The Marxist President, the War Criminal, and Slave Reparations

By Al Benson Jr.

There was an article posted on www.thefederalistpapers.org  for April 19^th  about how our Marxist president wants to punish all Americans (at least all white Americans) for slavery. I have been watching over the years as various race-baiters have sought to find a way to scam more Americans out of what little money they may have left. The slavery reparations game is just one more Marxist “redistribute the wealth” campaign. Does anyone honestly think that any of the ordinary black folks in this country will ever see a thin dime of “reparations” money if they manage to pull this off? Hardly! The Je$$e Jacksons and Al Sharptons and their organizations will be the ones to benefit from this scam, not ordinary black folks, so let’s don’t try to kid anyone as to what this is really all about.

The Federalist Papers article was written by Russ Helper, and he noted: “Every decade or so, the radical left mentions paying reparations to African-Americans for pre-Civil War slavery. The idea is that even though slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, many in the black community are still suffering from its effects. But now a report has come to light that the President is seriously considering forcing all Americans to pay reparations to descendants of slaves.”

Now I have to admit, I’m not a real big fan of that idea. My family didn’t come here until the early 1880s, from England and Scotland, so they didn’t own any slaves before the War of Northern Aggression—but, then, I forgot. They were white, so they were automatically guilty of “racism” and therefore, I, who am white, should feel guilty over that (I don’t. Sorry!) and I should be willing to shell out big bucks for slaves my family never owned to someone who has never been a slave. That’s the way this game is played in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.

So now the next installment of the reparations game is in full swing. Charles Payne, who is black, and works for Fox News has predicted that we will soon see an apology for slavery from the Red (White) House, and also the possibility of “massive sums of money doled out in reparations for slavery.” He says “There’s going to be a major push to get cash, and I’m talking LOTS of cash.”

All the slaves are dead, as are all the slaveowners, so how will Obama justify trying to pilfer the wallets of present day Americans with his reparations scheme? Well, he’s checked that out, and Mr. Helper’s article noted: “He cites a special field order from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in which he confiscated 400,000 acres of land along the Atlantic Coast for division into the 40 acre lots to house the tens of thousands of freed slave refugees who had joined his march. Sherman’s intentions are disputed, though many believe it was meant to be only a temporary fix for an immediate problem. According to Payne, that order will be seen as an unfulfilled promise by the federal government, and that it could very well be a driving force behind the push for reparations…On the surface, some people could make the argument that this is only just and the right thing to do, but is it really? The truth is that 90% of those living in the south prior to the Civil War never owned slaves. Why should any of their descendants be forced to pay for something their ancestors didn’t do?” Because they are white, that’s why.

The special field order under discussion here is Special Field Orders Number 15. According to Michael Fellman in his book Citizen Sherman, “Sherman then recalled that he had then sat down and drafted his Special Field Orders Number 15, which he issued after (Edwin) Stanton had edited them carefully. Other historians have stressed Stanton’s role in the authorship, as well as that of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. Whatever their exact genesis, these orders were an extremely radical proposal for redistribution of land confiscated from slaveholders to the newly freed slaves…’abandoned’ plantations (from which the owners had fled on the approach of Union troops)  were to be distributed in plots of ‘not more than forty acres of tillable ground’ to black heads of families’.” Fellman continued: “Land confiscation as one means of displacing the Confederate leadership had been discussed widely during the war…The general too had, since 1862, threatened Southerners with dispossession, their land to be distributed to Northern white colonists.” And Sherman continued: “…it may be both politic and right that we should banish them and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population…If they want eternal war, well and good; we will dispossess them and put our friends in their place…Many people with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.”

So it would appear that Comrade Obama and his socialist cadre plan to use this approach as their excuse to gouge the American public for reparations money. However, is this claim really legitimate?  Fellman noted on page 169 of his book that: “After the war, Sherman would claim that he intended his Special Field Orderss Number 15 only as an emergency war measure, and he did not protest when Andrew Johnson revoked it in 1866. So if Andrew Johnson revoked it that means it no longer had any binding authority after his revocation. Of course Obama and his minions have not bothered to mention Johnson’s revocation—at least not that I’ve read about and you can bet the farm that if the “news” media is aware of it they are not about to mention it either.

This whole scenario aptly illustrates why I call those people Yankee/Marxists. The Northern political and military industrial complex had a decided Marxist bent to it even that early.

In The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, writing at the behest of the League of the Just  (Illuminati) listed ten points that Communists should employ in their seizure of various countries. Number One was: “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.” Number Four was: “Confiscation of the property of all émigrés and rebels.” So, basically what Sherman sought to do in confiscating thousands of acres and redistributing them to ex-slaves was an exercise in pure Marxism—but that wouldn’t bother Comrade Obama. That’d be right up his alley, just the like the reparations scam will be right up his alley—redistribution of the wealth is another Marxist tenet and you can bet the wealth always gets “redistributed” to their friends, their corporate fascist buddies.

I don’t know if he will try to push something like this through Congress, although many of them wouldn’t be averse to it, or if he will try to do it through yet another “executive order.” The gutless wonders in Congress, in both parties, would probably love to give him this, but there is an election coming up next year, farce though it is and some of these turkeys do want to get voted back in so they can keep feeding at the trough. But keep your eyes open either way. This Marxist scheme needs to be resisted.

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Was the War of Northern Aggression a Marxist Revolution?

by Al Benson Jr.

