Able-Bodied/Able-Minded compatriots
Call to Rockwall Cavalry Camp Duty!

Well, almost. Or maybe to use the Naval lingo… All Hands On Deck! This next Saturday (May 16) is the Rockwall Founder’s Day Festival, and we will be up front and center (so to speak). Compatriot Doug Garnett from the Capt. Bob Lee Camp in Bonham will be joining with us to exhibit his field hospital display for all interested casualties… ummm, I mean the public. Right next to him we will have our display table setup for camp recruiting. I have an ample supply of recruiting brochures and such. Commander Bass and I have committed to being there, but we could benefit from one to three more campatriots to assist us in this effort which is so important to our camp. Please consider coming to help out. If you can, please say so in the meeting and/or let me personally know. I will supply a cooler with drinks, and there are ample eating opportunities available at the Festival.

Also, on the weekend of May 16, North Texas SCV camps will have a recruiting table at the Big Town Gun Show, Mesquite. If you would like to be there for a spell to help recruit, contact Daryl Coleman (214.725.3330) and I will put you in touch with the coordinator.

In a January 31, 1864 letter to Major R.M. Sawyer, Sherman explained the reason why he hated the South in general, and South Carolina in particular, so much. The war, he said “was the result of a false political doctrine that any and every people have a right to self-government.” In the same letter Sherman referred to states’ rights, freedom of conscience, and freedom of the press as “trash” that had “deluded the Southern people into war.”

Sherman’s subordinates expressed similar opinions. In 1865 Major George W. Nichols published a book about his exploits during Sherman’s “march” in which he describing South Carolinians as “the scum, the lower dregs of civilization” who are “not Americans; they are merely South Carolinians.” General Carl Schurz is quoted by Stokes as remarking that “South Carolina – the state which was looked upon by the Northern soldier as the principal instigator” of the war was “deserving of special punishment.”

All of this is so telling because it reveals that neither Sherman, nor his subordinate officers, nor the average “soldier” in his army, were motivated by anything having to do with slavery. South Carolina suffered more than any other state at the hands of Sherman’s raping, looting, plundering, murdering, and house-burning army because that is where the secession movement started. It was NOT because there were more slaves there than in other states, or because of anything else related to slavery. It was because South Carolinians, even more than other Southerners, did not believe in uncompromising obedience to the central state.

Shortly after the war ended some prominent Northerners began to pour into South Carolina to revel in the scenes of destruction (and to steal whatever they could). The goofy Brooklyn, New York, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher went on one such excursion and gave a speech while standing under a giant U.S. flag in Charleston in which he declared:

“Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding flag! It says, ‘GOVERNMENT hath returned hither.’ It proclaims in the name of vindicated government, peace and protection to loyalty; humiliations and pains to traitors. This is the flag of sovereignty. The nation, not the States, is sovereign. Restored to authority, this flag commands, not supplicates . . . . There may be pardon [for former Confederates], but no concession . . . . The only condition of submission is to submit!”

In other words, the purpose of the war was to “prove” once and for all the false nationalist theory that the states were never sovereign; they did not ratify the Constitution, as explained in Article 7; the constitution created them; that the states never delegated certain powers to the central government in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8); and that the central government is to have unlimited “supremacy” over all individuals and institutions.

This was the nationalist superstition about the American founding, first fabricated by Alexander Hamilton and repeated by successive generations of nationalist/consolodationist/mercantilist despots such as John Marshall, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln.

—Valerie Protopapas

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Mises.org

After writing two books and dozens of articles, and giving hundreds of radio and television interviews and public presentations on the subject of Lincoln and the political economy of the American “Civil War”over the past fifteen years, I have realized that the only thing the average American knows about the subject is a few slogans that we are all subjected to in elementary school. I was taught in public elementary school in Pennsylvania that Abe was so honest that he once walked six miles to return a penny to a merchant who undercharged him (and six miles back home). He was supposedly so tendered hearted that he cried after witnessing the death of a turkey. He suffered in silence his entire life after witnessing slavery as a teenager (While everyone else in the country was screaming over the issue). And of course he was “a champion of democracy, an apostle of racial equality, and a paragon of social justice,” Joseph Fallon writes in his important new, must-read book, Lincoln Uncensored.

