By Ron HammonWhen the Founding Fathers created the Constitution of the United States of America, they intended the United States to be just that, a confederation of independent, sovereign states. The Federal government was meant to be similar to the European Union today, an association of fellow "States", assembled for mutual defense, unfettered commerce, and only a very limited amount of cooperation in other areas. To join, individual states had to agree to abide by a number of over reacting principles, such as freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.
Spain is still considered sovereign today, even though it is a member of the European Union. Spain is also, (as far as we know) able to resign from that union as it wishes. In 1859, a citizen of the "State" of Virginia was assumed to be a citizen of the "COUNTRY" of Virginia, NOT a citizen of the United States, no less than a citizen of the country of Spain is NOT a "citizen" of the European Union today. This is why Robert E. Lee felt compelled to serve his beloved Virginia, his home "country", when it resigned from the corrupting Union. Lee had nothing to gain from the false, today-touted reason of maintaining slavery as THE cause of the Great War. Slavery was dying out all over the world. There was never any need for a war over it. Lee, the head of the Army of Virginia, had no slaves, nor did the vast majority of Southerners who fought for the Confederacy.
Despite the efforts of a few of the Founding Fathers, like Alexander Hamilton, to form a strong empire, rather than a confederation of sovereign states, the original idea of "United States" rather than a "United STATE" held true for almost a whole century. Then, a fresh movement arose. The Northern states (those that had already given up their former practice of widespread slavery, like New York), because of greater voting population, could out-vote the South and pass special taxes and tariffs to be paid primarily by the South but spent by the North, a redistribution of wealth, fleecing the South. Less than a century earlier, this sort of "Taxation without Representation" fueled the FIRST American Revolution against British tyranny. Today, virtually every American feels that this first attempt to split away from an oppressive, over lording government was justified and noble. However, in the last century, the Union government has managed to blind most Americans to the noble effort of the much more free and independent Southern states to separate from that central government, a government which had changed into an empire and became far more oppressive to the South than King George had been to the colonies.
The brand new political party in 1860, the Republican party (which replaced the Whigs) was dedicated to the drastic change to a dominant, centralized Federal government, a true empire, to overlord the individual states. This single "nation", with uniform rules that the whole "nation" MUST follow was a drastic change into a completely different frame of government. The centralized form, as opposed to smaller, distributed government, closer to the people, was spearheaded by Alexander Hamilton and resisted bitterly by Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Completely different ideals splintered the opposition party, the Democratic party, into different factions. Because of a severe FOUR-way split among the other candidates, the new, radical Republican party won the presidency with its first Presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, a strong advocate of the new, bastardized idea of U.S. government envisioned by Henry Clay and Alexander Hamilton, a strong central government with subjugated states bowing to the whims of a distant overlord.
The REAL "United States", as originally conceived by Thomas Jefferson, was doomed. Lincoln, and his handlers, had a grand plan for empire building and would let nothing stop the forging of a strong, centralized, global power, not even the U.S. Constitution! For example, the Constitution states that only states can coin money. This didn't stop the "lawyer", Ol' "Honest Abe" from outlawing the practice and delivering the production of all money over to the Federal government. The Southerner Andrew Jackson, while President, had infuriated big bankers by squashing their power of a National Bank. But, the Yankee President Lincoln and the young Republican party did the exact opposite. They made banking and money-making a Federal operation since whoever controls the money controls the people. (The European Union is pissed that Great Britain refuses to stop printing its own money. Sound familiar?) They intended to utterly shift control away from local oversight and balance, as designed by the Founding Fathers, to Washington, D.C. The day of "Big Brother", the overreaching and overbearing centralized power, was born.
We now suffer the inevitable results of Lincoln's change to a "Big Brother" centralized power. There may be no stopping the impending collapse. (to continue, go to top right) The REAL U.S. patriots in the South decided that the only reasonable course was to cut away this diseased corruption of the principles of freedom and local control designed by and promised by the Founding Fathers. Some states forfeited their membership in the crumbling Union to form a fresh Confederation of states that would abide by the principles of the original U.S. Constitution. After South Carolina tried to clear a stronghold of stubborn, Northern military occupation, in blatant defense of it's sovereignty, the young Confederation WAS ATTACKED by a vengeful Lincoln. The North would not give up the expected tax windfall from the South without a fight. (A sad part of the story is that gold and silver mines discovered out West more than replaced all money lost from not fleecing the Southern states!)
In direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, Lincoln raised an army without consent of Congress to combat these "rebels". Contrary to popular opinion, Lincoln's cause was so unpopular in the North that one forth of all Union troops were constantly diverted to put down rebellions in the streets of northern cities, newspaper editors were imprisoned, and Lincoln even (illegally) suspended Habeas Corpus.
This "Second American Revolution" was even more popular than the original American Revolution at the time. The South was almost totally non-industrialized, so the Union expected to squash this "rebellion" in just a few months. But, they totally underestimated the hearts, minds, grit and resolve of Southerners. In a few months, the Army of Northern Virginia almost took the District of Columbia itself! An escape plan was ready in case the Confederate Army managed to rout the Northern Army and seize the Capitol. Early in the conflict, Lincoln imprisoned the Maryland legislature to prevent their even having a chance to vote to join the Confederacy thereby surrounding Washington.
The South was right, and the whole world knew it. (That is, if the first American Revolution was right, then the second American Revolution was also right.) France, England, and most of nations of the world were on the side of the Confederacy, at least in principle. This wasn't just because they needed cotton, as has been told. It was generally realized that this was the American Revolution, Act II. But this time, the overreaching, overbearing, tyranny was Washington, not King George across the Atlantic. This time, despite our very best efforts, "right" finally lost. If the South had known how it would be victimized after rejoining the union, Lee would never have surrendered, he said so.
Southern Generals, as well as the Southern people in general, still believed in honor. This put them at a further disadvantage in the "total war" advocated by the top Northern Generals and approved by Lincoln. The Northern shelling of civilians and the destruction of civilian property to demoralize the enemy was later studied by Hitler. One of Lincoln's Commanders even went so far as to suggest that EVERY "rebel" (CSA citizen) should be killed! Fighting honorably against an enemy who employs every trick in the book (like offering citizenship to potential immigrants to come and join their army), dooms the honorable side to eventual failure without an overwhelming superiority.
Was "The War" about slavery, as we were taught by an educational system supervised by the U.S. government? No way! Even General Grant, the future President, said, during the war, that if he thought that the war was to free slaves, he would resign immediately. Old "Honest Abe" himself, the "Great Emancipator", said that if he could win the war without freeing a single slave, he would. In fact, he said that "we should be separated" and there was "a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races". Lincoln was NOT an advocate of black equality! Had Lincoln not been assassinated, his plan was to remove all blacks off of the continent to either the Caribbean or Liberia. The African nation of Liberia was CREATED by the U.S. for just such a plan. Lincoln never desired an integrated society.
Dixie became an occupied country after Lee's surrender. Many Yankee's even demanded that Jefferson Davis be executed for treason. (This was probably because Davis, unlike most "fair-weather" friends of the South, NEVER professed that the actions of the Confederacy were wrong.) For a generation, Federal troops were stationed all over the South, lurking, stealing, abusing, raping, all with a wink and a nod from Washington. After all, the nasty, unkempt, drunkard, former Union Army General Grant, whose slovenliness was so conspicuous compared to Lee, had become the U.S. President! This shameful period AFTER the war spawned the "damned Yankee" sentiment, not the war itself. There were Northern "carpetbaggers" crawling out from under every rock to con Southerners out of what few treasures they still had. Since the Yankee Army formed the acting police, little was done to those "punishing" the former "Rebels", and all knew it.
So, be proud, ye Southern born! Our forefathers were the keepers of truth and law, keepers of humanity, and keepers of the grand plan, the Constitution of the Founding Fathers. We did more than our best. We exhausted our meager resources and ourselves in a hopeless fight, simply because we were right. Yankee lies can't hide the truth.
Yankees can never take our pride. We can still be PROUD REBELS!
“I’m here to say that we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will” ~ obama
