Investigating the War of 1861 Part 2

By Jim Jester

Empire

A correspondent for Macmillan’s Magazine did a thorough job investigating the war while in America. He talked with hundreds of people, from all walks of life, in the North and was convinced that slavery had nothing to do with Northern motives for war. He summarized the answers he was given with the words, “We do not claim to be carrying on a war for the blacks, but for the whites…. The object of the war is to preserve the Union…. It was for clear matter-of-fact interests.” When he tried to pin down these interests, the answers did not show any moral or legal justification for a war of aggression with the carnage that was taking place. Noble principles are rarely involved in warfare. What really were involved were trade, money, and empire building. He came to the same conclusion as many foreign correspondents did, that preserving the American empire was at stake. The Quarterly Review (London) analyzed “The American Crisis” in these words:

For the contest on the part of the North is now disguisedly for empire. The question of slavery is thrown to the winds. There is hardly any concession in its favor that the South could ask which the North would refuse, provided only that the seceding States would re-enter the Union…. Away with the pretence on the North to dignify its cause with the name of freedom to the slave!

It became clear to the majority of British writers that preserving the Union really meant preserving the empire. The thinking of the 19th century was to conquer and explore. America was building an empire across the continent, with Alaska, Canada, and Cuba on the list, and this is what Europeans saw as a very understandable reason to preserve the Union. The Athenaeum (6 May 1865), a highly respected British weekly, wrote:

Many different motives urged her [the North] to begin the work on which she lavished blood and treasure. She fought… for all those delicious dreams of national predominance in future ages, which she must relinquish as soon as the union is severed…. They saw the necessity for an undivided nation: they knew that banded together they might achieve all their promises and predictions, but that their historical pre-eminence would be sacrificed as soon as they consented to a dissolution of partnership.

Although the abolitionists were ready to support secession to sever the North from slavery, the bankers and businessmen, everywhere supported war in order to prevent secession and maintain one nation so they could continue business as usual. Constitutional discussion did not matter (besides the South was winning on that issue), just hard-nosed economic reality – money. Even the work on the Capitol Building did not stop during the war; and furthermore, used slave labor. Author Ellis Gibbs Arnal was of the same opinion:

Northern lust for taxes and empire building (of which commercial prosperity played a huge role) caused the war. Lincoln was committed to the success of the financial oligarchy of the North. This economic exploitation of the South was to be continued for nearly eighty years after the war and was only abandoned in the face of the crisis of World War II. – The Shore Dimly Seen, 1946, p. 165-185

Charles Dickens also studied the situation in America, came to the same conclusion, and said, “The quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.”

As soon as Lincoln took office, the old Whig coalition (now Republican) finally controlled the entire government. It immediately tripled the average tariff rate, began subsidizing the building of a transcontinental railroad in California even though a desperate war was being waged. The Legal Tender Act (25 February 1862) empowered the Secretary of the Treasury to issue paper money (“greenbacks”) that was not immediately redeemable in gold or silver. The National Currency Acts of 1863 and 1864 created a system of nationally chartered banks that could issue bank notes supplied to them by the new Comptroller of the Currency, and a 10 percent tax was placed on state bank notes to drive them out of business and establish a federal monetary monopoly. The government's paper money flooded the banks so that by July 1864 greenback dollars were worth a mere 35 cents in gold. The reason Lincoln issued the greenbacks was because when he went to the bankers for war loans, they wanted to charge a whopping 24 to 36 percent and Lincoln refused.

The sponsor of the banking legislation in the House of Representatives was Congressman Elbridge G. Spaulding, a New York banker. Spaulding argued that the new fiat money system would finally clear the way for the mercantilist system of massive “internal improvement” subsidies. The New York Times, 9 March 1863, published a celebratory editorial in which it said, “The legal tender act and the national currency bill crystallized . . . a centralization of power, such as Hamilton might have eulogized as magnificent.” One president, who could see an ever-increasing debt, with no chance of ever paying it back, had this to say. “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution taking from the federal government their power of borrowing” ^{Endnote 1} (Thomas Jefferson, 1798).

Since the days of Andrew Jackson, American presidents had opposed a fiat money system. But with Lincoln’s War, opposition to central banking was ended, literally, at gunpoint. Lincoln’s main role was to avoid doing what presidents had done for the previous three decades – veto central banking legislation. Of course, there was no chance of that happening since Lincoln had always advocated central banking and fiat money. The Party of Lincoln wanted to transform the American government from the limited, constitutional republic of the founding fathers to an empire that would rival Great Britain’s, and they knew they needed a central bank to do it. As Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation on the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War, explains, “By 1863 the Republicans envisioned a dominant international role for a unified American nation, and [Senator John] Sherman promised that the bank bill, with its implicit strengthening of the national government, would advance that goal.”

