Another Attack On The First Amendment

by Al Benson Jr.

According to an article on http://www.steadfastloyalty.com a new Democrat-sponsored bill to limit First Amendment rights has been introduced. The Digital Platform Commission Act would establish yet another federal agency to regulate and punish anyone who puts out “misinformation” as defined by the socialist Democrats.

In other words, and let’s be blunt about it, this is a bill to severely limit the free expression of their opposition and limit the right of the American people are able to hear, read, and learn. Misinformation will be anything socialist Democrats and socialist Republicans disagree with.

This is one you will need to contact your senators about when the bill number bursts upon the scene and let them know you want them to oppose it. If Congress passes this automatic cancellation of your First Amendment rights then China Joe Biden will appoint a commission of five people, which the Senate will have to confirm.

You don’t need a whole lot of imagination to figure out the kind of individuals Biden will appoint. So now the plan is for government-appointed “experts” to decide what constitutes “misinformation.” Won’t that be fun? I don’t know if this will deal with what you are able to look up on the internet or not, but probably it will. After all, why wouldn’t anything anywhere that the powers that be disagree with be removed from the public eye as “misinformation”?

George Orwell’s “memory hole” already exists to a large degree. With a new bill like this it could well become all encompassing. At least at this point in time we can still find some opposing viewpoints out there on the net to the government hogwash they foist upon us. What would happen, for instance, if all the opposing viewpoints dealing with the War of Northern Aggression were suddenly “discovered” to be “misinformation” and therefore subject to federal removal because of that, and those who refused to comply were to be “punished”? It doesn’t take much to figure out where this draconian measure is headed if enacted. Let your senators know you will be watching what they do with this travesty!

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China Joe And “White Supremacy”

by Al Benson Jr.

According to http://www.politico.com “President Joe Biden denounced white supremacy as ‘the most dangerous terrorist threat’ to the nation in his commencement address to Howard Universities graduating class Saturday. Biden said ‘And I’m not just saying this because I’m at a black HBCU. I say it wherever I go!…invoking the battle cry he used to galvanize voters in the 2020 election cycle, he called on his audience to ‘fight for the soul of the nation’.”

Well, Biden is right about one thing. The battle he is engaged in is truly a battle for the soul of the nation. Unfortunately for Biden, as is usually the case, he is on the wrong side in this battle! As to whether he even realizes that or not, I will leave that up to my readers. Personally, I think he does realize it, but the lure of filthy lucre may have blinded him to any real truth. Those fat checks from foreign governments and companies tend to take his mind off any truth that might have once dwelled there.

Critics accused Biden of using this chance to inflame racial tensions in this country–and I would tend to agree with that. One might easily call him China Joe the race baiter! One commentator labeled him as our “divider-in-chief” and that is an accurate portrayal. Biden is actively working to divide Americans along racial lines because it is to his political advantage to do so.

His definition of a “white supremacist” most likely refers to anyone who is conservative or truly patriotic–or anyone who dared to vote against him and for Trump. Biden also uses the white supremacy label to push for more gun control–especially if the shooter in any given situation happens to be white. If the shooter is black or Hispanic then China Joe takes great pains, along with the prostitute press, to ignore the situation.

Many people just think Biden is just bonkers. They fail to realize that there is a method to his madness–a direct attack on his political opponents–all of which he would gleefully lock up if he thought he could get away with it. In other words, if you dare to oppose Biden’s extreme leftist agenda, you’re automatically a white supremacist, or a domestic terrorist, whichever label is appropriate at the moment!

Biden is using the classic “divide and conquer” strategy to keep all Americans of all races from understanding what a political trickster he really is. And, at this point in time, that also distracts from the congressional testimony being presented as to his family’s massive influence peddling and getting big money from businesses and hostile regimes such as Communist China.

Biden says the white supremacists will not have the last word. At this point in time we have to wonder if race baiters like Biden will get the last word–at least in the short term. Woe to this country if it does, for it will be the beginning of the end for this generation!

The Destruction Of A Southern Town For Expediency And “Progress”

by Al Benson Jr.

When my wife and I moved south in 2002 we ended up in a small, semirural town in North Louisiana. It was the kind of small town we wanted. Our intent was to avoid cities as much as possible. We had both grown up in small towns in the North and were not city people. The town we ended up in had one main street and about five side streets and it had a distinct small town Southern atmosphere. There was a gas station, a couple churches, a bank, market, and a couple restaurants and a hardware store on the main street.

One of the restaurants was sort of a local hangout, the kind of place you could visit on a warm afternoon, buy a glass of sweet tea or coke and just sit and visit with some of the local folks. They also served a pretty good (and .inexpensive) fried catfish dinner in the evening. My wife and I often stopped there for supper on Saturday evening. It was all ideal–for awhile.

But then came the scions of “progress and change” and nothing was ever the same again. They told us the town needed a bigger and better bridge across the river–and they were correct about that. The old bridge across the river that was there had been built in the early 1930s. It needed replacing. But the replacement we ended up with took out about a third of the town’s main street. The result was that one of the churches, the hardware store, and the two restaurants all had to go. And the local chemical company (a division of Dow Chemicals) bought from the town all the land that the church and restaurants and hardware store had previously occupied and nothing was to be built on that land. The chemical company wanted all of it to remain open space. That pretty well killed the town’s main street as far as business went and it erased the unique Southern atmosphere the town had previously had.

The mayor at that time had some grandiose plans to put all businesses out on the main highway–about five miles from where they had previously been. I’m not sure anyone ever figured out completely what he was trying to do, but he worked at it anyway–and the town completely lost its unique Southern character and became just one more shopping stop on the main highway. There were those in town that protested, but not enough of them.

My wife and I now no longer live in the town, in the house we lived in. Our health will not permit that any longer. When we still lived in that town, I ran for the town council one year, on a platform of less government and more personal responsibility. And though I didn’t win, I got a respectable number of votes for someone who had not lived their life there.

