something that the Washington and New York culture-benders wanted it to be. All this blather about “quality education for the kids” to put it bluntly, smells like a fresh West Texas cow chip on a hot day in August. It’s pure bovine fertilizer–and not even the high grade stuff at that!

As far as all the Confederate monuments coming down, what do you think most public schools in the South have been teaching your kids about their ancestors who seceded and fought for the Confederacy? You probably don’t really want to know. But you better start finding out, because the drivel they are pushing down your kids’ throats will affect their future, your grandchildren’s futures and the future of your Southern culture.

Just remember this–if you take nothing else away from what you’ve read here–“Reconstruction” is ongoing. It has never stopped. It may have shifted gears here and there, but it has never ceased. It is as relevant to your lives today as it was to those who surrendered at Appomattox.

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Education Is “Reconstruction”–Even Today!

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

In his informative book Segregation–Federal Policy or Racism (Shotwell Publishing Co., Columbia, South Carolina) author John Chodes has some interesting information in chapter 6, which he entitles The Freedmen’s Bureau:  Segregation for Black Education. In this chapter he notes that the whole concept of segregation was promoted so that blacks could be “educated” (radicalized) separately from whites. This was a kind of master  plan to promote class hatred between the races. Look at it this way–one of the reasons for the War of Northern Aggression was not to free the slaves, but rather to transfer ownership from private hands to federal hands. From private hands to the Freedmen’s Bureau!

Chodes notes how the federal government was, even in the 1860s, messing around with federal control of and aid for education. The foolish idea of public, or government, schools being “ours” or somehow belonging to the people, is and has been the prevalent myth, propagated on the public at large so they will not realize that this leviathan institution was made and directed from Washington from day one. This is something we have got to get through our heads! These really were and are Government Schools!

Chodes observes, on page 34 that: “The Union League, for all its destructiveness for race relations,  was only a division of a larger organization–the Freedmen’s Bureau. It was an agency of the War Department. Its role in the post-war South was enormous and its educational projects that were put in place in the 1860s, became national models for the 20th century. Its political directives for the special treatment of blacks and the hunting down of racists is still expanding in the contemporary United States and continues to impact current national policy.”

The Union League separated the blacks from the whites and then the Freedman’s Bureau educated them differently, which laid the basic foundation for “eternal segregation.” And Chodes accurately observed that  “The primary function of the Freedmen’s Bureau was educating blacks to vote Republican and to forever hate Southern whites. Integration was unthinkable, except in some rare, showcase schools, where it was used to torment whites with radical principles of social equality.” They could teach the blacks how to vote Republican and not bother to teach the whites much about anything regarding voting because the vast majority of the whites had been disenfranchised due to “reconstruction” and could no longer vote.

Then came the Yankee/Marxist “school teachers.” These “missionaries” and they were missionaries, felt that they were “…the advance guard of a new army of invasion against the terrible South.” And here your “history” books have told you that “reconstruction” ended when all those Yankee troops departed. Well, not really. The South was still in the process of being invaded–only now it was with school teachers instead of soldiers–but the results, if more insidious, were still the same. It was never about “freeing the slaves” but it was always about changing the culture, particularly the Christian culture, of the Old South. After 150 years of this, we still haven’t figured that out yet. I begin to wonder if we ever will!

These invading “missionaries” of Yankee/Marxist “education” came down here to show us the error of our ways, and while they were assaying to do that they “…taught the negro the wildest of social, political, and religious doctrines…In teaching him not to be servile, they taught him to be insolent…” Anyone notice any of that going around today?

Chodes said that “In his autobiography, General O. O. Howard described his plan to permanently consolidate all Southern schools. This would be the prelude to nationalizing them.” Howard wanted all education, both private and public, to “become absorbed in a great free system.” Guess who would control that “great free system?”  Subtle hint: it wouldn’t be the parents! In retrospect, you have to wonder how much different this was than Karl Marx’s tenth point in the Communist Manifesto  “Free education for all children in public schools.” I don’t see much difference.

And in regard to educating white kids “…education would be the instrument for reforming the Southern mind to be sympathetic to the principles of union and liberty, and for training Southerners to be obedient to Republican Party rule. In a sense, the school was the common denominator,  the agency for nationalization of the sectionally minded South.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where all this was going–and remember, this was 1866, not 1966!