Senator John Sherman, chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, declared, “nationalize as much as possible, even the currency, so as to make men love their country before their states. All private interests, all local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals, everything, should be subordinate now to the interest of the Government.” This is a perfect expression of the collectivist/communist philosophy that would plague the next century (and ours) with its insistence that citizens are to be servants of the state, rather than the other way around. Kentucky Democrat Lasarus Powell was not as enthusiastic about the banking bills:

The result of this legislation is utterly to destroy the rights of the states. It is asserting a power which if carried out to its logical result would enable the national Congress to destroy every institution of the States and cause all power to be consolidated and concentrated here [in Washington, D.C.].

Of course it would, that was always the intention of the Party of Lincoln. This is what Lincoln’s War was really about: for the North – empire, for the South – independence. The only way for freedom to continue must be in a debt free economy. This was the principle with Lincoln’s greenbacks (which he needed to finance the war) and with the previous Independent Treasury System (which he opposed). As we can see in the following quote, a debt free system was good for everyone except the moneychangers, who made their opinion known in the London Times:

If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.

Lincoln later considered the further use of this type of money (the Greenbacks), which the bankers obviously would have opposed. Were they the ones who conspired to have him killed? Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Germany, is quoted as saying in 1876, “The government and the nation escaped the plots of the foreign financiers. They understood at once, that the United States would escape their grip. The death of Lincoln was resolved upon.” Lincoln was assassinated and died the next morning on April 15th (I wonder if it is just coincidentally our tax deadline day?). Now Lincoln sits immemorial facing the Federal Reserve building in D.C. paying them homage. He had fought a war to maintain the Union – all for their benefit – but now (at wars end), they had no need of him and did not want any competition from debt free money. It is also known that pages are missing from the diary of John Wilkes Booth (Can we imagine why?).

Many of our presidents were assassinated during this short thirty-six year period: Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, and McKinley in 1901; and they all had spoken out about the money powers. It was not long after the assassination of McKinley that the Federal Reserve was formed in 1913. Was all this just a coincidence? President Jackson (1836) opposed a national bank and there was an attempt on his life. It seems that Lincoln was aware of this dangerous situation in America when he said, “I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe.” Could Lincoln have regretted what he did to America, or was he coerced?

The goal of the money monopoly men was to divide and conquer. Their plan was to divide the United States so that part would go to England and part to France. To allow a country to coin or issue notes that were debt free would allow that country to become independently wealthy and the people prosperous and free. For a short period (during the 1840’s), America had such a banking system (Independent Treasury System). The “banksters” could not allow this to happen. This was the real reason behind the turmoil of depressions, war, and assassinations during 19th century America. Bismarck is quoted as saying:

I know of absolute certainty, that the division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the U.S., if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. Of course, in the inner circle of Finance, the voice of the Rothschilds prevailed. They saw an opportunity for prodigious booty if they could substitute two feeble democracies, burdened with debt to the financiers, … in place of a vigorous Republic sufficient unto herself. Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to drive a wedge between the two parts of the Union…. The rupture between the North and the South became inevitable; the masters of European finance employed all their forces to bring it about and to turn it to their advantage. [Quoted by Conrad Siem in La Vieille France 216:13-16 (March 17-24, 1921); Patrick Carnack, Bill Still, The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (video, 1998).]

The European bankers wanted a war that would return the United States back to its colonial status, but they were not necessarily interested in preserving slavery. It just meant that the owners had to feed and care for their workers. The bankers preferred “the European plan” – capital could exploit labor by controlling the money supply, while letting the laborers feed themselves. This ploy was revealed in a document called the Hazard Circular, July 1862. It said:

Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. This can be done by controlling the money. The great debt that capitalists will see to is made out of the war, must be used as a means to control the volume of money. To accomplish this, the bonds must be used as a banking basis… It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that. (Quoted in Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, Charles Lindberg, 1913, p 102.)

In other words, there were 4 million slaves not owned by the bankers, but by those who provided for their needs and controlled their labor. This was a significant number that could be added to the economy, which would mean more profit for the bankers and money would control labor. These slaves and their owners were self-sufficient, living off the land as free people, independent of the bankers. Isn’t that the way it should be?

In Web of Debt, p. 90-91, author Ellen H. Brown explains how the bankers’ plan came about:

The system the bankers wanted to preserve was what Henry Clay and Henry Carey had called the “British system,” with its twin weapons of “free trade” and the “gold standard” keeping the less industrialized countries in a colonial state, supplying raw materials to Britain’s factories. The American South had already been subjugated in this way, and the bankers had now set their sights on the North, to be reeled in with usurious war loans; but Lincoln had refused to take the bait.  …But they achieved their end by other means. While one faction in Congress was busy getting the Greenbacks issued to fund the war, another faction was preparing a National Banking Act that would deliver a monopoly over the power to create the nation’s money supply to the Wall Street bankers and their European affiliates. The National Banking Act was promoted as establishing safeguards for the new national banking system; but while it was an important first step toward a truly national bank, it was only a compromise with the bankers, and buried in the fine print, it gave them exactly what they wanted. A private communication from a Rothschild investment house in London to an associate banking firm in New York dated June 25, 1863, confided: “The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or so dependent upon its favors that there will be no opposition from that class while, on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending… will bear its burdens without complaint (Robert Owen, National Economy and the Banking System, 1939). [emphasis mine]

