Reconstruction: Destroying a Republic and Creating an Empire

Chapter 1:

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN— A BIRACIAL MORAL AND ETHICAL SOCIETY

The slave must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline and thus be made unfit for slavery. —Jefferson Davis¹

THE STORY TOLD by Northern propagandists² about the Southern resistance to Reconstruction is that the resistance movement was motivated by hatred for blacks. One of the South’s many failures, from 1776 to today, is that it never developed an efficient mechanism to challenge the North’s narrative about We the People of the South. From the colonial era to 1860, Southerners working privately as individuals attempted to find a peaceful way to emancipate, at their own expense, a significant part of their population. As Jefferson Davis said in Congress, if allowed, the day will come when slave owners can complete the journey on the high road to emancipation.³ The question for most Southerners, slave owners, and non-slave owners, was not if slavery should end but how and when it should end. Patrick Henry understood the need to find a solution to the difficult question of slavery. He declared:

Slavery is detested. We feel its fatal effects. We deplore it with all the pity of our humanity. I would rejoice my very soul if every one of my fellow human beings was emancipated…. But is it practicable, by any human means, to liberate them without producing the most dreadful and ruinous consequences?

We ought to soften, as much as possible, the rigor of their unhappy fate. I know that in a variety of particular instances the legislature [Virginia] listening to complaints, have admitted their emancipation.⁴

The high road to emancipation was seen as a time to prepare a race of people who never created a democratic society for full membership in a free and prosperous Southern society. This was a Southern society that could have been, a society in which both blacks and whites could continue to live together in friendship and produce a peaceful, prosperous, Christian society. Confederate General Bradley T. Johnson described what could have been in a speech delivered on February 22, 1896:

If the institution of slavery had been left to work itself out under the influence of Christianity and civilization, the unjust and cruel incidents would have been eliminated…. Institutions and society change by the operation of the law of justice and love, of right and charity, and by its influence the negro would have been trained and educated in habits of industry, of self-reliance, of self-denial, of moral self-government, until in due time he would have gone into the world to make his struggle for survivorship on fair terms.⁵

After the War former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens told the Georgia legislature that white Southerners owe a debt of gratitude to black Southerners. Numerous, but untold, are the stories of slaves protecting their white folks during the War. Fred Ardis was Captain Isac Ardis’s slave. While the Captain was visiting home during the closing days of the War, Fred noticed a group of deserters who were planning to kill the Captain. Fred warned Captain Ardis who managed to flee out a back door. Fred then went to the slave quarters, gathered several men who armed themselves with axes and placed themselves as guards around the house. Fred then told Mrs. Ardis, Now, Miss Lizabeth, you go to sleep. If anybody gets in this house tonight, they have got to kill us first.⁶ The white South’s debt of gratitude could have been the foundation for a mutually beneficial biracial Southern society, but Yankee invasion and occupation destroyed the potential.

Conditions immediately after the end of the War gave evidence of what could have been. What could have been if the Yankee Empire had not destroyed the high road to emancipation and imposed Lincoln’s low road to emancipation. The impoverishment, malnutrition, disease, and death rate of post-War black and white sharecroppers (a new form of slavery) that resulted from Lincoln’s low road to emancipation are well documented.⁷

Black and white Southerners, immediately after the end of the War, understood the need to begin rebuilding their society. W.H. Trescott of South Carolina, in DeBow’s Review, wrote the following about black Southerners a year after emancipation:

… [there] was no impatience, no insubordination, no violence. They have received their freedom quietly and soberly. They remained pretty steadily on the farms of their [former] masters, a very general disposition being manifested to adjust the terms of compensation on a reasonable basis."⁸

This reflects the potential that the high road to emancipation held—a peaceful and prosperous potential that was violently denied to We the People of the South. Lincoln’s low road to emancipation meant immediate emancipation without preparation and training for the mostly illiterate black Southern population. It was a recipe for social disaster but a recipe that worked to the advantage of the victorious Republican Party in Congress.

The Republican Party was aware that, with the end of chattel slavery, blacks would be counted as a full person in the census instead of three-fifths. This would mean that the South would gain between 11 to 15 new representatives in Congress! If black and white Southerners worked together, they and Northern Democrats would force the Republican Party into the position of a minority, sectional Party. To prevent this, the Republican Party initiated their divide-and-rule efforts to separate black and white Southerners.