I have, over the years, often maintained that public (government) education was an integral part of “reconstruction.” Unfortunately, most Southern folks I have talked to either totally don’t get it, or they don’t even want to think about it. To that degree, “reconstruction” in the South has been a smashing success. The “missionaries” have done what the Yankee troops couldn’t.

But, whether you want to think about it or not, government schools ARE a major part of the ongoing “reconstruction” of the South, and of the rest of the country as well. If you look at the history of government schools, you will find that kids (and parents) in the North were being “reconstructed” for about a generation before they started on us. So, whatever else you want to think, government schools as we now have them, were part and parcel of “reconstruction” in the South, and that is a problem we have yet to deal with down here.

Key Words For Confederate Monuments–“On Private Land”

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Usually, I seldom quote the New York Times as it is not one of my favorite publications, and I have accused it, over the years, of not printing “all the news that’s fit to print” but rather of printing all the news that fits (the agenda).

On August 30th I read a Times article by a Sabrina Tavernise, and although I did not agree with all her conclusions in this article, she did bring up some points worthy of comment.

To start her article she noted: “One of the proudest moments of Robert Eldreth’s life was erecting a Confederate monument on a patch of grass behind the Georgetown (Delaware) Historical Society in 2007. It was the first monument to Delawareans who had served the Confederacy, and the fact that it came 142 years after the end of the war hardly mattered. ‘It’s a lesson in history,’ said Mr. Eldreth, who led the group that put it up. ‘It’s about our roots and sacrifices that those citizens here in Delaware made. To me that’s so honorable’.”

Ms. Tavernise made an interesting comment, citing the damage the Charlottesville episode was intended to cause the cause of Southern history and heritage, when she said: “While old monuments erected in bygone eras are coming down, new ones continue to go up.” Most in the mainstream media would never admit this.

She mentioned other instances along this line. She observed: “In Crenshaw County, Alabama,  a new monument to ‘unknown Confederate soldiers’ was unveiled Sunday in a private park. In the small East Texas town of Orange, a giant concrete ring of 13 columns, representing the states the Confederacy claimed as its own, is going up on private land at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Martin Luther King Drive.”

A historian at the University of North Carolina has also stated “There has been a Civil War memorial boom going on over the last 20 years.” He noted that at least 36 monuments had gone up in North Carolina since 2000 and that was as many as were put up in all the years between 1940 and 1990.

At this point, Tavernise made a statement I somewhat had to disagree with. She did note that, while in former years, monuments and memorials were put up in “busy public squares” the monuments going up today are appearing in quieter areas, more away “from the bustle of daily life on plots of private land, or on battlefield sites,…” And while many Americans don’t want to see monuments taken down, she feels that new monuments are not finding the acceptance in “broader society” that they once did. I guess that depends on where the “broader society” is coming from. If you are talking about Northern Virginia, which has become infested with dwelling places for Washington bureaucrats, she might have a point. However, I don’t think that holds true for many other places in the South.

A Sons of Confederate Veterans commander in Alabama noted that more monuments will go up, but it will be on private property. That seems to be the trend now, and in light of all the cultural destruction and ethnic cleansing that has gone on in the South in recent years, that seems to me to be the way to go. We need to keep putting up our monuments, flags, and memorials, but do it on private property, where culturally Marxist city and town council members can’t get their grubby collectivist paws on them. Oh, they will wail and moan about the “injustice and racism” of it all because they don’t get their way. Tough, baby. Let them know this is how the cookie crumbles.

Not as many may get to see some of the monuments in more out of the way places, but those that really care and want their children to appreciate their culture and heritage will make the effort to visit these places. And their culture and history will be preserved–even if it is a little ways outside of town. In the long run, that doesn’t matter.

The key to putting up our monuments, flags, and memorials is to start doing it on private land! The folks mentioned in this article have shown that this can be done, and for the sake of our children and their children’s futures it needs to be done. Whatever the cultural Marxists manage to tear down, let us be replacing as much as we can on private land. Private land!!! Even the thought of that makes the cultural Marxists cringe!

Political Ignorance–Part of the new slavery

by Al Benson Jr.