Once again, as with the Constitution (regardless of the Bill of Rights), our enemy got what they needed in the banking act to enslave the American people. The Rothschild family financed the destruction of the South and the wars that have followed. The 19th century became known as the age of the Rothschild’s when it was estimated they controlled half of the world’s wealth. According to historian, Eliott Germain, Truth in History,

Russia openly exposed the Secret Societies, which instigated and ran the French Revolution. The Czar even sent ships to the American coasts during the War of 1861 because he did not want to see America suffer the same fate as Europe {from the Napoleonic Wars}. In 1905, Russia sent a publication throughout the Western world exposing a plan by secret societies to end the sovereignty of every nation for the creation of a one-world government.

The internationalist goal of a “new world order” was already working behind the scenes. It had also been the goal of the secret societies that America would become the “New Atlantis.” Had the North allowed the South to go their own way their empire would have been slowed or stopped. If Rothschild and the bankers had been exposed (and they are being exposed today because of the internet), there may have been at least two independently wealthy countries in North America: the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. Or, they may have rejoined later. Whatever plans these “banksters” had for America (be it divided or united), they had to be in control.

Secessionism

The South believed in in “the law of compact,” claiming that each party can decide on its own judgment, whether the other has lived up to its terms. Northern historians claim the federal government was not guilty of any non-compliance with the Constitution, and therefore secession was not justified. However, many Unionists also believed in the right of secession. The secession argument roots from the Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist battle (previously discussed). Many of the Anti-Federalists did not live to see the War of 1861, but it proved to be just what they had warned about when a country was sectionalized over slavery, economics, and western expansion.

The South Carolina Secession Convention became the model for the other states which followed. In its “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” December 24, 1860, it cites South Carolina’s 1852 threat to secede and gave as reasons “the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the sovereign States of this Union, especially in relation to slavery.” It goes on with a history lesson mentioning our “Declaration of Independence” from Britain and that the colonies, “are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.” This being established it goes on how South Carolina entered into the compact known as the “Articles of Confederation” and later the “Constitution of the United States.” South Carolina’s Declaration goes on:

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with defined objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights. We hold that the government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of independence; and we hold further that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely, the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences. In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused for years past to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof.

The Declaration then goes into those statutes and concludes how “a sectional party” has found “the means of subverting the Constitution itself.” It concludes,

On the 4th of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the Judicial tribunal shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against Slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guarantees of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The Slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation; and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the people of South Carolina, by our Delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent state, with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

It appears biblical to me that if a compact is broken then the parties may go their own way. This is seen in the fact that God divorced (See Jeremiah 3:8) Israel when she had broken the compact she made at Mt. Sinai. This is also shown in the words of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….”

President Davis, in his “Message to the Confederate Congress About Ratification of the Constitution,” April 29th 1861, gave a history lesson on how the then colonies formed a compact in order to defend themselves against British invasion. He expresses what some call the “compact theory”; I quote in part:

Under this contract of alliance [speaking of the Articles of Confederation], the war of the Revolution was successfully waged, and resulted in the treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, by the terms of which the several States were each by name recognized to be independent. The Articles of Confederation contained a clause whereby all alterations were prohibited unless confirmed by the Legislatures of every State after being agreed to by Congress; and in obedience to this provision, under the resolution of Congress of the 21st of February, 1787, the several State appointed delegates who attended a convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several Legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of the Union.” It was by the delegates chosen by the several States under the resolution just quoted that the Constitution of the United States was framed in 1787 and submitted to the several States for ratification, as shown the seventh article….

Davis then quotes that article and mentions he has “italicized certain words in the quotations just made for the purpose of attracting attention to the singular and marked caution with which the States endeavored in every possible form to exclude the idea that the separate and independent sovereignty of each State was merged into one common government and nation, and the earnest desire they evinced to impress on the Constitution its true character that of a compact between independent States.” He then goes on with a very interesting admission:

The Constitution of 1787, having, however, omitted the clause already recited from the Articles of Confederation, which provided in explicit terms that each State retained its sovereignty and independence, some alarm was felt in the States, lest this omission should be construed into an abandonment of their cherished principle, and they refused to be satisfied until amendments were added to the Constitution placing beyond any pretense of doubt the reservation by the States of all their sovereign rights and powers not expressly delegated to the United States by the Constitution. – Jefferson Davis

What, the clause providing for State sovereignty – the “cherished principle” – was omitted from the new Constitution (although to some degree in the 10th Amendment)? Is this why the federal government does as it pleases regardless of what we say, do, or vote? This is a huge fault in the present Constitution and the main cause of the War of 1861. Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists were right; and the South was right too.