The mayor with all the big plans extended the town’s debt so much the town almost ended up bankrupt. The mayor after him was a conservative and loyal American who had served in the marines, but by the time he got elected the town was so far in debt there was little he could do and I understand the current mayor is quite liberal, so we can kiss the unique Southern atmosphere of the town goodbye. It’s doubtful if it will ever return. It reminded me of the West Texas towns in some of Elmer Kelton’s novels about Texas. They were on the point of losing their unique Western identity because of what some “progressive” people wanted to do to and with them. Unfortunately, such situations are not unique to fiction. They exist in real life and we have seen them acted out.

Right now, the South and its culture and identity are under constant attack. Southern monuments, symbols, and flags are almost everywhere denigrated where once they were honored and revered. If the South loses its identity it will never get it back and it will end up being just another nonentity among the other nonentities in Wokedom. That seems to be where we are headed. I have talked with other Southern patriots who said they never thought they’d live to see what’s going on now, and I did not think I would either, but I have–and it gives me no pleasure. I could weep for my adopted country!

All that has made her unique is being flushed down the sewer in a headlong rush to be like the rest of the country–something we should not want nor want to be partakers in. Both the South and the Far West have a unique heritage–something that should be preserved, not tossed aside. They are the only unique American cultures remaining and they must be preserved. We discard them to our own hurt and the hurt of our children!

Who Needs Objectivity When You Can Have “Social Justice” Instead?

by Al Benson Jr.

Professor Jonathan Turley wrote an interesting article that appeared on the Durden Dispatch on February 2, 2023 which dealt with the lack of objective journalism in our day. I can recall working with a young lady years ago who had taken a journalism class. She said the class emphasized the 5 w’s-who, what, when, where, and why as a guide to writing articles. In other words you had to just give people the basic information and let them make up their own minds about what it all meant. Suffice it to say, that kind of journalism is long a thing of the past.

Professor Turley noted in his article, in part, “We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting.”

Objective media–just giving people the facts and letting them make up their own minds–is now considered “reactionary and even harmful.” Emilio Garcia Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it very plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.” In other words it’s dangerous to let people make up their own minds. You need to “condition” them with your spin on the news so they will buy what you are telling them instead of thinking for themselves. And you have to admit that in our day, our excuse for a “news media” attempts to do exactly that. After all, who needs facts when you can regurgitate leftist talking points and pass them off as information?

Professor Turley duly observed: “In an interview with the Stanford Daily, Stanford Journalism Professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to ‘free itself from that notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.'” Turley continued: “He rejected the idea that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views ‘journalists as activists because journalism at its best–and indeed history at its best–is all about morality.” Naturally then, the question should arise–just whose morality is being promoted here?

Advocacy journalism is not new by any means. It existed back in the 1800s. Nor are dishonest “journalists” new either. I can remember, back when we lived up in Indiana, an issue arose regarding cars being tested for emissions in four Indiana counties, but not the whole state. Needless to say, the emissions testing was wildly unpopular in those four counties. People in those four counties felt discriminated against, to the point where the state’s spineless Republican governor was even burned in effigy at one point. At one point, the emissions testing stations were regularly picketed every Saturday morning for one whole summer.

Finally, a public meeting was held to give local residents the opportunity to air their grievances about the emissions testing and a sizable crowd showed up for that. The local paper sent a reporter to cover that story, but the newspaper was in favor of the testing. As person after person stood and spoke against the testing, one lone man at the end stood up and applauded the testing. When I read the paper the next evening I couldn’t believe the incredible spin the reporter put on this article. The “reporter” totally ignored the anti-emissions comments of the vast majority of those present and concentrated his whole story on the commentary of this one guy who was in favor of the testing. When I read it I said “Is this the meeting I attended last night?” Sure didn’t sound like it! This was advocacy journalism at its rankest.

Since then I have run into the same situation in the Southern Heritage Movement, where honorable Southern patriotic people have been tarred as white bigots, closet Klansmen and traitors. Now there may be a handful of those in the Southern Movement–but the vast majority of Southern patriots are not in any way involved in all of that. It is offensive to them, but yet the media tars them all with that same brush. More advocacy journalism in place of the truth!

I’ve been watching what passes for a news media in this country for over 50 years now and I can’t say I am impressed with their ability to tell the truth. In that area they lack. Truth and objectivity are as foreign to them as are little green men from Mars. It would seem that the journalism schools in this country are finally getting around to admitting that!

Marxist “Reconstruction” in Louisiana

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

How about a little “change” in your state government, brought to you by a young man who talked quite well, well enough that he truly sounded convincing–without really ever telling you much of anything?

Right off the bat I know who comes to mind that fits that description–Comrade Obama. He did lots of talking, though often in a condescending manner, because, if the truth be known, he really looked down on all of us that were not raving socialists. But this isn’t about him (thank Heaven). Rather it’s about one of his illustrious predecessors who was imbued with the same Marxist mindset and operated  somewhat in the same way–with the state house controlling everything in Louisiana. This sterling individual, Henry Clay Warmoth, was a radical Republican, of the same stripe as those Donnie Kennedy and I wrote about in Lincoln’s Marxists.

Henry Clay Warmoth (interesting that he was named after the man Thomas DiLorenzo  characterized as a national socialist) was born in 1842 in McLeansboro, Illinois–in what was to become the “land of Lincoln.” During the War of Northern Aggression he served in the Union army in Missouri. He was wounded at the Battle of Vicksburg, but was dishonorably discharged for promoting exaggerations in regard to Union losses in that battle. Such behavior did not bother Mr. Lincoln, though, who reinstated Warmoth’s military status. He was commissioned a judge in the Department of the Gulf Provost Court in 1864 by no less a military luminary than General Nathaniel (Commissary) Banks of Red River Campaign fame, (or infamy, depending on how you view his loss in that campaign to a Confederate force with decidedly inferior numbers).

