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 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.

The Left Continues To Peddle A Guilt Trip About Slavery

by Al Benson Jr.

Those on the political and theological left continue to try to decimate Southern culture with the slavery issue. They insist the War of Northern Aggression was fought to free the slaves (a specious lie, but they don’t care. They blame the South for slavery in this country, forgetting that there were slaves in all the 13 original colonies–a fact they hope you never check out.

But now there has been a new chip thrown into the pot, one the left didn’t figure on–blacks admitting that their ancestors were part and parcel of the African slave trade. I recently came across a site that was most informative, https://historynewsnetwork.org which observed: “Incomplete depictions of the Atlantic slave trade are, in fact, quite common. My 2003 study of 49 state U.S. history standards revealed that not one of these guides to classroom content even mentioned the key role of Africans in supplying the Atlantic slave trade. In Africa itself, however, the slave trade is remembered quite differently. Nigerians, for example, explicitly teach about their own role in the trade…In Ghana, politician and educator Samuel Sulemana Fuscini has acknowledged that his Asanti ancestors accumulated their great wealth by abducting, capturing, and kidnapping Africans and selling them as slaves.” Wonder how that statement would go over in classrooms run by leftist teachers.

The article continued: “Ghanian diplomat Kofi Anoonor has written: ‘I believe there is a great psychic shadow over Africa, and it has much to do with our guilt and denial of our role in the slave trade. We too are blameworthy in what was essentially one of the most heinous crimes in human history…All the tribes were involved–no exemptions.” Another African American stated: ‘So we really can’t blame the Europeans, we sold our own. It takes two.” The article also observed: “The white man did not introduce slavery to Africa…And by the fifteenth century men with dark skins had become quite comfortable with the concept of man as property…”

Yet another article, this one on https://www.khaynacademy.org noted this: “African societies practiced human bondage long before the Atlantic slave trade began…Furthermore, prisoners of war between different African societies oftentimes became enslaved.” That was where the Europeans got many of the slaves they brought to America, from African tribes who sold off some of their POW’s.

And an interesting article was on http://www.bbc.com that observed comments written by another African who said: “My great grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku, was what I prefer to call a businessman, from the Igbo ethnic group of Southern Nigeria. He dealt in a number of goods including tobacco and palm produce. He also sold human beings.” And this lady lived in relatively modern times. She also added: “He had agents who captured slaves from different places and brought them to him” my father told me.”

Sandra E. Greene noted on https://research.cornell.edu that “Slavery in the U.S. ended in 1865, but in West Africa it was not legally ended until 1875, and then it stretched on unofficially until almost World War 1.”

So most of this politically correct baloney that blames all whites, and particularly Southern whites for slavery is just that–leftist baloney–for want of a better term. It is nothing but anti-white propaganda! The Africans would have continued to engage in slavery had they never sold a single slave to white American slave traders who were all from the North anyway, and many were Jews as well as Christians and agnostics.

Whites have purposely been taken on ahuge guilt trip over something that has been a practice of every race on earth! It is long past time to quit feeling guilty and to take a long look at the slavery practiced by other races every bit as much as white folks did.

The Times They Are Changing–And Not For The Better!

by Al Benson Jr.

Some of you, like me, may be able to remember the old “Cheyenne” Western series on television. There is a channel in our area that broadcasts lots of the old Westerns that were popular in the 1950s and 60s and I watch some of them.

Recently there was one of the old “Cheyenne” series on that featured a young man who rode around with a Confederate flag tied to the barrel of his rifle. In the show he ended up dying, but in the last scene, it portrayed Cheyenne taking the young man’s rifle and wedging it in the rocks atop a hill there so it stood upright, with the Confederate flag flying in the breeze. I thought, as I viewed that final scene, no way would that ever be allowed in any television series today!