Strange, indeed, must it appear to the impartial observer, but it is none the less true that all these carefully worded clauses proved unavailing to prevent the rise and growth in the Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that the government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a national government, set up above and over the States. An organization created by the States to secure the blessings of liberty and independence against foreign aggression, has been gradually perverted into a machine for their control in their domestic affairs. The creature has been exalted above its creators; the principles have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves. – Jefferson Davis

The big question for Americans should be: which came first, the States or the federal government? Most today would say the Federal government. Yet, the signers of the Declaration of Independence announced to the world “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.” States is plural – it does not say State. Indeed, in the treaty ending the war, Great Britain agreed to the terms of peace not with one nation, but with each of her former colonies. These colonies became the States under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, enacted on March 1, 1781. Unionists like to emphasize the word perpetual in the above title and say that the union under the federal government is permanent and therefore secession was not legal. But, the Articles were done away with when the Constitution of 1787 took its place; so where was its perpetuity? It was gone – each State seceded from it and established a new union by ratifying the Constitution! The States that did not ratify remained under the Articles. Try as hard as they might, the Unionists cannot find any language in the Constitution mentioning perpetuity or permanence (this ambiguity proved fatal to thousands); and even if they could prove permanence, it would mean that the Constitution is antithetical to the Declaration of Independence (a secessionist document). Our fathers brought forth thirteen new nations. The union of those thirteen independent nation-states was known as these united States, not this United States.

Many Unionists like to quote President Andrew Jackson’s words, “The Federal Union – it must be preserved.” Yet few quote from his later explanation that a union could not be preserved by force because the Union he referred to was a voluntary union, and force would, in and of itself, destroy the very thing it was supposed to preserve. C. C. Burr, editor of Judge Upshur’s book, The Federal Government: Its True Nature and Character, p. 104, noted:

The name of our federation is not Consolidated States, but United States. A number of States held together by coercion, or the point of a bayonet, would not be a Union. Union is necessarily voluntary – the act of choice, free association. Nor can this voluntary system be changed to one of force without the destruction of “The Union.” The Austrian Empire is composed of several States, as the Hungarians, the Poles, the Italians, etc., but it cannot be called a Union – it is Despotism. Is the relation between Russia and bayonet held Poland a Union? Is it not an insult and a mockery to call the compulsory relation between England and Ireland a Union? In all these cases there is only such a union as exist between the jaws of the wolf and the lamb. A Union of States necessarily implies separate sovereignties, voluntarily acting together. And to bruise these distinct sovereignties into one mass of power is, simply, to destroy the Union – to overthrow our system of government.

Some Northerners also like to mention that Robert E. Lee was against secession, but we know which side he finally chose when the line was drawn.

A well-known book of the time on Constitutional law was William Rawle’s Views of the Constitution, which was used at West Point Military Academy. Rawle said that the people held the right to “determine how they will be governed.” He goes on to say that this right was an “ingredient in the original composition of the general government.” This is a reflection of Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence that a just government was on based on the consent of the governed. This is a natural result of us being a free people, acting through our agent, the State, to give or take away the right of a government to rule over us. Rawle explains how a state should withdraw:

To withdraw from the Union is a solemn, serious act. Whenever it may appear expedient to the people of a state, it must be manifested in a direct and unequivocal manner.

As an American, Rawle knew that the Union was dear to all and offered many advantages to member states. But, as an American, he also knew that when the people of a state felt those advantages no longer existed and the Union had become a threat to their happiness, the very reason for the existence of the Union was no longer valid. The words of the first popular war song of the South “The Bonnie Blue Flag”, expresses this well, “As long as the Union was faithful to her trust, like friends and like brethren kind were we and just. But now that Northern treachery attempts our rights to mar, we hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears the single star.” In song and deed, the Southern people were saying that the North had lost sight of the real reason for its existence.

Before the war started, President James Buchanan petitioned the Attorney General to determine whether the United States could invade and force those seceding States to obey the laws of the Union. In his response of 20 November 1860, Attorney General Jeremiah Black issued several opinions as to what the U. S. might do legally. In short, the President learned, (1) he could not invade States under powers granted him by the Constitution and could only do so legally by Court order; (2) an illegal invasion by Congress would dissolve the entire Union, and if States were treated as enemies they could retaliate in whatever form chosen as necessary; (3) Congress had no power to displace that of the States and if Congress puts “enmity and armed hostility… will not all the States be absolved from their federal obligation” and; (4) the only legal way was to accuse and bring them before a Court of law. The judicial question is, did the U. S. government provide due process before taking life, liberty and property from the States and people in 1861 and thereafter? Can anyone find a summons or judicial hearing of any kind or where Congress judged and sentenced the States? No! A clear violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The North went to war to “prove” that the right of secession did not exist (in their view of the constitution). However, after winning the war, the North required the Southern states to put a clause in their new state constitutions surrendering the right of secession before they could rejoin the Union. Uh, how could a state give up that which it never had (in their view)? This requirement of the North proved that the South did have the right of secession after all. What was the cause of the war? In one word – secession.

A Just War?