The willingness of whites and blacks to work together for their mutual benefit is demonstrated by the account of what Benjamin Hill of Georgia found when he returned to his plantation after the War. When former Confederate Senator Benjamin Harvey Hill of Georgia returned to his home, the La Grange plantation, he found that not one of his slaves deserted or betrayed him, even though Georgia was full of Yankees. In a speech delivered in Atlanta denouncing the Republican Reconstruction Plan, he paid special attention to the evil perpetrated upon freedmen by those claiming to be their new friends:

Oh, I pity the colored people who have never been taught what an oath is or what the Constitution means. They are drawn up by a selfish conclave of traitors to inflict a death-blow on the Republic by swearing them into a falsehood. They are to begin their political life with perjury to accomplish treason…. They are neither legally nor morally responsible—it is you, educated, designing white men, who thus devote yourselves to the unholy work, who are the guilty parties…. Ye hypocrites! Ye whited sepulchers! Ye mean in your hearts to deceive him and buy up the negro vote for your own benefit.⁹

Then Hill continued by addressing the freedmen in the audience directly:

They tell you they are your friends—it is false. They tell you they set you free—it is false. These vile creatures never went with the Army except to steal spoons, jewelry, and gold watches. They are too low to be brave. They are dirty spawn, cast out from decent society, who come down here to see and to use you to further their own base purposes…. Improve yourselves; learn to read and write; be industrious; lay up your means; acquire homes; love in peace with your neighbors; drive off as you would a serpent the miserable dirty adventurers who come among you… and seek to foment among you hatred of the decent portion of the white race.¹⁰

Hill understood what pacified Southerners and conservatives of today refuse to recognize: the ultimate but complete change of all American government from the principle of consent to the rule of force and a war of races.¹¹ Hill’s stinging but truthful words struck the ears of the occupying Yankees like canister shot. Shortly after Hill’s speech, Union General Pope wrote to General Grant insisting that such Southern spokesmen should be banished from their state—like the way President Lincoln banished Ohio Representative Vallandigham from the United States due to Vallandigham’s criticism of Lincoln’s unconstitutional war.¹²

In the early days of the Freedmen’s Bureau, when it was non-political, the Bureau acted in a fair manner, seeking to help the freedmen. In Georgia, Bureau agents hired two hundred and fortyfour agents from the local population. Note the fact that they hired from the local population. It was openly acknowledged that these local agents did not encounter the prejudice felt against officers of the Army, or agents for the North, and were thereby enabled more readily to secure justice to the freedmen, and to build up and foster a healthy public opinion.¹³ This is another example of what could have been had the South been allowed to follow the high road to emancipation.¹⁴ White Southerners were not filled with animosity against the newly freed slaves. There existed a sense of community between the races in the pre-War and post-War South. Even after four long years of war, there was still a well of friendship between black and white Southerners.¹⁵ But, as has been well documented, freeing the slaves and helping oppressed blacks was not the Yankee Empire’s fundamental motive for waging aggressive war.

BLACK AND WHITE SOUTHERNERS WORKING TOGETHER

Shortly after the end of the War, General P.G.T. Beauregard of Louisiana urged his fellow white conservatives to accept the circumstances and make the best out of a bad situation. Beauregard was an early Southern champion of black suffrage.

In Negro suffrage he saw an element of strength for the South in the future and a possibility of defeating the radicals with their own weapon.¹⁶

He openly declared a general understanding of all white Southerners when he stated, The Negro is Southern born; with a little education and some property qualifications he can be made to take sufficient interests in the affairs and prosperity of the South to ensure an intelligent vote.¹⁷ This attitude was also expressed by General Nathan Bedford Forrest who addressed a meeting of blacks in Memphis and declared:

We were born on the same soil, we breathe the same air, live in the same land, and why should we not be brothers and sisters…. I want you to do as I do—go to the polls and select the best men to vote for…. Although we differ in color, we should not differ in sentiment.¹⁸

Former Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, addressed the Georgia legislature lamenting the fact that the newly freed slaves were, through no fault of their own, poor, untutored, uninformed, liable to be imposed upon… and urged the legislature to secure for the freedmen ample and full protection… so that they may stand equal before the law in the possession and enjoyment of all the rights of person, liberty, and property.¹⁹ From these statements of former military and civil officers of the Confederacy, it can be seen that there was no overwhelming animosity toward the newly freed slaves. As former Vice President Stephens said in his address to the Georgia legislature, we owe these people a debt of gratitude. Gratitude and continuing friendship were the attitudes of post-War white Southerners toward black Southerners at the advent of carpetbaggers and the Union League.