In today’s Hollyweird the Confederate flag is viewed as horribly politically incorrect and as outright treasonous by the Biden Regime. Just ask General Milley about that! Some of you all may also remember that singer Johnny Horton did a song back in the 1950s called Johnny Reb. It was, basically a tribute to the average Confederate soldier and his dogged persistence in fighting four long years for a cause he believed it–and it wasn’t the continuation of slavery–contrary to what today’s leftist and neo-con “historians” tell you.

If you want to understand that war, then read Gene Kizer’s book Slavery Was Not The Cause Of The War Between The States. I don’t recall the exact figure, but I think it was something like 6% of the Confederate soldiers owned slaves and the other 94% didn’t. To think the 94% who never owned a slave were fighting so the other 6% could keep their slaves is ludicrous! Yet that’s what today’s “historians” would have us believe.

You will never see a movie or tv series today where the owner of a Confederate flag is not portrayed as some sort of racist monster who secretly desires to re-enslave all black folks. And it is all so much rubbish. When we had our own home I had a First National Confederate flag flying in our front yard. It had nothing whatever to do with race, but was rather my way of honoring my Confederate ancestor–who did not fight to preserve slavery, but rather fought because his state was invaded.

In the old John Wayne movie, The Undefeated, the Yankee officer, played by Wayne, asked the Confederate soldier why the Southerners are still fighting the day after the war has supposedly ended and the Confederate soldier replied “because you’re here.” That’s a pretty accurate answer for a movie, but then that movie was also made back in the 1960s I believe.

For the past 40 plus years Confederate flags, symbols, and monuments have been under almost constant attack by dedicated leftists who know better and by nutty neo-cons who should know better but never seem to learn. April is Confederate History Month. That means that those who truly understand what Confederate heritage is all about (not racism) should use this opportunity to protect and promote legitimate Southern heritage.

If you live in an area that has any Southern heritage events coming up that you are aware of, go out and take part if you can. Here in North Louisiana they always have the (Confederate) Flags Across The Ouachita in April. This year it will be on April 21st at 4 pm in the afternoon on the Lea Joyner Bridge between Monroe and West Monroe, Louisiana. If you happen to be in that area come on over and help the Sons of Confederate Veterans support our Southern heritage. At least drive by if you can and let them know you appreciate what they are doing. After all, it’s your heritage they are defending!

Theology And The War Of Northern Aggression

by Al Benson Jr.

The War of Northern Aggression aka the Civil War had many reasons, economic (tariffs), constitutional (states rights), and even conspiratorial. There were certain people, both north and South of Mason-Dixon that had as their objective the destruction of the Constitutional Republic the Founders gave us. Abraham Lincoln was one of these. And the idea of a One World Government was not new, even in 1860.

However, most books written about the War studiously avoid dealing with the theological implications involved. Either their authors are unaware of those or they hope their readers are. And then books on the theological aspects of the War do not sell nearly as well as books about battles and personalities.

Northern “historians” which predominate in our day want nothing to do with the theological issues because those issues tend to cast the North in a less than glamourous light. Fighting to “free the slaves” sounds oh so much better than fighting to defend apostate religious views does. So Northern historians want nothing to do with the theological issues except for their own theology, which, though they may not even realize it, is steeped in radical Unitarianism. To ignore the theological issues is to ignore the real reasons that men like Lee and Jackson fought–and it wasn’t to defend slavery! The thought of going to war so your neighbor down the road apiece could keep his 20 slaves would have been reprehensible to them. And peddling such political pap does most of your Southern fighting men a grave disservice. Though that seems to be where the “enlightened” thinking seems to reside in our day. Forgive me, but such truncated thinking is a long way from “enlightened!”

If history today is accurately read (almost an exercise in futility) it will show that in the three decades before the War the North had become saturated with Unitarian thought while the South was leaning more and more toward orthodox Christian thinking–what today we call Reformed Theology. The South produced theologians of the caliber of James Henley Thornwell, Robert L. Dabney, and Benjamin Morgan Palmer while the North was producing apostates like Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson–the man who was “always ready to invest money in treason.” So there was a distinct theological cleavage between North and South!