There a lots of “useful idiots” out there on the Left that couldn’t pour water into a teapot if they were handed a set of gilt-edged instructions along with the water. Our government education system has largely aided in their brainwashing and programming so that they think good is evil, freedom is slavery, and white is evil, even though many of them are white. They claim that fascism is a “right-wing” phenomena when any sane person recognizes that there is precious little difference between a Nazi (national socialist) and a Communist (international socialist). They are both socialists!

I just read an article this morning from Frontpage Magazine, by Matthew Vadum, dealing with Antifa, which is supposed to be an “anti-fascist” group but, in reality, acts as though they were Hitler’s brown shirts. Vadum stated in his article: “Video has surfaced showing masked Antifa thugs in Berkeley, California, last weekend calling for the destruction of the United States…It is becoming increasingly clear that the Antifa, short for anti-fascists, are the de facto militant arm of today’s Democratic Party…” According to Tucker Carlson of Fox News “This is a political militia that is doing the bidding, in effect, of Nancy Pelosi and Governor Jerry Brown and the mayor of Berkeley and all these supposedly mainstream Democratic politicians, and this is a militia hurting American citizens for saying what they think.”

And Antifa does have an agenda, whether its own or one that was handed to it by those who finance its Leftist political gyrations or not, I don’t know, but I rather think it’s one that has been handed to them and then they have been left to work out the particulars.

They talk about “creating a culture of  tolerance and then they employ the techniques of cultural Marxism to work that out. They say “To create a culture of tolerance, we must first eliminate all forms of hate speech. Every idea critical of our movement or our way of thinking  must be condemned as” racist, homophobic, misogynist, etc.” So, in their “culture of tolerance” they are going to condemn the opinions or ideas of anyone that dares to disagree with their collectivist viewpoint.

And they continue: “…When all else fails, compare someone to Hitler. Every once in awhile one of our minority group friends will become disillusioned and speak out as a conservative a.k.a. fascist. Belittle them as delusional..Our color, my blackness, for example, comes first. It defines who I am. Black first, American second. Gay/Lesbian first, little person/dwarf second, American third, and so on.”

And they say: “Most liberals are not ANTIFA (yet) but soon they will be…Never call any immigrant ‘illegal,’ obviously.  They are ‘undocumented…By 2117, one hundred years from now, our goal is to have 70% of the US population be non-white…”

They have a big interest in controlling the media and they have a big interest in the social media. They have said: “Social media is the new battlefront of ideals. We’ve seen what kind of power these outlets yield by kicking major fascists off their platform before. This will and this must only continue.” In other words they work to eliminate opinions contrary to their own. So much for “free speech.” It’s “free” if they say it is–otherwise it’s “fascist.”

And they make an interesting statement for those of you who have kids. They say: “Many of us first learned about Antifa and gained our views on college campuses and universities across the country. This needs to start earlier. Take up teaching as a profession. Educate the youth about the dangers of fascism…Teach little Tommy not just how to read good, but also how to think and act good.”  All in accord with the worldview of Antifa, of course. Maybe, if his parents are not too sharp about what goes on in school, they can teach little Tommy to be a good socialist! That’s where they are really headed and one way for them to do that is to make sure that little Tommy has no cultural heritage, particularly Southern cultural heritage, to fall back on, because like all good socialists, Antifa knows that if they steal your youngsters’ history and heritage they will control his future instead of you.

This is just a little something for you to ponder as you sit in front of the TV and watch the Anfifa thugs, all masked, march across your screen in their quest to “destroy fascists” which means  you!  

About Those Slaves In The North–?

by Al Benson Jr.

We’ve been watching with bated breath for months now as those charming people in Antifa and Black Lives Matter have continued their Leftist crusade to smash and destroy all statues and monuments commemorating anyone in the South that might have been a slave owner–all the way back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. These two Founders, they now claim, have to be “de-commemorated” because they owned slaves. Were Washington and Jefferson alive and on Facebook today they would automatically be “unfriended” for owning slaves and would never be allowed to post anything ever again.