Perhaps the best examples of the closeness between black and white Southerners were demonstrated by the way the returning Confederate veterans were treated by the former slaves—now free but remaining home with their white folks. Sergeant James W. Nicholson, 12th Louisiana Infantry is typical of the Plain Folk of the old South who made up approximately 80% of the Confederate Army. Upon returning home to the family farm (not a plantation), he was met by his sisters and father—his mother passed away during the War. This is his account of his return:

The darkies politely stood aloof until the salutations of the whites had somewhat abated. Good Old Uncle Nathan, unable to restrain himself longer, burst in, and seizing me by the arms, exclaimed, Bless de Lawd fur all his mercies; de boy is cum back to us er man. Aunt Callie, my old nurse, came next, and grasping my hand she sobbed, My dear baby boy! What fur yu stay so long? Yo Callie ben waiting, watching, and praying fur yu all dese years. My! What a big un my baby is got to be! To her hand I held fast for the very comfort to be had from that living contact.²⁰

Postmodern²¹ propagandists masquerading as historians discount such examples as being nothing more than an attempt of defeated Southerners to justify their treason against the good ole USA. However, numerous Yankee sources support the truth represented by such examples. Union officer and Radical Republican Carl Schurz reported the post-War congenial relations between former slaves and former masters in a report to Congress. He reported:

Instances of the most touching attachment of freedmen to their old masters and mistresses have come to my notice. To a white man whom they believe to be sincerely their friend they cling with greater affection even than to one of their own race…. Centuries of slavery have not been sufficient to make them the enemies of the white race.²²

This observation was made by a Yankee Radical who saw in it the potential for cooperation between former slaves and wellmeaning white Southerners. Such cooperation in the political realm would spell doom for the local and national Republican Party. The great irony of American history is that what centuries of slavery could not accomplish, that is, teaching blacks to hate whites, the Republican Party accomplished in a decade of Active Reconstruction.

The friendship between the races even during the early stages of Jim Crow segregation is demonstrated by the continuing comradery between black and white Confederate veterans. Confederate Veteran, Robert E. Houston from Aberdeen, Mississippi wrote in June 1902 concerning the status of state pensions for Confederate Veterans, We have quite a number of colored servants who deserve and receive pensions.²³

Race was not the reason post-War white Southerners objected to granting the privilege of voting to the newly freed slaves. Race is always the knee-jerk emotional response of anti-South leftist propagandists. Post-War whites objected because most of the freedmen, through no fault of their own, lacked the social and political skill necessary to be an informed voter. Their civil deficiency made them easy tools for unscrupulous men (carpetbaggers and scallywags) seeking to use (exploit) illiterate voters for their personal gain. This could have been avoided had the South been allowed to follow the high road to emancipation. But allowing black and white Southerners to work out the mutually beneficial parameters of a new and free Southern society would have cost the Republican Party and its financial and commercial elites their positions of power and control. Instead, black and white people of the South were forced, at bayonet point, down Lincoln’s and the Republican Party’s low road to emancipation. The evil thus done carried through Active Reconstruction (1866-1877), into Passive Reconstruction (1877-1965), and continues with a vengeance today during Modern Era Reconstruction (post-1965).

From the Mississippi legislature, we can find examples of the respect and political cooperation between white and black Southerners after the end of Active Reconstruction and into Passive Reconstruction. It demonstrates what could have been, it demonstrates how black and white Southern politicians worked together even though they belonged to different political parties. Both Republicans and Democrats joined in presenting a watch to Representative John R. Lynch, a black Republican. The Democrats offered a resolution praising Representative Lynch for his ability, courtesy, and impartiality as speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives.²⁴ Another black member of the Mississippi legislature during this time stated on the floor of the State House of Representatives that:

I was born in Mississippi but raised in a Northern State; associations there led me to regard the Southern white man as dire foes to the Negroes but receiving such cordial and unprejudiced association upon this floor [Mississippi House of Representatives] by the entire Democratic party here these suspicions have been eliminated from the bosoms of this feeble six [he and his fellow black representatives] and for them I am authorized to speak. You are our best friends....²⁵

Where is the intrinsic racial animosity that Yankee propagandists constantly claim exists down South? Even after the War and Reconstruction, there remained a sense of community between black and white Southerners. Even at that late stage, this sense of community could have been used to develop a mutually agreeable Southern society, but the opportunity was cruelly denied. As one contemporary Southern historian noted, it could have been a Southern-based emancipation without war.²⁶

Mississippi not only provides an excellent example of why the Southern resistance to Reconstruction arose but also why blacks who owned property were willing to cooperate with their white friends and neighbors. By 1874, the Republican city government of Vicksburg, Mississippi, virtually spent the city into bankruptcy. The city’s debt grew from $13,000.00 to $1,400,000.00 in just five years of Republican rule! The city officials were elected by the mass of mostly illiterate, non-taxpaying voters. In the election of 1874, the city Republicans nominated for mayor a white man with twenty-three indictments against him and for alderman one illiterate white and seven illiterate or of low moral standards freedmen. An uprising began to brew among the white and around fifty black taxpayers. Included in the uprising were two Republicans, Union General C.E. Furlong, and George McKee who represented the district in Congress. The peaceful uprising was a success and on August 4, 1874, the old city government was replaced with a new one that represented the interests of the taxpayers—both black and white.²⁷ This demonstrates the willingness of whites to work with blacks to elect officials who would not abuse their offices.

In the Mississippi elections of 1875, many property-owning blacks voted for the Democratic ticket even though this brought upon them severe social ostracism among their fellow blacks. But their votes, just like the votes of whites, were not based on race but on the need to remedy the oppressive tax load created by the Republican Party that controlled the state legislature. Hiram Revels, the first black man to serve as a US Senator, wrote to President Grant explaining the 1875 vote rejecting Republican rule in Mississippi. He explained that: At the late election men, irrespective of race, color, or party affiliation, united and voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest.…²⁸

When Mississippi’s black Lt. Governor, Alexander Kelso Davis, was impeached by the state’s House of Representatives and tried in the state’s Senate, the vote was overwhelming in favor of conviction. The vote in favor of conviction included one black Republican voting for conviction. Despite what Yankee propagandists claim, not everything is about race.²⁹ There were men of goodwill of both races who could have worked together to create a fair and just Southern society but what could have been was aborted by a North under the influence of radical abolitionists before the War and by Radical Republicans after the War.

Mississippi was not the only place where such friendship and cooperation between black and white Southerners occurred. Just before the North Carolina constitutional convention in 1865, a convention of freedmen gathered in the African church in Raleigh to discuss the status of their race .…The first political act of North Carolina Negroes, is notably conservative.³⁰ This is an example of what could have been possible if the South had been allowed to follow the high road to emancipation. Yankee-imposed cultural distortion via its divide-and-rule policy aborted this golden opportunity.

In Louisiana, the entire summer of 1872 was spent with five different groups hammering out a compromise between the various elements that wanted to reform the state government and make it a fair and efficient representative of the people. After much work and mutual compromises, the five groups were reduced to two groups both recognizing black voters and black candidates in the list of candidates.³¹ Note, that the compromise position of the Louisiana conservatives was to recognize black voters and to include black candidates on the list of favorable candidates. Recall how General Beauregard was promoting a similar stance immediately after the end of the War. Southern whites were willing to work with their black friends and neighbors. This is something that, in 1872, would never have been tolerated in a Northern state!