At the start of War of 1861, the North numbered about 20 million people; the South had only 8 million, 4 million who were slaves. The North was also open to immigration, which the blockaded South was not. It is estimated that over 400,000 mercenary troops (Irish and German immigrants) were enrolled in the Northern army. However, even with this advantage in Northern manpower alone, more boys in blue (over 364,000) were killed than boys in grey (329,000). This is a Northern figure and does not include the white seniors, women, and children; nor does it include the African-American servants and their families. By the end of the war, 693,000 combatants lay dead – a whole generation of young Israelite men – more servicemen than were killed in World Wars I & II, Korea, and Vietnam combined. Some Southern historians estimate that 2 million Southerners died during the war: 1 million whites (out of 8 million) and probably as many as 1 million blacks (out of 4 million). In short, 12.5 percent of all Southern whites died, while 25 percent of all Southern blacks died. This was a genocidal bloodbath for both races. There is no record of how many Asians, Native-Americans, or Hispanics died.

Speaking of the Yankee myth that the Confederacy fought to preserve slavery, the Kennedy brothers, in their book The South Was Right, p 34, makes this point:

The absurdity of this myth can be seen by understanding that it has been estimated that from seventy to eighty percent of the Confederate soldiers and sailors were not slave owners! Now let’s try to put the extent of the Southern sacrifice into some type of modern perspective. During World War II, the United States lost approximately three hundred thousand military personnel. If the United States had lost personnel in World War II at the same rate (per capita) as the South did during the War for Southern Independence, the loss of American lives in World War II would not have been three hundred thousand but instead six million!

Who in his right mind could honestly claim that the Southern soldiers and sailors, the vast majority of whom were not slave owners, went to war against a numerically superior foe and endured four long years of hardships, all in order to allow a few rich men to keep their slaves? Yet, the Yankee myth of history has been so pervasive that this is the message that our children usually receive from the educational system paid for by our taxes.

Today most white people and reconstructed southerners in particular, accept their assigned position of guilt for slavery without one word of protest.

The Yankee myth that slavery caused the secession of the South and therefore the war can be proven false by a little known incident in 1850. A dispute arose when a federal army officer called a convention to form the state of New Mexico on land that was claimed by Texas. The governor of Texas called for force to be used to maintain the integrity of Texas. War was averted by a compromise giving Texas ten million dollars and 33,333 square miles of land. This near war was not about slaves but about land; and it almost caused secession ten years before South Carolina seceded.

In early 1820, before slavery had been used by the North as an issue against the South and after the financial panic of 1819 concerning mismanagement of the Bank of the United States, a Kentuckian predicted that events would continue “…with a steady pace, to civil war and dissolution of the union.” About the same time, Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College said, “We shall ere long be forced to calculate the value of our Union, to ask of what use is an unequal alliance by which the South has always been the loser and the North always the winner.” (A History of the South, Francis B. Simkins, p. 97, 100) These two examples, at this early date, show that Southerners were expressing the need to separate from the North – even if there had been no question about slavery.

Lincoln’s immortal words, “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” may have stirred the patriotism of Northerners, but it was exactly what Jefferson Davis and Southerners believed in, and yet were denied. The South did not want a war; and many (on both sides) hated the abolitionist movement. The right of the Southern states to govern themselves was at stake – the moral issue of slavery was irrelevant. History shows that all secession wars are fought over land and resources. Money and empire building was the real motivation for the North to wage war. Negotiations did not matter and law was ignored – if the Constitution was brought up, it was only the Constitution according to Lincoln.

Not only were American laws violated, but so were the laws of nations. The Dutch lawyer, Hugo Grotius, today known as the “father of modern international law,” first wrote down these laws, known and held for centuries by civilized societies. His work, The Law of War and Peace, was translated into English (1646) and found its way into libraries and courts all over Europe. Grotius discussed the concept of a just war and concluded that “authorities generally assign to wars three justifiable causes: defense, recovery of property, and punishment.” The principles of international law were known and taught at West Point by General Halleck. No general during the War of Northern Aggression could claim ignorance of the laws of war, especially the laws against plunder and devastation of private property. Lincoln fired Halleck in 1864 and appointed Grant as the top commander. The laws of war were ignored, especially during the last year of the war by Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.

Major General W. T. Sherman wrote from Vicksburg on January 31, 1864:

The Government of the United States has … any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war – to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything…. War is simply power unrestrained by constitution…. To the persistent secessionist, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better….

Note that Sherman is not making these remarks in the heat of battle, but while writing to subordinates. He also claims the right to execute all secessionists, female or male. Some alleged super-patriots feel the government can do no wrong and would defend the general and say he was only exaggerating. Yet, look at his remarks five months later in a letter on June 21 to Secretary of War, Stanton: “There is a class of people, men, women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” Now Sherman has expanded his target to children instead of softening his position. However, this is not all of the matter. Secretary Stanton replied, “Your letter of the 21st of June has just reached me and meets my approval.”

Witness an order from General Halleck, chief of staff in Washington, as he relayed an order from General Grant, “General Grant…directs that…you…make all the valleys south of the Baltimore and Ohio road a desert….” Who can survive in a desert? Where are displaced civilians and refugees supposed to go, or what are they to eat? A report from Louisiana by an officer of the Union Army, boastfully wrote in his official report,

No squad of men … can live anywhere we have been. The people have neither seed, corn, nor bread or mills to grind the corn if they had it, as I burned them wherever found.  …I have taken from these people the mules with which they would raise a crop the coming year, and burned every surplus grain of corn….