This view of Lincoln, writes Fallon, is only true “in official histories or in Hollywood movies” but not in reality. The reason for this historical disconnect is that “this myth of Lincoln, not the Constitution . . . now confers legitimacy on the political system of the United States.” Despite being mostly a bundle of lies, it is nevertheless the ideological cornerstone of statism in America and has been for nearly 150 years.

The real Lincoln was a dictator and a tyrant who shredded the Constitution, fiendishly orchestrated the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens, and did it all for the economic benefit of the special interests who funded the Republican Party (and his own political career). But don’t take Joseph Fallon’s or Thomas DiLorenzo’s word for it. Read the words of Abe Lincoln himself. That is what Fallon allows everyone to do in his great work of scholarship, Lincoln Uncensored. No longer do Americans need to rely on politically-correct, heavily state-censored textbooks or movies made by communistic-minded Hollywood hedonists to learn about this part of their own country’s history.

Each of the twenty-three chaptes of Lincoln Uncensored explains the real Lincoln in Lincoln’s own words by quoting him directly from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (CW), complete with specific citations for every single quotation. The following is an abbreviated sampling of what you will learn upon reading Lincoln Uncensored.

LINCOLN WAS AN OBSESSIVE WHITE SUPREMACIST

“Free them [blacks] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We can not then make them equals.” (CW, Vol. II, p. 256).

“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races” (CW, Vol. II, p. 405).

“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races” (CW, Vol. II, p. 521).”I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary.” (CW, Vol. III, p. 16).

“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races . . . . I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people . . .” (CW, Vol, III, pp. 145-146).

“I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.” (CW, Vol. III, p. 146).

“Senator Douglas remarked . . that . . . this government was made for the white people and not for negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too.” (CW, Vol. II, p. 281).

Until His Dying Day, Lincoln Plotted to Deport all the Black People Out of America
“I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation . . . . Such separation . . . must be effected by colonization” [to Liberia, Central America, anywhere]. (CW, Vol. II, p. 409).
“Let us be brought to believe it is morally right , and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime . . .” (CW, Vol. II, p. 409).

“The place I am thinking about having for a colony [for the deportation of all American blacks] is in Central America. It is nearer to us than Liberia.” (CW, Vol. V, pp. 373, 374).

LINCOLN ONLY RHETORICALLY OPPOSED SOUTHERN SLAVERY. IN PRACTICE, HE STRENGTHENED IT

” I think no wise man has perceived, how it [slavery] could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty himself.” (CW, Vol. II, p. 130).

“I meant not to ask for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.” (CW, Vol., II, p. 260).
“I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination I the people of the free states to enter into the slave states and interfere with the question of slavery at all.” (CW, Vol. II, p. 492).
“I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” (CW, Vol. III, p. 16).

“I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery . . . because the constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so.” (CW, Vol. III, p. 460).

LINCOLN CHAMPIONED THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

“I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive slave law.” (CW, Vol., III., p. 40).

“[T]he people of the Southern states are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law.” (CW, Vol. III, p. 41).

Lincoln Advocated Secession When it Could Advance His Political Career

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.” (CW, Vol. 1, p. 438).

LINCOLN VIEWED FORT SUMTER AS AN IMPORTANT TAX COLLECTION POINT AND WENT TO WAR OVER IT

“I think we should hold the forts, or retake them, as the case may be, and collect the revenue.” (CW, Vol. IV, p. 164).

LINCOLN BELIEVED THE CONSTITUTION WAS WHATEVER HE ALONE SAID IT WAS

“The dogmas of the quite past [referring to the U.S. Constitution], are inadequate to the stormy present . . . so we must think anew and act anew.” (CW, Vol. V, p. 537).

“The resolutions quote from the constitution, the definition of treason; and also the . . . safeguards and guarantees therein provided for the citizen . . . against the pretensions of arbitrary power . . . . But these provisions of the constitution have no application to the case we have in hand.” (CW, Vol. VI, p. 262.

