THOUGHT FOR T'DAY ON THE GHOST OF THE CONFEDERACY

A few months ago Dr Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article based on two books written by Thomas DiLorenzo which looked at Abraham Lincoln. I have not read these books by DiLorenzo but if I find time I will. The article by Roberts is called The Power of Lies and provides this basic reason for the US Civil War:

The War of Northern Aggression was about tariffs and northern economic imperialism. The North was protectionist. The South was free trade. The North wanted to finance its economic development by forcing the South to pay higher prices for manufactured goods. The North passed the Morrill Tariff which more than doubled the tariff rate to 32.6% and provided for a further hike to 47%. The tariff diverted the South’s profits on its agricultural exports to the coffers of Northern industrialists and manufacturers. The tariff was designed to redirect the South’s expenditures on manufactured goods from England to the higher cost goods produced in the North.

This is why the South left the union, a right of self-determination under the Constitution.

[source : The Power of Lies, Paul Craig Roberts, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/04/13/power-lies/, 13th April 2014]

This is the same basic kind of explanation for the war, and the same attack on Lincoln, that we find in Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island.

But there is much more to the civil war than this.

The book Treason in America by Anton Chaitkin describes in great detail how the US Civil War was engineered by the British using slavery for the purposes of breaking up the United States. The planning for the war began in the decades before it kicked off and involved the Anglophile Boston families and British agent Giuseppe Mazzini and his Young America. Slavery was the cause of the war, not tariffs. If you want proof read the reasons for secession at The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States which were written by the seceding states themselves!! In other words, no interpretation is required. It is right there in front of you: SLAVERY!

DiLorenzo hates Lincoln. DiLorenzo is in the Libertarian camp, writing for the websites of Lew Rockwell, etc. Griffin is also involved in Libertarian politics. In one article on Rockwell's website DiLorenzo praised The League of the South, an organisation established in 1994 by among others, Jack Kershaw.

So what is it, exactly, about the League's statement that causes such a violent reaction among our modern-day Jacobins? First of all, it is the Statement of Purpose: "We seek to advance the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honourable means." Good God, these people must be stopped! They want to improve the lives of all their friends and neighbors!

There's more. The League also makes the "outrageous" claim that "Southern culture is distinct from, and in opposition to, the corrupt mainstream American culture. Therefore, we stand for our own sublime cultural inheritance and seek to separate ourselves from the cultural rot that is American culture." This is especially outrageous to neocons — and also to certain "libertarian" imposters — because it suggests that there are still people in America do not abide by the notion that the role of government in America is to force a uniform culture on the entire population.

[source : The Dreaded 'S' Word, LewRockwell, http://archive.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo91.html, Accessed: 27th June 2015]

DiLorenzo's article on The League of the South is a whitewash of that organisation, basically repeating what the league says about itself on its website: religious, God-fearing, all equal before God, charitable, etc, etc, etc.

But do you know what Kershaw did? He had a 25 foot statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest erected next to 13 poles each flying one of the flags of the Confederate states!! Forrest was a brilliant but ruthless butcher, possibly the reb' most dedicated to the causes of the Confederacy. Forrest had made a fortune selling slaves. He later ran the Ku Klux Klan.

So what were the causes of the Confederacy?

Well, as pointed out above, the Confederacy consisted of states whose prime reason for seceding was slavery, as stated in their causes.

But if you read the Constitution of the Confederate States adopted on 11th March 1861 you will find that slavery was to be protected, and that the Confederacy had plans for the expansion of itself and of slavery into any new territory it captured.

Article 1 Section 9 (4) states:

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

Article 4 Section 2 (1) states:

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

Article 4 Section 2 (3) states:

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs,. or to whom such service or labor may be due.

Article 4 Section 3 (3) states:

The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

So there you have it. The US Civil War was over slavery not tariffs. The (League of the) South believed that their right to own slaves was under threat so they seceded, and they now cover that up by trying to claim it was all about tariffs and that they are actually a nice God-fearing people.

Slavery was and is brutal.

The Confederacy never really died. Its ghost still haunts the planet. Dylann Roof is proof of that.