But. for Warmoth, the army wasn’t where the long green was. So, in 1865, Warmoth decided to run for Congress.

Looking for a constituency that would help to support his aspirations, Warmoth arrived in New Orleans and latched onto the newly freed blacks, seeking to convince them that he would be their “main man” in government if only they’d elect him. He must have been good at spinning windys  because he won. However, after Lincoln’s assassination, the Yankee Marxists that controlled the Congress declined to seat any Southern representatives, even those that didn’t have Southern accents. Why they refused him a seat when he was one of them is hard to figure. They surely must have known his origins. Anyway, he returned to New Orleans.

However, in 1868, Winfield Scott Hancock was removed as the Military Commander of the Fifth Military District, which took in both Louisiana and Texas, and Hancock’s handpicked successor also resigned. This opened the way for a special election in 1868 and Warmoth ran for Governor as a Republican, an election he won narrowly over a Democrat. Then the financial fun and games began in earnest. Warmoth wasn’t in the game to do the good folks of Louisiana any favors. He was profoundly interested in the big bucks!

Under Warmoth’s gentle guidance the state’s bonded debt ascended from $6 million to $25 million, and was reputed, at one point, to have been around $100 million. After all, what’s a few million here or there among friends, as long as it all ends up in the right pockets.

Even in our day, Warmoth’s reputation has continued to live after him.  On http://www.sos.louisiana.gov on the Secretary of State’s page, there is a reference to Mr. Warmoth. It states, in part: “Henry Clay Warmoth epitomizes the corruption of Louisiana politics during Reconstruction and at other times as well. Elected Governor at age 26 as the Republican candidate,  Warmoth speculated in state bonds and treasury notes, profited from part ownership in the newspaper which held the contract for state printing, and created the State Returning Board to supervise election returns. The Board had the power to throw out votes from any precinct thought to have tainted results. Radical Republicans  used the Board to maintain power by enabling them to steal elections from the Conservative Democrats.” In other words, how the Board acted depended on whose ox was supposed to be gored.

Claud Bowers, in his expose of “reconstruction” The Tragic Era noted: “…and a few weeks later, at the age of twenty six, he (Warmoth) was elected Governor.  His enemies were soon to comment on his capacity to save one hundred thousand dollars a year on a salary of eight thousand dollars and to accumulate a million in four years.” Some of our modern politicians have probably taken a page or two from Warmoth’s political playbook. But why should anyone find this extraordinary? Isn’t this what the Carpetbaggers came south for in the first place?

Bowers went on to describe the legislature in session in Mechanics Hall in New Orleans under the reign of Warmoth. He observed: “It is a monkey house…with guffaws, disgusting interpolations, amendments offered that are too obscene to print…Bad in the beginning, the travesty grows worse.  The vulgarity of the speeches increases; members stagger from the basement bar to their seats. The Speaker in righteous mood sternly forbids the introduction of liquor on the floor.” Bowers noted that corruption was inevitable and that some members who were openly charged with bribery were not even offended. The truth didn’t bother them much one way or the other.

Bowers informed his readers that: “Measures involving millions, many criminal, and having to do with railroads, canals, and levees are passed without examination and members vote vast sums into their pockets openly, defiantly. One outraged legislator, when confronted with his outright thievery,  had the gall to respond with ‘What we give to the community is without money and without price. It is so valuable that the price may not be fixed–there is no standard’.” In other words, these political charlatans were out there doing so much good for the state of Louisiana that they should have been allowed to steal all they wanted as just compensation for their valiant efforts in behalf of the people of Louisiana! Do you now begin to wonder why Southerners hated, and still hate, “reconstruction” in spite of all the pious lies told to them by our current crop of Marxist “historians?”

Warmoth pretty much had the state in his back pocket at that point. Through his control of the managed media, the prostitute press,  (yes folks, it was the same then as now) part of which he owned a share in,  he “brought pressure to bear in favor of four measures intended to give him dictatorial power and prolong his reign. The Registration Bill made every parish registration official his minion, and gave them power to accept or reject votes without interference from the courts…The Election Bill superceded sheriffs on election day with Warmoth’s appointees,  forbade the courts to interfere and authorized him to deny certificates of election  to successful candidates as he saw fit…The Constabulary Bill authorized Warmoth to name a chief constable in each parish, who could name a deputy, and these were absolute.  And the Militia Bill empowered him to organize and equip as many men as he wished and place one hundred thousand dollars at his disposal for the purpose.”

When oppressed Southerners protested to the legislature, rather angrily at times, Bowers noted that: “…behind the legislature was Warmoth, behind him his militia and constables; and behind them federal bayonets–and the laws went into operation.”

This all was a glowing example of the “hope and change” wrought by “reconstruction” not only in Louisiana but all over the South. It was a glowing testimony of the “transparency” of all the “reconstruction” governments. The compassionate concern for the people they were robbing blind was about on the same level as is the concern for us today that emanates from Washington in our current phase of “reconstruction.”

Is it any wonder that many of us think that “reconstruction” never really ended, but just continued on under more euphemistic titles–like multi-culturalism or diversity, or civil rights–all culturally Marxist ploys for what is really cultural genocide for the South. 

“Reconstruction” is still alive and well today, not only in the South, but all across the country both in government schools at all levels, and elsewhere.

The Man Who Owned the Rifles

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Here we arrive at George Luther Stearns, another of John Brown’s Secret Six supporters. Mr. Stearns was an industrialist and a merchant. As such, he was pretty well fixed financially. However, it had not always been so. Stearns’ early life had not been easy and he had been in a position where he had to work to support his family, starting at age 15.