In Louisiana during the 1876 election, future Governor Nicholls and his conservative followers made specific efforts to break the political color line that was created by the Republican Party’s imposed Reconstruction. As in the other Southern States, the division of race was primarily in politics. This antagonistic division of the races down South was essential for the Republicans to hold the state in the Republican camp. Louisiana conservatives secured the support of many property-owning black citizens by an appeal to the mutual desire for honest government and fair taxation.³²

South Carolina’s Republican Reconstruction legislature had a few black elected officials who could have been a major political contributor to society had the South been allowed to follow the slow but steady high road to emancipation. James S. Pike observed that even though the Reconstruction legislature was a shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings, there were some of the black members who conducted themselves with dignity and decorum. Pike noted that the black chaplain of the South Carolina House of Representatives was in dignities and proprieties of his office, in what he says, and still better, in what he omits to say, he might be profitably studied as a model by the white political parsons who so often officiate in Congress.³³

During Wade Hampton’s campaign for governor of South Carolina, the white conservatives worked to mend the racial antagonism brought about by the Republican Party’s divideand-rule Reconstruction policy. Hampton declared: I am in this fight to save South Carolina…to bring the two races in friendly relations together with equal and impartial justice.³⁴ Here we see a Southern Statesman attempting to undo the harm done by the Republican Party’s divide-and-rule scheme to control the South. Such sentiment points toward what could have been if the South was left alone to correct its social issues without interference by power-hungry Northerners.

Approximately a year after emancipation, W.H. Trescott of South Carolina, in DeBow’s Review, wrote of the following, … [there] was no impatience, no insubordination, no violence. They have received their freedom quietly and soberly. They remained steadily on the farms of their [former)] masters, a very general disposition being manifested to adjust the terms of compensation on a reasonable basis.³⁵ This reflects the potential that the high road to emancipation held for a peaceful and mutually respectful Southern society. It was a dream denied!

Even in the circuses of Republican-controlled Southern state Constitutional Conventions, there were black members who demonstrated a gift for and a sincere desire to do the right thing for their state. The graft and corruption of these post-War Republican-led state Constitutional Conventions were done to serve the peculiar interest of the national Republican Party. As one Southern historian noted, the black members of these Conventions generally demonstrated better judgment and appreciation of the realities back home than the white carpetbaggers, scalawags, and other demagogues.³⁶

These examples are evidence of what could have been (1) if before the War, Northern radical abolitionists had not destroyed the South’s vibrant emancipation movement³⁷ and (2) if after the War, the Yankee Empire had not initiated its campaign to use divide-and-rule as a political technique to control the South.³⁸ The Republican Party needed black voters in the South to keep their Party in power in Washington. Creating mistrust and hatred between black and white Southerners via a policy of divide-andrule was their solution. Today, during Modern Era Reconstruction (post-1965), the Democratic Party is following the example set by the Republican Party during Active Reconstruction. In the Yankee Empire, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Pre-War, the South was making a slow but definite movement toward finding a safe, efficient, and humane way to end slavery. Before the 1830s, the South had more abolitionist societies than the North—this fact of Southern history is ignored by South-hating academics.³⁹ New England’s radical abolitionists of the John Brown school were mainly responsible for cooling the South’s movement toward emancipation. Judge William Rawle from Pennsylvania, whose textbook on the Constitution was used at West Point, was an active abolitionist, but he disapproved of New England’s radical abolitionists.⁴⁰ By the early 1830s, it became clear that the New England intellectual climate became increasingly favorable to the agitator.⁴¹

POST-WAR LABOR ISSUES COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED

The sudden emancipation of the major portion of the South’s labor force caused a great deal of issues for landowners seeking to return their land to productive use. Just as important, the newly freed slaves, most of whom had no concept of free labor with written work contracts, were not adequately prepared to support themselves and their families in a free labor system—see Jefferson Davis’s quote at the beginning of this chapter. This confusion could have been avoided had the South been allowed to take the high road to emancipation. When Lincoln was asked how the slaves were to survive after immediate emancipation and the destruction of the plantation system, he replied, Let them root hog or die.⁴² It was not unexpected that confusion would reign under Lincoln’s low road to emancipation. Such circumstances created the perfect storm to be exploited by unscrupulous Northerners (carpetbaggers) and Southerners (scallywags) seeking personal gain at the expense of newly freed slaves in the South’s post-War society.

Before the Union League worked its cruel magic on black Southerners and early after the end of the War, there seemed to be an opportunity to establish a free labor system. J.H. Christy of Georgia noted that:

Generally, the Negroes work better than I supposed they would. A great many of them acquire property. I suppose there are from sixty to seventy-five in my town who have houses and lots. They are industrious.⁴³

Again, this shows the potential of what could have been. It represents a peaceful nonviolent and mutually agreeable potential that "could have been; if the pre-War South was allowed to follow the gradual and privately sponsored high road to emancipation.