This is genocide by starvation, is it not? Notice the words of Sherman to Grant on October 9, 1864, “Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources….” Utter destruction of its people? Philip Sheridan also got in on the action as per his communiqué dated October 11, 1864, to General Grant, “…Guerrilla parties …are becoming very formidable…. I know of no way to exterminate them except to burn out the whole country.” Exterminate – are we talking about insects here? They burned everything – a Southern holocaust!

General Sheridan received this letter of encouragement from General Sherman:

I am satisfied… that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory… a great deal of it, yet remains to be done…. Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results.

On January 21, 1865, Sherman sent this communiqué, “The people of the South… see… the sure and inevitable destruction of all their property…. They see in the repetition of such raids the inevitable result of starvation and misery.”

These officials and officers of the United States knew their war of aggression against the civilian population would produce starvation and misery. This was a war against all Southerners, black and white. While the U. S. government was on its extermination campaign in the South, it was also attempting to solve its Indian problem in the West. Yankee General John Pope said, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux.” He planned “a final settlement with all these Indians.” Author and historian of the West, Alvin M. Josephy states:

In the harsh atmosphere of the Civil War emergency, the green light was given to an era of stern suppression of the tribes, whose efforts to protect their lands and freedom – and even to avoid starvation and to survive – could be regarded as interfering with the general war effort and giving aid and comfort to the Confederate enemy. (The Civil War in the American West, p. 231)

The North’s final solution to the Indian was the same as with the Southerner – deprive those who were left of their land and then re-educate them so they would become Yankees. The same policy continues today – anyone who deviates from the established political and religious systems is hated and rejected, just as our Lord Jesus Christ. This government hates honorable people.

Lincoln and his generals violated the laws of nations, and Northern historians seem to ignore this fact. Sherman had determined to make Georgia an “example to rebels” and liked to brag that Southern maps would have to be re-drawn after he and his troops passed by. He literally wiped towns (like Meridian, Mississippi) off the face of the earth. When Sheridan cut his swath of destruction through the Shenandoah Valley, Lincoln conveyed the “thanks of the Nation and my own personal admiration and gratitude.” In contrast, very few Northern cities were touched by the war and most Northern states were completely spared and would not have any reason to think that a major military conflict was raging across the continent. In the words of an unreconstructed historian, Lochlainn Seabrook:

Most of the North’s citizens never saw the horrors of the War on their doorstep; never had to flee from an approaching army; never had to watch their home being torn down; never had their nostrils filled with the pungent smoke of the battlefield and the stench of rotting bodies; never heard the screams of loved ones who had been shot or bayoneted; never had to defend themselves against an enemy who robbed, torched, raped, pillaged, and blasted its way through their communities; and never received a government letter saying that their son, brother, or father had been tortured, then intentionally starved to death in a Southern military prison (as nearly 6,000 Rebel soldiers were at Lincoln’s notorious Camp Douglas in Chicago). Most Northerners also never saw their schools, churches, hospitals, and libraries senselessly blown apart; never saw their factories demolished, their railroads ripped up, their crop fields set ablaze; never witnessed their pets and livestock being tortured, killed or stolen; never saw their businesses torn down, every structure turned to rubble, or their entire countryside laid waste (Everything You Were Taught about the Civil War is Wrong, 2012, p. 28).

As Sherman and Sheridan were devastating civilian life and property, sixteen European nations met in Geneva, Switzerland, to codify the laws of war. The civilized world was motivated by the suffering of injured soldiers during the Crimean War, which had recently ended, and were also motivated by what the Northern armies were doing in America. The conventions codified the century-old laws of war at Geneva (1863) and The Hague (1899) and decreed that:

1. Attacking defenseless cities and towns was a war crime.
2. Plundering and wantonly destroying civilian property was a war crime.
3. Only necessities could be taken from a civilian population and had to be paid for.

Lincoln and his generals violated all these laws, knowingly and willingly, and should have been tried as war criminals. This is how they won the war along with an endless supply of resources (human and material) – they starved them out.

The American Revolutionary War set civilized examples that Sherman and Sheridan could have followed. That war too was a war for secession, and the purpose, from the British standpoint, was to bring the colonies back into the empire. The British, like the Northerners, called Americans “rebels” and “traitor” as well. Both of these wars were for the same purpose. In contrast, the British avoided atrocities and devastation of property. They wanted the colonists to return as willing subjects, not as a crushed and devastated people. It is true that there were atrocities on both sides of the wars, but not as policy by the commanders, except for the War of Northern Aggression where it was the policy all the way up to the commander in chief. That helps explain why reconciliation was never achieved by that generation or following ones. Reconciliation was one war objective that the Union lost; setting the stage for the guerilla tactics of the Ku Klux Klan and other militant groups, which aided the White man in regaining political power and control of Southern society. In the end, after a decade or so, Southerners expelled the Yankees from their homeland. This is why Southerners have traditionally voted for Democrats. In the final analysis, both sides lost the war, for since then America has suffered the loss of freedom from subsequent amendments to the constitution and the antagonism of the black race. Even if Lincoln’s military had behaved according to civilized decency, his purpose of “preserving the Union” finds no support in the laws of war as a just cause. In addition, Biblical Law was also violated, for in I Kings 12:21-24 we read:

And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah, with the tribe of Benjamin, an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel, to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam the son of Solomon. But the word of God came unto Shemaiah the man of God, saying, Speak unto Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and unto all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the remnant of the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is from me. They hearkened therefore to the word of the Lord, and returned to depart, according to the word of the Lord. [Emphasis mine]

The North did exactly that; they launched a war of aggression against their racial brethren. Where was the man of God in the churches of the North? Why didn’t the church oppose Lincoln? Because they had already believed the lie of the “equality of all men” (because “all races came from Adam”) and were too busy supporting the abolitionist movement to listen to God.

Politicians always have an excuse to do whatever it is they want. Lincoln had to find another excuse besides the Sumter incident to make war. He had to deny these states their right to “the consent of the governed.” To him they were not freedom fighters, fighting for independence – they were conspirators and traitors, and he was simply putting down an unlawful rebellion (this is why he called it a “civil war”). He could ignore their constitutional processes of secession by popular vote. He came up with his “preserving the Union” theory and Northerners bought the idea. They invaded the South to destroy Southerners’ right to self-determination because it was a good for them politically and economically. Northern commercial interests demanded Union, on their terms. That is why ordinary civilians during the war years called it “a rich man’s war, and a poor man’s fight.”

Northerners promote the propaganda to support Lincoln’s War as a “just war.” Now that you know the truth, you know the absurdity of the words from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by the radical abolitionist, Julia Ward Howe, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Both sides claimed to have God on their side. The U.S.A. asserts that because they won they were right. Thus, the C.S.A., because they lost, were wrong and unjust in their cause. Can this be true? Not necessarily: the U.S. has participated in wars in which they ended in a standoff or actually lost, such as the War of 1812, Korean War, and Vietnam War. If winning is the sole criteria in judging the right or wrong of a warring nation, then we would have to judge that we were wrong and immoral in these conflicts as well. Are we to believe that “might makes right” or that God is on the side with the biggest army? No! The South stood for everything morally good: family values, faith, tradition, a free market economy, a love of agriculture, animals and the land. And, the North: commercial values, skepticism, progress, a controlled market, and love of industry and money.

The North claimed that God was using them to punish the South for slavery. But, the war dragged on and was becoming very unpopular. The guilt-ridden Lincoln tried to exculpate himself because of the carnage. His logic was to bring God into the picture and say it was punishment to both sides for their participation in slavery. So now, it was God’s war and God has his purposes; thus, Lincoln refused to seek peace when the opportunity presented itself many times over the four years. In his second inaugural address he did not quote the words of Jesus “blessed are the peacemakers” but used the words of Jesus recorded by Matthew 18:7, “Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” These words, pulled from their context, Lincoln applies to the war:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills be removed and that he gives both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came…. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

But, if slavery was so wrong and America was being punished by a righteous God with the blood of a whole generation of young men (nearly 700,000 combatants), then why wasn’t the rest of the western world punished? Why did Britain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Russia all escape the wrath of God? And, why didn’t Jesus, Paul, or any of the prophets over the many centuries say something about the inhumanity (and/or the sin) of slavery?

The answer, of course, is that slavery was not wrong; and that Lincoln’s War had not gone so well. God had not given any support for their invasion of the South. If God were on the side of the Northern crusade, surely He would have given them tremendous victories on the battlefield, as He did Joshua in bringing down the walls of Jericho and stopping the sun in the sky. To the contrary, the South had similar great successes on the battlefield. It was as if Robert E. Lee were a Moses, a Joshua, or a William Wallace. The war did not end slavery but only extended it from the black man only, to both black and white men (or anyone who becomes a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment). Furthermore, the federal government has used the slavery issue to hide its collective guilt for its illegal and unlawful war and abuse of other inhabitants on this continent that happened to be in the way of its empire. Certainly, there was nothing just about this war.

Aftermath

Robert E. Lee’s final words of wisdom came about a month before his death in 1870. Under the yoke of Reconstruction and its military dictatorship, Lee was invited by a Union general to arrange a meeting with a number of leading ex-Confederates. The general asked Lee to make a statement, supposedly to indicate how happy he was to be back in the Union. Lee said no. He had seen the ugliness of Northern occupation. However, he did set up a meeting for many ex-Confederates to have a say. The last to leave the meeting was the former Confederate governor of Texas, Fletcher Stockdale. Lee took him aside and said,

Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.