Stearns was involved very early on with the Emigrant Aid Society, helping to get anti-slavery settlers into Kansas. Wikipedia noted that “Stearns was one of the Secret Six who aided Brown in Kansas, and financially supported him until Brown’s execution after the ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. Stearns physically owned the pikes and 200 Sharps rifles brought to Harpers Ferry by Brown and his followers. Following Brown’s arrest, Stearns briefly fled to Canada but returned to Medford (Mass.) after Brown’s death…”

According to J. C. Furnas in The Road to Harpers Ferry, Stearns’ first wife passed away and he married a second time to “a well-connected niece of Lydia Maria Child, the lady Abolitionist, who disliked her aunt personally but shared her ideas.” His new wife was not always happy with Mr. Stearns. She wished that he would dress more expensively and do more entertaining. She felt that his station in life called for him to present a more elite appearance than he usually did. One thing you have to say for Stearns is that he was not overly enamored of the pomp and vanity of Massachusetts society. He was kind of like the old cattleman in Texas who dressed in faded jeans and run-down cowboy boots and who looked just like some of the rag-tag cowboys in his area. They couldn’t afford to dress up, while he didn’t have to. He knew what he had and wasn’t trying to impress anybody. In his own way Stearns seems to have been like that old cattleman.

One of his best friends was Charles Sumner, “the pontifical slavery hater” as he was described by Furnas. Otto Scott, in The Secret Six: the Fool as Martyr has observed, of Senator Sumner, that he “…had a wide acquaintance among European revolutionaries.” You have to be led to the conclusion that it is more than just coincidence that these abolitionists knew so many people in the Leftist, radical crowd from Europe. So we can probably assume that Senator Sumner was more than familiar with some of the socialist luminaries Donnie Kennedy and I wrote about in Lincoln’s Marxists. 

One of Stearns’ sons wrote a biography of his father in which he said that his father and John Brown met “like iron and magnet.” If such was truly the case, then Brown was the magnet, for he attracted more metal from Stearns, in the form of firearms, than from just about anyone else. Furnas noted that Stearns “…paid out of his own pocket for the $1300 of revolvers for Kansas that eventually found their way to Maryland with Old Brown…” In those days, revolvers sold for around $12-15 apiece, so $1300 would have bought quite a slew of them. Stearns said, at one point, “I consider it the proudest day of my life  that I gave good old John Brown every pike and rifle he carried to Harpers Ferry.” And that’s not including the revolvers!

Stearns may well not have been the elitist snob that other members of the Secret Six were, but he surely had his priorities skewed when he ended up supporting John Brown and his terrorist actions.

Furnas summed up George Luther Stearns this way: “Actually, the man hardly belongs among the Six. He did not have enough ego for their overweening society. He probably knew less of Old Brown’s exact plans than Smith, Sanborn  or Higginson.”

Stearns may well not have known as many of the exact details as did some of the others. However, he knew enough to be willing to pay for the rifles John Brown needed to carry out his terrorist agenda. And when the plan turned sour and Brown blew it, he knew enough to run to Canada, so he was hardly a complete innocent.

In looking at the Secret Six as a whole, you are forced to note a group of men with both social position and resources, who somehow, thought that their position and resources gave them the right to dictate how other people should live their lives. It is no different in our day. We are beset, fore and aft with Marxist “educators” and politicians and their friends in government, big business, and the media who feel they, somehow, have the right and authority to tell the rest of us how we should live and what we should think. And if others are not especially willing to live by their standards, well, there are always a few “John Brown” types lurking about, waiting to be used to “persuade” them–if the price is right! I’m sure, in our day, that, should you put your minds to it, the names of some of these “persuasive” groups would come to mind.

The College Grad And The Terrorist

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn  was probably the youngest member of the infamous Secret Six that supported and/or financed abolitionist/terrorist John Brown. Born in 1831, he entered Harvard College in 1852, graduating in 1855, a mere four years before the debacle at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

He graduated seventh in his class, so he was no academic slouch and obviously did not spend his college time partying. While in college he became friendly with Ralph Waldo Emerson of Transcendentalist fame.  As a result of that friendship, Emerson “engaged” Sanborn to start a small private school in Concord, Massachusetts, which Emerson’s children attended. According to http://mail.colonial.net others who had their children in Sanborn’s private school were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Horace Mann, and John Brown. An interesting mix! If you are like me you might be led to wonder why Horace Mann, the Unitarian promoter of public education, had his children in a private school at that point in time when he was so strongly tryin for force public education on everyone else via compulsory attendance. You might be led, had you a suspicious mind, why that compulsion for public education didn’t apply to his own kids. But I digress.

Franklin Sanborn was an author, journalist, “reformer” and a social scientist–one of that breed that has done such yeoman duty in the public schools–at the price of your kids’ historical knowledge.

He memorialized the Transcendentalist Movement, writing biographies of many of its leading lights.  Not everyone was completely happy with his efforts, though they did applaud his agenda. The website http://www.alcott.net said of his work that: “Sanborn’s editions and histories, despite being marred by editorial inaccuracies and shabby scholarship, served well to keep Transcendentalist ideas alive and to translate the movement’s idealism into meaningful social action.” “Social action”–now there’s a loaded term, even today. Not totally a glowing recommendation!

Sanborn founded the American Social Science Association in 1865, as it was said, “to treat wisely the great social problems of the day.” Seems to me that social scientists are still doing the same thing today–and we are still beset with many of the same social problems, which they apparently haven’t solved. That being the case you have to question just how “effective” they have really been.

In 1856 Sanborn became the secretary of the Massachusetts Kansas Commission, also known as the Massachusetts Kansas Aid Committee and it’s believed that this is where he came into close contact with John Brown. At that point, he had been out of college for around a year and was seemingly quite awed with Brown. College students, even in our day, are often overawed by various revolutionary types who are introduced onto college campuses via more-than-willing college administrators and leftist professors.

At any rate, this committee Sanborn was the secretary of had been formed to get provisions, clothing, and arms to settlers in Kansas so they could supposedly “defend” themselves against incursions from pro-slavery people.