The potential of free labor was beginning to express itself even under the dreadful economic, political, and social conditions in the South during the early post-War years. In 1868, the Little Rock, Arkansas, Gazette noted: The wages paid to Negro laborers in the cotton fields of Arkansas far exceed the wages ever before paid to labor anywhere, except in California during the few years after the first discovery of gold.⁴⁴ A fact that is ignored by Yankee propagandists is that not all blacks in the South were field hands. Many became skilled craftsmen while slaves on their plantation. Modern, fair-minded scholars documented that while slavery limited opportunities for bondsmen, still over 25 percent of male slaves were managers, professionals, craftsmen, and semi-skilled workers.⁴⁵ It was only when greedy and aggressive Northerners brought politics into the social relations between white and black Southerners that a division along racial lines occurred. Edward King of Middlefield, Massachusetts, traveled the South during the post-War period. In his book The Southern States of North America, he wrote, the same negro who will bitterly oppose his old master politically, will implicitly follow his advice in matters of labor and investment.⁴⁶ If this much social and economic good could be accomplished during the bad times of Reconstruction, one can only imagine what could have been accomplished if the South was allowed to follow the high road to emancipation.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON ENDORSES THE SLOW ROAD TO FULL CITIZENSHIP FOR BLACKS

President Johnson presents a sad picture of a principled but confused man attempting to work within a system ofConstitutional government that, post-War, existed only in his imagination. To a limited extent and without his own understanding, he represented the last shadow of the high road to emancipation. He advised that the freedom of blacks in the South should be safeguarded, especially their property rights and their right to engage in free labor contracts and in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor. As a Southerner, he, unlike many Northerners, believed that black and white Southerners could live side by side in a state of mutual benefit and goodwill. But the President warned post-War Northerners about being too hasty in moving former slaves into full citizenship. Like Jefferson Davis’s high road to emancipation, President Johnson took a long, slow, and steady approach to bring the mostly illiterate black population into full citizenship. He admonished his critics that time is always an element in reform.⁴⁷ But time was not on the agenda of a power-hungry Republican Party full of bloodlust for their conquered foe and an unquenchable passion for political power.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

The South’s resistance movement against the cruel and tyrannical oppressions imposed upon We the People of the once free and sovereign States is slandered by postmodern⁴⁸ Yankee propagandists as evidence of intrinsic Southern racism. It will be demonstrated throughout this book that the Southern Resistance Movement that arose during Active Reconstruction was an effort by all conservatives, mostly white but many blacks as well, to regain control of their state and local governments. The Southern Resistance Movement was an effort to establish a system of government that honored the American principle of No taxation without representation. Before Lincoln’s war,⁴⁹ the issue of slavery—which was the emotional issue used by the North to justify an aggressive and unconstitutional war—could have been resolved by private individuals in the South following the high road to emancipation. Post-War black and white Southerners of goodwill could have established a fair, just, and mutually beneficial society. However, allowing such things would not have allowed the aggressive North to establish a supreme Federal Government that they would control. It would not allow them to foist upon We the People a new system of American government that would provide unlimited perks, privileges, and power to Northern ruling elites and their cronies.⁵⁰

The people of the South were denied the opportunity to develop a just and fair biracial society. Such a society had never been accomplished. Yet, the South was making slow progress as it slowly traveled down the high road to emancipation. The South could have been a part of the country where black and white Southerners shared the responsibilities and benefits of their society. The antebellum South could have been a place where slaves were slowly granted their freedom in a manner that allowed them to immediately become a successful and prosperous part of Southern society. It could have been a community of friends and neighbors who judged each other by the content of their character. It could have been, but we will never know if such a social experiment would have worked. The opportunity was denied by Lincoln’s war and the Republican Party’s Active Reconstruction—a denial that continues today.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF LINCOLN’S WAR

Southern scholar, Dr. M.E. Bradford (1934-1993) succinctly summarized the lasting impact that Lincoln had upon America:

That this kind of politics would destroy the Union did not worry Mr. Lincoln…. But once he was finished in this career, he had left behind him a trail of blood, an emancipation under the worst possible circumstances, and a political example which continues to injure the Republic which he did so much to undermine. It is at our peril that we continue to reverence his name.⁵¹

In the next chapter, we will review the modern-day impact of Reconstruction. Throughout this book, it is demonstrated that Reconstruction never ended but continued into the post-1965 Modern Era Reconstruction. The so-called Deep State with its anti-conservative, weaponized Federal bureaucracy was impossible before Lincoln’s war and the Republican Party’s Active Reconstruction (1866-1877).