For the average Southerner there was a distinct belief in God’s sovereignty and man’s complete dependence on God for his salvation through Jesus Christ. Southern preachers had warned their congregations against “extreme confidence in human nature” and against the Unitarian mindset where “each man is his own Christ.” The Southern biblical worldview was completely at variance with the Unitarian-inspired thinking of much of the North. Besides, the abolitionist thinking in the North was tainted with sort of a “one world” aura that reeked of internationalism. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison had said his country was “the world” and he was into the Feminist Movement and spiritualism of his day.

So the theological climate in the North was far removed from the orthodox Christian faith–and some of the conspirators I took note of earlier had a plan to subvert orthodox Christianity in the South and replace it with a more Scofieldian version which was famous for its neutrality toward evil. For a bit of reflection, go back on this blog to 4/9/2016 and read the article The War Didn’t End At Appomattox.

Confederate Flag Day

by Al Benson Jr.

I have been informed that March 4th will be designated this year as Confederate Flag Day. It will be a time to have programs about Confederate flags and their true meaning and purpose. Those flags were not about slavery. Today they are often misused and abused by those who should not use them.

This gives the Confederate flag a bad rap–and I am not sure that some of that is not intentional. The FBI infiltrated some of these groups years ago and some leaders have been pegged as FBI informants.

People need to learn the truth about our flags and not just believe the media liars that tell us these flags represent only “racism.” Also, April is designated each year as Confederate History Month, an excellent time to take a look at Southern history and how important it is to this country and to our understanding of American history overall.

There are places on the internet you can check out accurate Southern history. Look up the website for Abbeville Institute. They have all kinds of articles about the rich history of the South. I would recommend checking out their site. You will learn a lot that the news pundits and public school systems wish you didn’t know about.

If you want to learn how Southern culture and heritage is under attack today, check out the site of the Virginia Flaggers and read about their attempts to preserve our culture and heritage. Our Southern culture and heritage have been under severe attack for at least thirty years that I am aware of (and probably longer).

You get the faulty impression from the “news” media and many politicians that the War of Northern Aggression was only about slavery and that the North fought a noble war to free the slaves–and it’s all hogwash! If the North was only fighting to free the slaves, then why didn’t they first free the slaves in slave states that remained in the Union–Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia? The Emancipation Proclamation specified that only slaves in Confederate territory were to be emancipated while slaves in Union territory were to remain in bondage. They ended up being freed only by the 13th Amendment after the War was over and Lincoln had gone on to his “reward” whatever and wherever that was.

I’ve asked the question several times–if the North fought to free the slaves, why didn’t they start by freeing their own slaves? To date, the silence on that question has been deafening. Everybody simply ignores this question and probably wishes it would go away. But it won’t! Even the so-called conservative news media disparage the South and they should know better. It seems that they learned their “history” in the same public school indoctrination centers that the socialists did, and they believe the indoctrination!

When I was growing up I heard lots of stuff about how bad the South was and what a terrible place it was. When I got old enough to go there myself, I found it was all a monstrous lie. To be sure, the South ain’t perfect. But, then, no place on earth inhabited by sinful men is perfect. As far as racial prejudice, I heard much of that in the North as a kid. And now the Biden Regime is supposedly trying to cure that with their own brand of reverse racism which openly discriminates against whites.

In spite of all the political fertilizer that was thrown around, my wife and I ended up in the South and we have no regrets for having done so. We’ve been here for over twenty years now and found it is not the horrible place we were told it was. Believe me, folks, I grew up in the North and it is no paradise.

The Southerners were not traitors when they seceded. They did not try to overthrow the Northern government. All they tried to do was separate from it. If separation is treason then so was the Declaration of Independence. Even though the politically correct socialist types are pushing for it, Southern culture and history are not going away. But we need our folks down here to stand up for their heritage. One way we can do that is to get our kids out of public indoctrination centers we still call schools and make sure they start learning our real history instead of lies. It is up to us to preserve our heritage because you can bet the political liars in Washington are bent on destroying it.

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?