Samuel Gridley Howe testified before senate committee which investigated the Harpers Ferry raid that he “believed” that 200 Sharps rifles were committed to John Brown’s tender care, and probably some revolvers as well, all to be used in Kansas, and these had been the property of the committee. “Provisions” and clothing for the anti-slavery folks in Kansas–yeah, right! Of course it might depend on how you define “provisions.” What it amounted to was that these people in Massachusetts were sending assault weapons into Kansas to aid the likes of John Brown who were, supposedly “defending” the rights of free soil Kansans. Brown and his “army” “defended” those rights really effectively the night they hacked five pro-slavery people to death in front of their families. I wonder if there were any swords among the “provisions” this committee entrusted to Brown and his “army.”

J. C. Furnas in The Road to Harpers Ferry took note of Sanborn’s youth. Having checked out some of Sanborn’s biographical material, he noted that: “His biography of Dr. Howe is a solicitous panegyric sticky with the writer’s delight in having known such a man well. In later life he widely exploited having been neighbor and disciple of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott in Concord, where he set up a co-educational private school…to teach the children of ‘the more aristocratic portion of the community’.” Ahh, now we know why Horace Mann’s children went to Sanborn’s school–they were part of the “aristocratic portion” of the community–no public school drivel for them! That was (and is) for the common herd.

Although Sanborn is said not to have approved of the Harpers Ferry raid, he spent much paper and ink later on defending John Brown. According to http://www.wvculture.org  “In the years after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Sanborn was one of Brown’s most dedicated defenders, and he wrote many articles on John Brown as well as the biography The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia. The biography was first published in 1885.  Furnas said of Sanborn’s work “And his successive  writings about Old Brown are like what a devoted younger brother might have written about St. Paul or Judas Maccabeus.”

As stated earlier, Sanborn was no dumb bunny when it came to academics. By the time he was eight years old he had read the whole Bible and declared himself a Universalist. It would seem that apostasy came early for Sanborn. Furnas noted that “After maturing he shifted to the eccentric Unitarianism of Parker, Higginson, and James Freeman Clark–hot Abolitionists all.” Sounds like Sanborn slid from the frying pan into the fire!

He always looked to believe the best about John Brown and he held onto his loyalty to the old terrorist. And Furnas informed us that “His loyalty survived even the discovery forced on him by eventual new evidence, that Old Brown and some of his sons had lied in their teeth about their responsibility for the Pottawatomie Massacre.” So the wild delusions of the Leftists, then and now, blind them to the truth, and the only “truth” they can ever see is “their truth.”

Furnas said of him: “Sanborn was not the most trenchant of the Six…His record does not go beyond facile acceptance of the half-baked highmindedness of the time.” Furnas referred to him as a “well-intentioned Yankee.”

Unfortunately, he was the type of well-intentioned Yankee that, in the end, seemed to have no problem with the Marxist concept that the ends justifies the means. But that’s where most of these men were really at–they were an early type of Yankee Marxists. 

One Of Our Well-Known American Heretics

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Apostasy was most definitely on the up-swing in the middle of 19th century America. Most people don’t want to deal with the thought that it started that early. It makes them uncomfortable to think the apostates and heretics were here and quite active before they were even born. However, if we don’t learn to deal with the truth about the past we will never be able to deal with it in the future and we will just end up burying our heads in the sand (again) and pretending it’s not there.

That’s why it is so important for us to come to grips with it, and the apostates that supported terrorist John Brown are as good a place as any to start. They represent a cross section of the apostasy that rampaged across our history in the 1800s–the apostasy our “history” books gloss over by not calling it what it really was.

All of terrorist/abolitionist John Brown’s Secret Six  supporters were controversial individuals. Most all have been theologically radical as well as politically radical–people that, today, should be considered way over on the Leftist fringe of society. Although with today’s fluctuating morays they might be considered mainstream. In a normal society you would have to classify these people as far Leftists, but then today’s cultural Marxist society is far from normal. Look at what the electorate did in 2008 and again in 2012. The heretic this article is about, Theodore Parker, would today probably be considered as middle of the road.

Parker was a Unitarian, but then, many John Brown supporters leaned in that direction. Of those that supported John Brown’s terrorism in the name of freeing the slaves, of those that upheld and financed his terrorism, few would be classified as orthodox Christians.

Interestingly enough, Theodore Parker started out orthodox. He was undoubtedly a highly intelligent man, speaking four languages besides English, one of them being Latin. Wikipedia noted that “His belief in God’s mercy made his reject Calvinist theology as cruel and unreasonable.” At this point, Parker and I would part company. Either Parker didn’t understand real Calvinism or he didn’t want to. Parker didn’t like “religious dogmatism.” Another example of Parker’s apostate mindset was Horace Mann, the “father of the common schools” (public schools). Mann, like Parker, rejected the Calvinism of his day in favor of his own personal creed and view of God.

That Parker’s “god” was not the God of Holy Scripture was evident, given his Unitarian rejection of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Observable is the fact that most participants in the Abolitionist Movement, the Feminist Movement, and other 19th century movements had rejected Jesus’ divinity and the truths of Scripture.

Author Dean Grodzins has written a book about Theodore Parker called American Heretic.  Having not read Mr. Grodzin’s book I can’t authoritatively comment on his take on Theodore Parker, but, seeing his book won a “2003 Choice Outstanding Academic Title” I will hazard a guess and say that Grodzins may well be in favor of Parker’s apostasy, or at least not overly opposed to it.

Parker seems to have been introduced to the Unitarian faith by one Convers Francis, a Unitarian minister, biographer, and historian. Francis studied at Harvard Divinity School and was ordained in 1819. Shows you how far down the road Harvard had slithered by the early 1800s.

Parker, it seems, went through a gradual descent into apostasy. I’ve been told by pastors that this is how apostasy works usually. It doesn’t just happen all at once. You don’t just wake up one fine morning and decide you don’t believe any of the theology you believed when you went to bed. In Parker’s case, he was exposed to some of the “higher criticism” of the Scriptures then growing in Germany, which led him to question. Lots of questionable ideas, and questionable people, came out of Germany in the 1840s. Parker gradually came to where he denied his orthodox views. His denial of the Biblical miracles and the authority of the Scriptures brought him some criticism, even in Massachusetts, and some pulpits, even in the Boston area, were closed to him.