“[T]he theory of the general government being only an agency, whose principles are the states [i.e. the true history of the American founding] was new to me and, as I think, is one of the best arguments for the national supremacy.” (CW, Vol. VII, p. 24.

“I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful . . .” (CW, Vol. VII, p. 281).

“You [General John Dix] are therefore hereby commanded forth with to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers [New York World and New York Journal of Commerce].” CW, Vol. VII, p. 348.

“It was decided [by Lincoln alone] that we have a case of rebellion, and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the writ [of Habeas Corpus].” CW, Vol. IV, pp. 430-431.

LINCOLN WAS ECONOMICALLY IGNORANT OF THE BIG ECONOMIC ISSUE OF HIS DAY: PROTECTIONIST TARIFFS

“[A] tariff of duties on imported goods . . . is indispensably necessary to the prosperity of the American people.” (CW, Vol. I, p. 307.

“[B]y the tariff system . . . the man who contents himself to live upon the products of his own country , pays nothing at all.” (CW, Vol. I, p. 311).

“All carrying . . . of articles from the place of their production to a distant place for their consumption . . . is useless labor.” (CW, Vol. I, p. 409).

“I was an old Henry Clay tariff whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject, than on any other. I have not changed my views.” (CW, Vol, III, p. 487).

“The tariff is to the government what a meal is to a family . . .” (CW, Vol., IV, p. 211).

“I must confess that I do not understand the subject [the economics of tariffs].” (CW, Vol. IV, p. 211).

“The power confided to me, will be used . . . to collect the duties and imposes; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion . . .” (CW, Vol. IV, p. 266).

“Accumulations of the public revenue, lying within [Fort Sumter] had been seized [and denied to the U.S. government] . . . . [The administration] sought only to hold the public places and property [i.e., the forts] . . . to collect the revenue.” (CW, Vol. IV, pp. 422-423).

ALTHOUGH HE NEVER BECAME A CHRISTIAN, LINCOLN CLAIMED TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN THE MIND OF GOD AND BLAMED THE WAR ON HIM, ABSOLVING HIMSELF OF ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT, IN ORDER TO BAMBOOZLE THE RELIGIOUS POPULATION OF THE NORTH

“[I]t is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation [i.e. the war].” CW, Vol. IV, p. 482.

“You all may recollect that in taking up the sword thus forced into my hands this Government . . . placed its whole dependence upon the favor of God.” (CW, Vol. V., p. 212).

“God wills this contest [the war].” CW, Vol. V, p. 404.

“If I had my way, this war would never have been commenced . . . but . . . we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us . . .” (CW, Vol. V, p. 478).

“[I]t has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return to peace . . .” (CW, Vol. V, p. 518).

“[R]ender the homage due to the Divine Majesty . . . to lead the whole nation, through the paths of repentance and submission to the Divine Will, back to the perfect enjoyment of Union . . .” (CW, Vol. VI, p. 332).

“It has pleased Almighty God . . . to vouchsafe to the army and the navy of the United States victories on land and sea.” (CW, Vol. VI, p. 332).

“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me . . . . God alone can claim it.” (CW, Vol. VII, p. 282).

“He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make . . .” (CW, Vol. VII, p. 535).

Joseph Fallon concludes that “Lincoln was not America’s Messiah. He was America’s Lenin, complete with a party dictatorship, centralized economy, and total war.” These are undeniable historical facts. His own words reveal him to be “a demagogue not a democrat, an opportunist not an idealist, and enemy and not a champion of civil rights.” This of course is why he has been so deified by totalitarian-minded politicians of all parties, from Thaddeus Stevens to Barack Obama.

June 5, 2013

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe, How Capitalism Saved America, and Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today. His latest book is Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government.

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Postscript by Newsletter Editor

This article is particularly useful for printing and carrying with you for those conversations you might have with a friend who denies that Lincoln said what he said. Fact is, most people just have no idea Lincoln actually said and believed these things. The article can be found at:

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo257.html