The title of this article is asked as a rhetorical question, as Donnie Kennedy and I have already dealt in depth with this subject in our book Lincoln’s Marxists. But it does not hurt to ask it again, as many folks have not only not read our book, but they have never been confronted with some of the information that is now out there dealing with this subject. The leftist radicals in the early Republican Party were not bashful in giving away their socialist tendencies when they commented on the South and their plans for it and its people after the War.

James M. McPherson, who is by no means my favorite “historian” has dealt with some of this in an Internet article–Some Thoughts on the Civil War as the Second Revolution. McPherson seems to enjoy dealing with the subject of the War as if it were, indeed, a revolution, only he quotes the people that portray the Southerners as the revolutionaries. Needless to say, it was really the other way around. But then, a standard Marxist tactic is “condemn others and elevate yourself.”

McPherson noted the comments of future president James Garfield while he was in Congress, and he noted that: “During the first three of his seventeen years in Congress, Garfield was one of the most radical of the radical Republicans. He continued to view the Civil War and Reconstruction as a revolution that must wipe out all traces of the ancient regime in the South. In his maiden speech in the House of Representatives on January 28, 1864, he called for the confiscation of the land of Confederate planters and the redistribution of this land among the freed slaves and white Unionists in the South.” It hardly needs to be stated that such a concept is in total agreement with what Karl Marx advocated in the Communist Manifesto. This position was in total agreement with the first and fourth planks of the Communist Manifesto. Marx–sorry, I meant Garfield–then sought to excuse such Marxist confiscation on the premise that this had been done during our War for Independence with land that had belonged to the Tories. Of course a lot of the Tories had left the country, many going to Canada, and so much of their land was vacant anyway. And Garfield went on: “The leaders of this rebellion must be executed or banished from the republic…” So, was Garfield advocating mass executions of Southern leaders? Or at least their banishment so the federal government could then control the land that had been theirs? This was the same attitude as that displayed by General Sherman regarding Southerners–and it was still consistent with Marx.

Land confiscation was a cardinal tenet of Marxism and it was also a favorite among the Northern elite. In his book Citizen Sherman, Michael Fellman observed: “Land confiscation as one means of displacing the Confederate leadership had been discussed widely during the war. As early as August 24, 1862, John Sherman had written his brother, ‘If we can’t depend on the loyalty of the white men of the South, I would give the land to the blacks or colonize a new set (of northern whites).’ The general too had, since 1862, threatened Southerners with dispossession, their land to be redistributed to Northern white colonists…When the inhabitants persist too long in hostility it may be both politic and right that we should banish them and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population…If they want eternal war, well and good; we will dispossess them and put our friends in their place…Many people with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.” Almost makes you wonder if such is a veiled threat.

And Sherman made it quite plain that he would not hesitate to practice what we today call psychological warfare on the Southern people. According to Fellman, “His army would not inflict military defeat on a Confederate army, but intentionally humiliating destruction on a peaceful, cultivated Southern landscape and her people.” Lots easier to fight mostly unarmed Southern civilians than it is Confederate soldiers that can shoot back. But this is the way Marxists fight a war. Almost makes you wonder if Lenin took lessons from Sherman.

Radical abolitionist (and Unitarian) Wendell Phillips was among the most outspoken. In his mind he insisted that the War “is primarily a social revolution. The war can only be ended by annihilating that Oligarchy which formed and rules the South and makes the war-by annihilating a state of society. The whole social system of the Gulf States must be taken to pieces.” And dear old Thaddeus Stevens, that “gentle giant” of the radical abolitionists said they had to “treat this war as a radical revolution” and “reconstruction” then needed to “revolutionize Southern institutions, habits and manners…The foundations of their institutions…must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain.” So, as you can see by the statements made, the real revolutionaries in this war were not the Southern people or their leaders, but were, instead, those among the Northern elite who had imbibed the doctrines of socialism that became so clearly apparent when they spoke. What they have been describing here is nothing less than what the Communists in Russia and China did when they took over those countries–cultural genocide. Change the culture and make it totally unrecognizable to those who had lived under the old Christian culture. For “those people” the war and “reconstruction” were nothing more than exercises in Cultural Marxism–the 19th century variety.

Back in 2012, Andre M. Fleche wrote a book called The Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict. I haven’t yet read it so I can’t comment all that much on it, but Fleche does deal with the Forty-eighters that Donnie Kennedy and I deal with in Lincoln’s Marxists. A review by Jarret Ruminski (University of Calgary) noted that: “Fleche supports his argument for the importance of 1848 by highlighting the significant roles European revolutionaries played in shaping American nationalist debates in the years leading up to the Civil War, and showing their continued influence after its outbreak.” So Mr. Fleche also recognizes how influential the Forty-eighters in this country were before the War and how their revolutionary influence affected what went on.

More and more, the general public, and especially Southerners, need to be much more aware of just how (from a socialist perspective) the North was influenced by the Forty-eighters and how that influence affected not only the War and “reconstruction” but how it has affected everything that has gone on since then.

This demonstrates that “reconstruction” never truly ended in the South, or anywhere else in the country, but is, in fact, in operation today. Obama’s plan to “fundamentally transform the United States” is all part and parcel of it. The old (Christian) culture has to be gotten rid of and a new one instituted. If you can say anything about Obama, you can truthfully say that he is a “change agent” for the New World Order, and he has taken many of his lessons in that area from Abraham Lincoln and from “Lincoln’s Marxists.”