By 1842 Parker had openly broken with the orthodox Christian faith and found, in his own estimation, that the Scriptures were chock-full of errors and contradictions. He now felt that people should concentrate their religious faith on “individual experience.” Again, does that sound familiar? There is lots of that mindset around even today and it leads  to all manner of “interesting” and bizarre deviations.

By 1846 Parker had finally found a congregation of like-minded souls to preach to. Among those in his congregation were William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist (and internationalist); Julia Ward Howe, author(ess) of the well-known Unitarian hymn The Battle Hymn of the Republic; Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women; and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the founders of the Women’s Movement in 1848. The Women’s Movement also had Spiritualist connections. What an august little group!

Some estimates have put Parker’s congregation at as many as 7,000 people. Apostasy was gaining traction in Boston.

While Parker was not a Spiritualist, he was nonetheless popular with them and he gave credence to their views. At one point he said: “I have not had time in the midst of my busy life, while solving the problems of human freedom, to investigate the phenomena of Spiritualism, nevertheless, I believe that its philosophy and phenomena are true, and that Spiritualism will be the religion of the future.” Interesting statement. It almost makes it sound like Rev. Parker is all alone out there “solving the problems of human freedom” while no one else bothers to do anything. It’s interesting that few of our “history” books reveal the fact that there were also many abolitionists in the South trying to deal with the problem of human freedom too. But, then, they were not the radical, Leftist type of abolitionist–and hence not worthy of mention.

Of slave insurrections Parker said: “I should like, of all things, to see an insurrection of the slaves…It would do good even if it failed.” Maybe he should have read about Nat Turner’s slave revolt in Virginia in 1831. It was a bloody excess and it failed. I wonder how much good it did. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t bloody enough for Parker!

J. C. Furness, author of The Road to Harper’s Ferry said of Parker’s statement “Such grim willingness to tempt young Abolitionists and thousands of Negro slaves to go and get massacred in a softening-up operation sounds more like the general staff of a Communist committee than like a professed disciple of a God of Love.” And this was the man who departed from the Calvinist faith because it wasn’t “loving” enough!

Parker was yet another of those self-appointed “experts” on slavery who had seldom, if ever, been south of Washington. The perfect person to become a member of the Secret Six and to support John Brown. Parker was really a man who knew almost nothing about his subject, but was content because he thought he did.

Parker had tuberculosis and went to Italy  to try to ward it off. He was over there when John Brown committed his last terrorist act at Harpers Ferry. Though physically on his last legs, Parker had a parting word of Unitarian love for the South. He stated: “The South must reap as she sows…a pretty crop…The Fire of Vengeance may be waked up even in an African’s heart, especially when it is fanned by the wickedness of a white man; then it runs from man to man, town to town. What shall put it out? The white man’s blood.”

All I can say is that it’s a good thing Theodore Parker was such a nice, caring, compassionate and loving Unitarian. Otherwise he might have told us how he really felt. Parker never, to my knowledge, addressed the fact of blacks who owned slaves in the South. Maybe that was the white man’s fault, too.

Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of our former Marxist-in-Chief in the White House would really have loved Theodore Parker!

Was Julia’s Husband a Male Chauvinist Pig?

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Julia Ward Howe, the woman who wrote that infamous Unitarian dirge, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was born in New York City. In 1843 she married the prominent physician Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. They had six (some sources mention five) children , which they raised in the Unitarian Mecca of the northeast, Boston, Massachusetts.

Not only was Ms. Howe an author, but she was also part of the most radical wing of the Abolitionist Movement, along with her husband. Writer Michael Dan Jones wrote of Ms. Howe that: “Mrs. Howe and her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, were supporters of the most radical and violent wing of the anti-slavery movement. These ‘disunion’ abolitionists wanted to tear apart the American republic of sovereign, independent states,  and reconstruct it along their own radical, political, cultural and religious ideals. History records only too well how they succeeded with their treason.” A few years back, Mr. Jones’ article appeared on http://www.confederateamericanpride.com If it is still there it is definitely worth reading.

Regarding Ms. Howe’s literary career Jones noted: “But her literary works had dark themes, such as murder, suicide and betrayal, perhaps reflecting her own unhappy marriage with her domineering and unfaithful husband. Her church, the Unitarian Church, although it claimed to be Christian, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity.” So her husband was “domineering and unfaithful?” It’s funny that the “history” books have forgotten to mention all that. The “history” books have told us that the abolitionist crowd were folk who were deeply concerned with the betterment of humanity, fine,  upstanding, full of moral integrity and such. Now we begin to find that some among them were sinners, just like the rest of humanity, except that if they were Unitarian in their belief system they didn’t accept Jesus Christ as God’s Son. Therefore, they could not go to Him and ask forgiveness because they believed He was just another ordinary man, and, hence unable to forgive sin. Thus their sin remained.

Ms. Howe’s husband, and their Unitarian pastor, Rev. Theodor Parker (more about him later on) were both part of the Secret Six group that supported John Brown’s fanatical terrorism, particularly at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.

Contrary to much of the abolitionist pabulum we have been spoon-fed over the years, the marriage of the Howe’s was, as  you can now well imagine, slightly less than idyllic . It has been noted that, at one point, Samuel had requested a legal separation, which Julia had refused. Many of their disagreements arose over Julia’s wanting to have a career separate from motherhood. While Dr. Howe has been touted as being “progressive” for his day and time, this was on really “progressive” area he had a problem with–maybe because it affected his own household rather than someone else’s. Quite often liberal elitists are that way. They have one standard for themselves and quite another for the rest of the common herd.

Dr. Howe was not overly enthused about women having any other occupation than that of wife, mother, and homemaker. No doubt the fanatical women’s libbers of the 20th century would have roundly criticized him as a male chauvinist pig!