As I have observed this continuing line of Leftist drivel, I have noted that slavery in the North has seldom been mentioned, nor have Northern slave owners been referred to. Of course that may come later as the ethnic cleansing progresses to the next level and the white race  is thoroughly purged–all except for the Marxist white professors that suggested the purging. Folks, welcome to “reconstruction” part two!

Leave it to Professor Tom DiLorenzo to come up with some interesting facts in most any area having to do with the War of Northern Aggression. This is the man that pinned Lincoln’s hide to the wall, so to speak. You really ought to read his books about Lincoln if you haven’t.

He had some interesting commentary on Lew Rockwell’s website the other day in reference to Ulysses S. Grant and James Longstreet and their friendship before the War. Professor DiLorenzo observed: “What few people know, however, is that Longstreet introduced his first cousin, Julia Dent, to Grant, and the two eventually married. Before the war, Grant lived with his in-laws and was the overseer (‘manager’ according to the National Park Service Website!) of the slaves on the family’s Missouri slave plantation. As stated in this National Park Service site…about the old plantation that was called White Haven, ‘the Dents, Grants, and an enslaved African-American workforce lived on the property.’  The slaves were not freed until they had to be after the Thirteenth Amendment became the law of the land in 1866.  How rich is it that Ulysses S. Grant’s slave plantation was called ‘White Haven’?!  So the man chosen by Lincoln to command the war ‘to end slavery’ was a former plantation overseer.” Well, does that mean that Grant’s picture should now be removed from the fifty dollar bill and replaced with, say, Denmark Vessey? If you don’t know who he was, look him up. And who will they come up with to put on the one dollar bill when Washington is forced to go the way of all slave owners? How about W. E. B. DuBois, the man who joined the Communist Party shortly before he died? That would be a logical choice for those Leftists among us who will hoot, scream, and howl about “white privilege” until they get their way, no matter how ludicrous their demands. I don’t know if they are even still making the two dollar bill. I haven’t seen one in over ten years, but Jefferson used to be on that one. Maybe if they are still printing them in some back office in the capital they could replace Jefferson with abolitionist/terrorist John Brown–with a picture of the armory at Harpers Ferry on the reverse side of the bill.

The Leftists are totally committed to destroying any remaining vestige of the memory of anyone in the South who owned slaves, or who even thought about it,  but strangely, up to this point, they have said nothing about Northern slave owners or slave traders, and a look at the history will show conclusively that the vast majority of slave traders came out of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. However, the Far Left has been silent about that, at least up until now, right along with most of our “history” books. We have been propagandized into believing that slavery in this country was exclusively a Southern institution that all Southerners today should feel guilty about, and the Leftist take on all this is, shall we say, slightly less than accurate.

Even liberal Northern newspapers admit this much. An article in the Providence Journal for September 20, 2014 noted: “Among the report’s findings: Rhode Island’s  Colonial-era economy was heavily dependent on slave trading; a handful of wealthy Rhode Islanders, including members of the Brown family dominated the so-called ‘Triangle Trade’ in rum, slaves and molasses;  slave-owning was widespread in Rhode Island and other New England states during the 18th and early 19th centuries; and several of the universities early supporters, including its founder, the Rev. James Manning, and its first treasurer, John Brown, were slave owners.” They then go on to tell you that the man the university was named after was an abolitionist–as though that somehow cleanses the stain of those who were slave owners.

Now with all of the current Leftist hysteria going on about tearing down statues and monuments of people that were slave owners, I wonder, should that same game apply to Yankees who were slave owners? Should monuments (if any) and plaques that honor these men also be removed? It seems to me that what is sauce for the goose should be good for the duck also.  After all, slave owners were slave owners–North or South–right?

And, if monuments for men in the North who were slave owners need to be preserved, for whatever reasons, then so do monuments here in the South. Just a little something for us to chew on! I hope the Leftists don’t choke over their inconsistencies. Maybe we need to remind them of them before they stumble over them and hurt themselves!

The Reds Among Us Since 1848

If you have not read in your “history” books about the Marxists and socialists who fought on the side of the Union during the “late unpleasantness” you are not alone. This is the kind of real history that our Establishment “historians,” so called, would rather we did not know anything about. If we are ignorant of the facts of this aspect of the War, then we can’t ask embarrassing  questions about it that the historians and politicians don’t wish to deal with.