The Disinformation War Is Now Upon Us.

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Well, if you have been watching the frantic rush by the cultural Marxist media to censor Alex Jones off all their lists you have to come to one conclusion–this is one of the most well coordinated “spontaneous” purges we will ever see in our lifetime. The list of outfits that will no longer carry Alex Jones’ material is about half as long as your arm. Every media outlet from Facebook to Spotify is on it except Twitter and I expect they will fall in line shortly.

They will all give you noble-sounding reasons why they just can’t justify carrying Infowars.com any longer–but the truth of the matter is that http://infowars.com carries truth that they don’t really want the public to see and so they are all pushing to make sure the public sees as little of it as possible.

And as I’ve said before, don’t think they will stop with Infowars.com. If they can silence Alex then they will move on to censor Drudge, Zero Hedge, World Net Daily, Breitbart, Lew Rockwell and anyone else they feel gives the public too big a dose of the real truth. You have to realize one thing in our day about censors–they seek to hide the truth from us. The public has started, for the first time in my lifetime, to wake up to the truth of how this country has been screwed over for decades and the task of the censors is to make sure they don’t hold onto that memory by removing all the information pertaining to it and how it was done from public view.

During all my growing up years the only major “information” sources available were the New York Times (which printed all the news that fit) and the Washington  Post, along with NBC, ABC, and CBS (the communist broadcasting system). Those “news outlets” had the corner on the market and they  printed everything the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission wanted us to  know–and nothing they didn’t.

In the last few years the alternative media has blossomed, and along with it the alt.right media and we started finding  out stuff the “big 5” really didn’t want us to know. And along came the internet, which was really responsible for both Ron Paul and Donald Trump doing as well as they did.

But now the Deep State has decided that all this truth-telling has gone far enough–it’s got to cease as the Deep States agenda is in jeopardy. Can’t have people waking up and realizing what they are doing to them and starting to  push back. They need to start getting us deplorables back in line where we just sit down and shut up. So bring on the censors. They can shut down the truth-tellers and start telling us how much they hurt “our democracy” and “our (really their) American way of life” with the truth.

Don’t for one minute think the censors will stop with Alex Jones.  If they can silence him (which I hope they are not able to) then they will attack all the other people I have mentioned in this article and lots that I didn’t mention. I think their final aim is the total destruction of the alternative media in every way, shape and form it exists in. This is  to be a thorough, complete purge, Soviet style. I think that’s where they are going with this. A cultural atrocity until no one is left but their spokesmen.

And for the Southern Heritage folks that don’t think this has anything to do with them, all you have to do is look at their ongoing attacks on our flags and monuments in the past several years to realize that we are on their to do list too. How much of our truth have they censored out with their “Civil War was only fought over slavery” blarney? You all know what I am talking about and in your hearts you have to realize that what is going on now in the political realm will affect you and your children.

How many of you have checked out Infowars.com lately to find out what really goes on in the country? No fun, you say? Of course it’s no fun–but you need to know!

Then there is the plan that Senate Democrats are planning for a government takeover of the  internet. Why don’t you check that one out on the internet. Try to see what you can find on duckduckgo.com  There’s lots of stuff there you don’t see other places.

Make no mistake, the Leftists and their paymasters among us intend to institute, via censorship, a complete purge of all internet sites where you can pick up even a few grains of truth. It’s in the works now and one thing you can do to slow it down is to start viewing on a regular basis those sites they are trying to censor.

Here’s a great quote from an article on Zero Hedge today: “Big tech is in bed with big government to make sure you don’t get off their reservation.”

Nikki Hates Guns As Much As She Hates Confederate Flags

 

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

I don’t doubt that Donald Trump has tried to do his best for the country and he has done a lot better than any of the presidents in my lifetime, but some of the people he has picked for cabinet officers and for other positions have been people that have only made his job more difficult. Some he picked fought him from day one because they were part of the Deep State and their  agenda was to neutralize him as much as possible. He finally saw through some of them and they moved on, but he hasn’t seen through all of them yet–and one major problem for him is his United Nations Ambassador, Nimrata (Nikki) Haley. Some of what she does goes against the core values of his base and you have to wonder sometimes just who Ms. Haley is working for.