According to http://www.uuworld.org we have been told that: “…Howe could be insensitive and argumentative and that his marriage was discordant are both well documented. As ambitious as he was for himself, he was determined that his smart and talented wife should be kept at home with their six children. Julia outlived him by thirty-four years and became a prominent suffragist and peace activist.” The ultra-liberal mentality is not to be denied!

Dr. Howe also agreed with Karl Marx on the scheme of progressive taxation. In 1865 he was in favor of and advocated a progressive tax system. He noted that, while the wealthy would resist this (really?)  he felt that America could not really become a just and caring society while the gap between rich and poor was so wide. Does this sound like anything you have heard from the current crop of Marxists in Washington in the past few years? You don’t get it from Trump but you sure did from his Marxist predecessor. The Marxists claim they want to “soak the rich” so they can help the rest of us. To put it bluntly, that’s a croc! It’s nothing more than a massive redistribution of the wealth scheme that removes everyone’s wealth and “redistributes” it to the federal government. The really rich that control the political shills in Washington don’t pay any taxes anyway. They can siphon off their huge incomes in “tax-free foundations” which they then use to make war on the middle class, under the guise of uplifting society.

And http://www.uuworld.org also informed us of how far-left Unitarianism had influenced Boston. It said that “In Howe’s day, Boston was the heartbeat of a spiritual and intellectual awakening called the New England  Renaissance. Unitarians who effectively controlled the State House, Harvard, and the city’s wealth, also led the great reform causes of the day…Theodor Parker for the abolition of slavery, Horace Mann for universal free education, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody for early childhood education.” So the Unitarians pretty much had Massachusetts in the palm of their collectivist hand–socially, theologically, and educationally. If you wonder what’s wrong with New England today,  a look back at the mid-1800s will tell you–apostasy–galloping apostasy, masquerading as “enlightenment.” Having grown up there, I know a little bit about it.

It was out of this theological and educational morass that Howe and most of the other Secret Six members emerged.

Otto Scott, in his informative book The Secret Six: The Fool as Martyr has observed of terrorist John Brown that he seemed to fit right in with this group, despite the differences in their backgrounds. Both they and Brown were revolutionaries. Brown was the sort of revolutionary that got his hands dirty–and bloody–and they were the kind that supported his activity–and kept theirs clean.

Of these radical abolitionists Scott observed: “The radical faction saw matters in a different light. It had no single leader in the Massachusetts branch of the aid committee: it was a coterie including Higginson, Parker, Howe and Stearns.  All were either famous or wealthy men who shared a common despair of the wisdom of their countrymen; each seemed to believe that slavery could only be ended by revolution.  Joh Brown appeared among these men with a reputation created by James Redpath of the N Y Tribune, attested by Richard Hinton of the Boston Traveler and the Chicago Tribune, enameled by Phillips of the New York Times in his recent book on Kansas…” So, thanks to gratuitous media coverage, Brown was duly inserted into this group of New England Unitarian revolutionaries. Do you still think the “news” media is objective in what they present? Were they back then???

Even in an undertaking such as financial support for Brown’s terrorist acts, these men were not totally honest with one another. Otto Scott observed that: “Therefore, the Boston committee of six–Howe, Higginson, Parker, Smith, Sanborn, and Stearns–started out keeping secrets from one another,  and were never to be wholly honest with the world.” John Brown assured these gullible folks that the people from Missouri were planning a big offensive in Kansas that spring, and because of their innate proclivity toward revolution, they chose to believe his fables.

Theodore Parker threw open his home and, according to Scott, “Captain Brown was lionized in a manner later made familiar to many momentarily famous revolutionists when received by wealthy radicals.” It was a case of each scratching the other’s back. In regard to Brown’s plans, Parker noted, according to Scott, that “I doubt whether things of this kind will succeed. But we shall have a great many failures before we discover the right way of getting at it. This may well be one of them.” These men viewed Brown’s revolutionary terrorism as a possible means to their ends, but if it didn’t work out, then he was just one more experiment they would have tried on their road to revolution.

And their revolutionary road would lead, as it ultimately did, to a complete overturning of the society and culture of not only the South, but eventually of the entire country. Today we live with many of the results of their revolution. How have those worked out for you all?

These men, Samuel Gridley Howe among them, wanted for the rest of the country exactly what their rampant apostasy had created in New England. Their spiritual descendants are still working on that revolution today. Let’s hope the Christian Church and the rest of the country wakes up and smells the coffee before everything becomes thoroughly Unitarianized.

Gerrit Smith, the “insane” philanthropist

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Gerrit Smith was an interesting character, in some ways different than the other members of the Secret Six that financed and supported abolitionist/terrorist John Brown. Smith was an ardent abolitionist and “social reformer” like the rest, but he had also been involved in politics, running for president a couple times. He also ran for the governorship of the state of New York on an anti-slavery platform.

Mr. Smith had some “interesting” relatives, too, one of which was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the main movers and shakers of the women’s suffrage movement that manifested itself at a convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 and was heavily influenced by Spiritualism, according to the book Radical Spirits that I have previously mentioned. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was Gerrit Smith’s first cousin, and, in fact, she met her future husband, Henry Stanton, also an active abolitionist, at the home of the Smith family in Peterboro, New York. The town had been named for Gerrit Smith’s father. And, in 1840, the candidate for president for the Liberty Party, James G. Birney, married Elizabeth Potts Fitzhugh, who was Smith’s sister-in-law. So as you can see, Smith was connected via family to some of the big wheels of his day.

In June of 1848 Smith was nominated as the Liberty Party’s presidential candidate. Needless to say, he didn’t make the cut, but he did manage to get elected in 1852 to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Free Soiler. He had some rather interesting political views.