Along this line, a few years back, Walter Kennedy and I wrote the book Lincoln’s Marxists. Our aim was to pull back the curtain and reveal the Marxists, socialists, and other assorted Leftists sitting back there hoping we would never see them. And you have to admit, most of our professional “historians” have done a pretty good job making sure we knew as little as possible about them.

Lots of folks who should will probably never get to read the book, which is unfortunate. Those who have read it have been enlightened by it, except for the ones on the Left and some of them were slightly ticked at it.

However, for the many who will probably not get to read the book, there is a new CD available called Lincoln’s Marxists. It is a 37 minute lecture by Al Benson Jr. that gives you basic facts about these Marxists and socialists and what their objectives for our country were (and still are), and why they so strongly supported Lincoln and the Northern Cause, and why Mr. Lincoln was so glad to have their assistance.

If you would like more information about this please contact Al Benson Jr. at copperhead102@juno.com  If you would like to have a copy of this CD, the cost is $8.00, which includes the cost of shipping. Please send your check or money order to:

Lincoln CD c/o The Copperhead Chronicle  P O Box 55,  Sterlington, Louisiana  71280.

Ahhh “Racism”–what a racket!

by Al Benson Jr.

I thought I had heard all the idiocy about “racism” that was out there in the past few years, but I should have known better–for the “racist” racket, scam, hoax, or whatever you care to call it, marches on and on and on.

We found out, on this morning’s “news” that now the eclipse of the sun that will happen today is also “racist.” Why is that? Because most of the main part of the country that will be affected by it is the area that mostly voted for Trump in the last election, that’s why! I kid you not. That was in an internet news item that I read this morning. The person that said, awhile back, that “you can’t make this stuff up” knew whereof they spoke.

Over the last decade or so we have watched all manner of things that have suddenly been declared “racist.” If you use white paper to write on you are “racist.” If you eat vanilla ice cream you are a “racist.” What about chocolate ice cream? Are the folks that like chocolate ice cream reverse racists? And what about someone that eats chocolate ice cream and then uses white paper to write something on? Now there’s a dilemma if ever there was one! Are they classified as a “bi-racist?” And those folks who dare to eat white potatoes are simply beyond the pale. How dare they! And what about bananas? They are almost white, although they do start to turn kind of black when they are going bad–so bananas must be racist too, along with chocolate chip ice cream, where only the chocolate chips are dark colored at the rest is white. So the chocolate chips are okay–but why are they sitting in this “racist” white ice cream? I can see future scientists pondering over some of these deep questions in the years to come and trying to come up with reasons why this or that is racist or not. All they have to do is make sure their solutions satisfy the liberal (socialist) intelligentsia and all will be well. As for the rest of us, especially those of us that live in flyover country, our opinions don’t really matter. After all, most of us voted for Trump so that automatically disqualifies us from having any real say or opinion.

I’m just wondering why Hillary, Chuck Schumer, Antifa and all these tenured white turncoats that pretend to work at colleges aren’t considered racist. After all, they are white. But then I guess maybe being willing to sell out your race and sell your soul to the highest bidder does count for something–for now!

As my readers know, I have been watching all this crappola about how racist Confederate monuments are and that’s why they have to come down. So they will take them down, even to the point of trying to disinter Nathan Bedford Forrest from his grave in Memphis–which, if you ask me, you really have to be a sicko to be involved with.

And after that, they will go for the statues of Washington, Jefferson, and a whole batch of others that really have nothing to do with racism–and all because they think they can.

And, when all the statues and monuments and flags are down and you no longer have a recognizable history, what will they do then? Then, dear reader, they will find that you, if you are white, are also “racist” and they will come for you. Another news article I read yesterday asked the question “where will all this end” And the answer in the article was “It won’t.” That was an accurate reply. Whoever wrote that article, and the name escapes me at the moment, seems to “get it.” Most of us don’t!

The people that push this racist drivel don’t seem to realize they are sealing their own doom. In saying that the eclipse is “racist” they are saying that God, who causes such events, is racist too–and that is something they will be called to account for at some point. However, until that point is reached, those who do realize what a scam this whole anti-white, anti-Confederate, anti-American game is need to be engaged in pushing back, because all the real racists understand is resistance.