One good thing about Trump is that he has been solidly behind the Second Amendment and the sensible people in this country, the ones that are not dedicated Leftists,  have understood that and supported it.

But Ms. Haley seems to have a penchant for going off  the deep end and has done so more than once. When she was governor in South Carolina, when those horrible church shootings took place, she was first in line to start hauling down Confederate flags. I wonder if she thought such politically correct (cultural Marxist) action would endear her to the Deep State Republican Establishment and might move her up the political ladder. She obviously had her eyes on bigger things than the mere governorship of South Carolina.

So she ended up as Trump’s UN Ambassador (bad pick Donald) where she has sought to flex her political muscle and as she wanted to endear herself to the Confederate flag haters in her Party, so now she seems to seek to endear herself to the One World government types that infest the United Nations.

She has embraced the UN position on world gun control (confiscation).

An article on https://www.infowars.com/alert-us-joins-gun-control-push just noted today, July 9, 2018 that “It was what Fast & Furious and the Gunwalker false flags were about–Now the UN Arms Treaty is back and the US, under UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, has signed on to the measure to track every gun in the US.” Go back and read that again. Let it sink in. Trump may well be pro-Second Amendment but his UN Ambassador has just signed away our Second Amendment rights to the jurisdiction of the United Nations–the organization that author G. Edward Griffin called The Fearful Master. In fact he wrote a book about the United Nations by that name. See if you can still find it on Amazon. If you can you need to read it

So now Haley has signed  us onto a treaty that will start the tracking down of every gun in the country. So who is going to do the tracking for the UN?

Will law enforcement agencies in this country be expected to perform that little chore at the  behest of the United Nations? And if so, will that mean that this country is no longer a sovereign nation, but only serves the agenda of the UN? So tell us–who’s going to come in and take the guns? Lots of folks will want to know.

You may get some law enforcement bodies in this country that won’t be real fussy about doing that, particularly in the South and West.  Or will Ms. Haley just request that the UN send in troops to do that? And what will Mr. Trump think about that? Will he just put up with it because his Carpetbagger UN Ambassador signed this monstrosity, or will he do what he should have done with her to begin with and send her packing? You can bet lots of people will really be concerned over this–Ms. Haley just giving the UN carte blanche to start tracking guns in the US, or forcing US authorities to do it for them. Bad news either way! Want the UN to have a list of every gun you own? That’s where  this is headed unless something turns it around. And Mr. Trump had better be aware of what his UN Ambassador his just done–she’s deep sixed our Second Amendment rights. That may sound far out, but that’s what it amounts to. Tracking and registration always leads to eventual confiscation. Ask the Germans and the Russians.

Pass this information along to all your friends. Everyone needs to be aware of  Ms. Haley’s agenda and Mr.Trump needs to be aware of it too.

Observations About Vicksburg

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

 

Recently I attended a meeting where the guest speaker was Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., who has been a history professor at several colleges here in the South. He has written several books about World War 2, and also some about the War of Northern Aggression. Years back he did one about Richard Taylor and the Red River Campaign here in Louisiana that I loved. A couple years ago he did a biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest which I have not gotten around to yet but will add it to my list.

Just this year he has gotten a new book published about the Vicksburg Campaign which I was able to get a copy of and I’m now working my way through it. Eventually, I hope to do a regular book review of it, but right now I just want to pass along some of Mr. Mitcham’s observations while they are fresh in my mind, as well as adding a bit of my own commentary.

I’ve been to the battlefield at Vicksburg twice over the years and don’t recall learning as much on those trips as I have gotten from Mr. Mitcham’s book. I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but the battlefield at Vicksburg always seemed like a dreary place. The fact that it rained both times we were there, sometimes quite hard, might have had something to do with it. We ended up going over the battlefield “between the rain drops” as it were. Then, too, it might be what Vicksburg represents to me, and others I have spoken with–part of the death  knell of the old Confederate States, which, though they never officially surrendered, were not able to win the day either. And the ensuing “reconstruction” period after the War (which continues in various forms until this very day) has been the most shameful period in this country’s history.