According to Wikipedia.org Smith felt that: “…The Federal government and the states should prohibit the liquor traffic within their specific jurisdictions; and that government officers, so far as practicable, should be elected by a direct vote of the people.” So, not only was he an advocate of prohibition ahead of his time, but he was also an advocate of almost pure democracy. The radicals today that want to do away with the Electoral College have nothing on Gerrit Smith. He was there ahead of them.

Smith seems to have had a genuine concern for poor and black people, to the extent that he gave numerous farms of 50 acres each to indigent families. Wikipedia noted: “In 1846, hoping to help black families become self-sufficient and to provide them with property ownership needed to vote in New York, Smith attempted to colonize approximately 120,000 acres of land in North Elba, New York, near Lake Placid in Essex County with free blacks.” Although this was a commendable personal effort on his part, the plan fell through for several reasons. Among them was the difficulty of farming in the Adirondack region, the lack of experience in house building, and the bigotry of their white neighbors.

Whatever your agenda might be, you can’t reasonably blame the bigotry of whites in Northern New York State on the folks down in Dixie. Some ultra-liberals will no doubt try, but such a leap of imagination is comparable to today’s liberals believing that trucks and trucks of Democratic ballots were actually missing in the recent mid-term elections–just enough to give the Democrats a victory if such foolishness is to be believed! And it shouldn’t!

Part of the North Elba plan was to provide terrorist John Brown and his family a home up there. I doubt it would have worked. Brown seems to  have had a difficulty making a go of much of anything except terrorism–his one shining accomplishment.

The website http://www.nyhistory.com charitably observed of John Brown that: “On October 16th 1859, John Brown led a small group of his soldiers in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia…” This was an overtly friendly description of Brown’s group. Sorry folks, they were not “soldiers”  they were terrorists, plain and simple, and to label them as “soldiers” does a grave disservice to those searching for accurate history.

The same website also notes that Gerrit Smith knew Brown a decade before the Harper’s Ferry fiasco and notes that: “When John Brown went to Kansas to fight against slavery interests, Smith raised money to support his military operations…When Brown raided the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, he had a check for $100 in his pocket sent to him by Gerrit Smith.” This website toned down Brown’s terrorist activities and made him sound like a legitimate military commander instead of the terrorist he really was. People who don’t know the full story about Brown may be taken in by such efforts. Did these people sanitize Brown on purpose? If so, they wouldn’t be the first.

J. C. Furnas, in his excellent book The Road to Harper’s Ferry has commented about Gerrit Smith. Furnas noted on page 354 that: “Smith may be the easiest of the Six to account for. I cannot fully explain how men of such bottom and intelligence as Howe’s, Parkers, and Higginson’s could enroll under a banner so Bedlamite as Old Brown’s…” But of Gerrit Smith he said: “The figure he cut is still most familiar:  the self-dramatizing millionaire addicted to causes, perhaps neo-Fascist, perhaps in guilt-assuaging subsidy of movements Reddish-to-Red; only in Smith’s time the ‘down with us’ impulse took other forms.”

And Furnas noted that “Word of Harper’s Ferry sent him into an emotional panic necessitating three months in an insane asylum.” Apparently he was confined in the state asylum in Utica.

There seems to be some difference of opinion as to whether Smith was fully aware of all that Brown planned on doing at Harper’s Ferry.

At one point the Chicago Tribune claimed that Smith had full knowledge of what Brown’s plans were. Smith responded to that accusation by suing the paper for libel, while claiming that he had no such knowledge.  He claimed he only thought John Brown wanted guns so the slaves that ran away to join up with him would be able to defend themselves against any who might attack them. According to Wikipedia (which surprised me) “Smith’s claim was countered by the Tribune, which produced an affidavit , signed by Brown’s son, swearing that Smith had full knowledge of all the particulars of the plan, including the plan to instigate a slave uprising. In writing later of these events, Smith said, “That affair excited and shocked me, and a few weeks after I was taken to a lunatic asylum. From that day to this I have had but a hazy view of dear John Brown’s great work.”

Smith was more than willing to finance Brown’s terrorism, but when asked about it, he suddenly had “but a hazy view of John Brown’s great work.” They tell me pigs fly, too, but I don’t believe that anymore than I believe Gerrit Smith!

Furnas also informed us that Smith’s second wife “…joined in his espousal of the Millerite end-of-the-world craze in the mid-1840s…As  his library showed he was almost professionally religious, preaching lay sermons in local pulpits lacking ordained ministers and founding at Peterboro a free-wheeling non-denominational congregation the unspoken credo of which was that Gerrit Smith was right on any topic that interested him.”

Otto Scott, in his book The Secret Six: The Fool as Martyr has noted Gerrit Smith’s view of Christianity in this country when he counseled twenty or thirty black families that had settled on his land. According to Scott, Smith sent them all letters: “…telling them to ‘turn your backs upon American Christianity and American politics as upon the Devil himself, for he is their author.’ He was bitter against the churches for  differing  with him on various theological points and on a political issue.”

So this was where Gerrit Smith was at–dare to disagree with him and he pronounced you the devil’s spawn. A typical Yankee/Marxist attitude! Yet this attitude made him a perfect follower and financial supporter of a terrorist like Brown. Why work slowly to remove what you perceive as evils when you can finance terrorists to do it for you so much more quickly?

How much different was Gerrit Smith than some of our advocates today of the modern “peace movement” whose only solution to the world’s problems seems to be some form of redistribution of the wealth (our wealth redistributed to them and their Marxist friends).

These are the people who, for decades now, have promoted the use of the so-called “peace symbol.” After the end of the Viet Nam War this symbol kind of went out of style for awhile, but I’ve noticed of late that it seems to be making a rather startling comeback, especially on clothing for young people.

Have you ever wondered what the “peace symbol” really was? Take a good look at it. It is nothing more than a Christian cross, turned upside down with the arms on it broken–denying the power of Jesus Christ! When you get right down to it, denying the power of Jesus Christ is really what it was all about for many in Gerrit Smith’s day as well as for now. Gerrit Smith would have loved the “peace symbol.”