In his final words, Lee pointed out the disaster that Reconstruction had brought to the South and to the whole country. The ugly peace was only victory for Republican and Northern control over the nation. The corruption and abuse of the Northern armies during Reconstruction (against the wishes of Lincoln) produced a hatred that lingered well into the 20th century. Southern whites got a raw deal from Republicans and they took out their wrath on the newly emancipated blacks, which got the rawest deal of all for over a hundred years. All of this, including the war, could have been avoided if slavery was allowed to fade away naturally. America is sometimes criticized for being the last country in the world to abolish slavery. However, we should remember that the South was a more suitable agricultural climate than the North or countries of Europe. And, these countries (North included) bought goods from Southern slave labor just as America does today from places like China.

At first, Lincoln’s logic showed that the purpose of the war was to maintain the Union because the Constitution (allegedly) did not allow secession. Once joined you are in it forever (sound familiar – the same today with a Social Security number). Then after two years of military disasters, Lincoln brought out the abolition purpose. Now it had become God’s war. But, in reality all these “purposes” were just a smoke screen to hide the North’s desire for economic control over the South. Today, Americans think Lincoln was a good, kind, and wonderful president. He is everywhere – from the Lincoln Memorial in our capital, to the pennies in our pocket. The myth of Lincoln should be seen as an example of how Americans cannot assess their history objectively because so many historical facts are unknown to them. Yet, almost everyone has heard of Sherman’s march to the sea. They should ask; if Lincoln was so great, why did such atrocities take place?

Northerners like to refer to Secessionists as “Rebels.” However, the North forsook the founding principles! There was nothing in the constitution about the “equality of all men” but rather “to ourselves and our Posterity.” The invasion of the South was a coup against the democratic process. Lincoln set the stage for an all-powerful empire in which the states were relegated to not much more than county status. Out of this war, we have seen the emergence of an “imperial presidency” in which presidents can launch wars and spend money without congressional approval; in fact, they can rule by decree like the consuls of Rome. Thus, Lincoln did more to destroy the original Union than preserve it. It is a union by coercion, much like the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The proper place of Lincoln in American history is with the liberal trinity: F.D.R., Wilson and Lincoln. He had the same values as they did; he advanced the country toward unlimited government as they did; he was willing to use foreigners (war mercenaries) and minority groups against his own people; etc. Lincoln’s War changed America from these united States (plural) with self-rule, to the United States (singular) with centralized federal rule. Our various states are no longer free, independent, or sovereign nations within a confederacy as was the original confederation of the founding fathers. This was the purpose of the so-called “Civil War” – to form us into one Nation (or Empire). This was fully realized with the Act of 1871, when the United States became a private corporation. Ever since the surrender at Appomattox, we have been under a forced union. Some time after the war, Robert E. Lee said, “All we ever wanted was for the country to continue as it was founded.”

Why did the North win? Why does abortion continue? Why does the government spy on everyone? Evil continues because we are living under the temporary reign of the anti-Christs. We may never know this side of eternity, why bad things happen to good people. Maybe we should consider the thought that the South lost because they were too tolerant of the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of all races. Surely, the doctrines of this corrupted version of the Christian faith had spread throughout America at the time. Had the South known they were God’s covenant people, Israel, and were to be separate, maybe God would have delivered them. As it stood, most Christians, following their churches’ doctrine, were unaware of their identity and uninformed of their responsibility for separation. Therefore, God did not choose to deliver, and has allowed our tribulation to continue to this day. When will we start following God’s Laws?

Perhaps we should view the War for Southern Independence as a continuation of the American War for Independence – for, as the South was beaten into submission, so have the American people been beaten into serfdom by an over-bearing federal government. Historian Charles Adams said, “If it [War of the Rebellion] had succeeded, it would have been called the Second American Revolution.” The Southerners were the last patriots to fight for their God-given rights and responsibilities. They saw their country going in the wrong direction, just as we do today. The only thing they could do was to separate, for they certainly could not change the Northern power structure and it was the only way to preserve freedom for their people. Perhaps there is a lesson here for today’s patriots: instead of asserting our rights under the Constitution, we should assert God’s authority under His Law against an unjust government. It is our responsibility under God’s Law that is superior to any right granted by the government. We should also consider the main flaw of the Constitution: it gave too much power to the federal government, especially after the war through additional Amendments; and, it does not provide penalties for evildoers. The Anti-Federalists were right, for if we had kept the Articles of Confederation, the War of 1861 would likely have never taken place.

Today we do not live in America as founded in 1776, or certainly as founded in 1620; we live in an Empire. Now we are in bondage to a huge federal government (actually, they are to serve us) and slaves to an economic system that slowly strangles (inflation) and robs (taxation) us of what little wealth we have. America is no longer a blessing to all the nations of the world – instead (as the Bible predicted of the Israel people), we have become the tail, not the head economically; and our military has become the bully forcing “democracy” around the globe. The War of 1861 was the end of a free country and the first step in global domination by the anti-Christs. We are now a century and a half after that war and our country is dissolving (racially, culturally, and economically) before our eyes; yet, all the average bubba has on his mind is football scores. We need a revolution based on the Law of God to correct our government. May God give us a new Moses and restore us in our promised land.