Going over the battlefield, even with listening to the narrative tape they let you borrow at the visitor center, doesn’t give you the whole history of what went on there and now, with all the  political correctness (cultural Marxism) going on today, you might get even less of the real history than we did years ago.

Mr. Mitcham noted in his book that, during 1862-63, there were ten separate attempts by the Union to take Vicksburg. He details them all. The battles at Port Hudson, Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, Raymond, Champion Hill, and others were all major parts of the Union campaign to take Vicksburg.. They did it from different areas, in different stages, but it was all part of the Yankee/Marxist plan to reduce Vicksburg and render the Mississippi River unusable to the Confederacy, thus cutting the Confederacy in half and separating the trans-Mississippi area from that part of the Confederacy east of the river.

As I’ve read in other  places, doing this accomplished several things for the Yankee/Marxists. Lots of cotton moved south through Texas, across the Rio Grande into Mexico, where ships the Union blockade couldn’t touch anchored at or near Matamoras. Many of these ships picked up cotton and off-loaded guns, new Enfield  rifles from England, as well as powder and ammunition and other goods needed in the South that couldn’t make it there because of the Union blockade. This material was then freighted  up out of Mexico into Texas and from there shipped east as needed.  But this could not  aid the Confederacy as a whole if this war material could not get across the Mississippi  to the Confederate States east of the river.

Over the years I have read many comments about General John Pemberton who was in overall command in Vicksburg. Many of these comments would lead you to believe that General Pemberton, who was Northern-born, was a weak and ineffective general and that’s why Vicksburg fell. Mr. Mitcham presents Pemberton in a much more positive light, and he goes into the fact that, had General Joe Johnston been more willing to help Pemberton with reinforcements Vicksburg might not have suffered the fate it did. Johnston had reinforcements he could have sent, but he vacillated until it was too late for them to do  any good.

All things considered, with what General Pemberton had to work with, as far as troops, and very diverse personalities in the commanders serving under him, he probably did as well as anyone could have. He wasn’t perfect. None of us are. But he was not the bumbling ineffective personality he has been made out to be. I would not want to be dealt the hand Pemberton was dealt and then be forced to try to make a go of it.

Mitcham’s approach to the Vicksburg Campaign  is anything but politically correct. He notes in several places in the book how the Yankee/Marxists  plundered and destroyed private property and how, in many cases, they just outright stole everything that was not nailed down. And if they couldn’t steal it they destroyed it!

He noted their, in most cases, brutal incivility, toward all Southerners, black as well as white–and when it came to raping Southern women, the Yankee troops were  “equal opportunity” rapists. They didn’t care about color–only sex! He noted in one place where a Southern woman demanded to know of Yankee soldiers if they had come south to free the slaves.They just laughed! They thought that idea was ludicrous!

Mr. Mitcham also observed how Sherman treated Southerners and how he loved to find some reason, any reason, to burn property, private as well as military. I have often contended that Sherman was a pyromaniac, and Mitcham’s book does nothing to change my mind.

He also commented how, in many cases,  some Confederate generals would not cooperate with or help one another when the chips were down, and there were some important battles that were lost because one general couldn’t be bothered sending some of his men as reinforcements to another general to assure a victory. There were little, individual fiefdoms that had to be protected–even if you lost the country doing it. And you could always write a book later on, blaming the general you refused to help (preferably after he was dead) for losing the War because he didn’t have enough men on hand to win a particular battle.

Anyway, this is enough to give you a small taste of what Mr. Mitcham had to say about Vicksburg, along with my own commentary on what he said. Hopefully when I finish the book I can do a regular review, but you can tell from this much that Mr. Mitcham has really written an interesting book–one I recommend.