_______________

1 Jefferson Davis, cited in Kennedy & Kennedy, The South Was Right! 3rd edition (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2020), 141.

2 Northern propagandists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were yellow dog newspapers and public orators of the New England school. These propagandists promoted Northern dominance of the Federal Government by spreading vicious, slanderous, anti-South stories about evil, slave-beating Southerners. Such stories were picked-up by European papers and printed as factual. Thus, not only the North but the entire world was told and began to believe that Southerners were evil slave-whippers, racists, and inhuman haters of human liberty. The purpose of the aggressor’s propaganda is to separate the targeted people from the community of acceptable humanity. After that, it is easy to morally justify exterminating such human vermin.

3 Kennedy & Kennedy, Jefferson Davis: Highroad to Emancipation and Constitutional Government (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2022).

4 Patrick Henry cited in John Remington Graham’s Principles of Confederacy (Salt Lake City, UT: Northwest Publishing, 1990), 574-5; Graham cites Virginia Convention, June 24, 1788, in Elliot’s Debates, vol. 3, 590-591.

5 General Bradley T. Johnson, Confederate Veteran, Vol. V., No. 10, Oct. 1897, republished in The Confederate Veteran Magazine Vol. V (Harrisburg, PA: The National Historical Society, 1987), 509.

6 Confederate Veteran Vol. IX, No. 1, Jan. 1901, republished in The Confederate Veteran Magazine Volume IX (Harrisburg, PA: The National Historical Society, 1987), 36.

7 Kennedy & Kennedy, Punished with Poverty-The Suffering South, 2nd ed. (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2020).

8 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1938), 29.

9 Bowers, Claude, The Tragic Era (New York: Halcyon House, 1929), 211.

10 Note that Hill encourages blacks not to learn to hate the decent portion of the white race. In this, he acknowledges that there are some indecent whites just as there are some indecent people in all races. See Bowers, Claude, The Tragic Era, 212.

11 Ibid., 213.

12 DiLorenzo, Dr. Thomas J., The Real Lincoln (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002), 154-5.

13 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1938), 148.

14 Kennedy & Kennedy, Jefferson Davis: High Road to Emancipation and Constitutional Government, 267-91.

15 African American Louisianian, Dr. Leonard Haynes quoted in Kennedy & Kennedy, Punished With Poverty-The Suffering South 2nd ed., 155-6.

16 Beauregard cited in Williams, T. Harry, P.G.T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 1955), 266.

17 Ibid.

18 Forrest cited in Kennedy & Kennedy’s Punished With Poverty-The Suffering South 2nd ed., 147.

19 Alexander Stephens cited in Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction, 149.

20 Nicholson, James W., Stories of Dixie (1915, Toccoa, GA: The Confederate Reprint Co., 2015), 163-4.

21 Postmodernists seek to deconstruct or debunk traditional Western European/American values. They are politically leftists who challenge traditional truth and reality because they believe that Western society used traditional values of truth and reason to establish an oppressive society. They assert that the oppression of women, racial or sexual minorities is part of a Western society that must be destroyed. The inspirational and philosophical source of postmodernism… the philosophy of Marxism. Hicks, Stephen R.C., Explaining Postmodernism-Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault 2nd ed. (Ockham’s Razor Publishing: 2011), 2-5.

22 A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction, ed. John David Smith (New York: Signet Classics, 2013), 140.

23 Confederate Veteran Vol. X, No. 8, Aug. 1902. Republished in The Confederate Veteran Magazine Volume X (Harrisburg, PA: The National Historical Society, 1987), 355.

24 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction, 456-7.

25 Representative More cited in Kennedy & Kennedy, The South Was Right! 3rd ed., 147.

26 Livingston, Donald W, Confederate Emancipation Without War, To Live and Die In Dixie, ed. Frank Powell, III (Columbia, TN: Sons of Confederate Veterans, 2014), 455-89.

27 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction, 530.

28 Senator Revels in Robert Selph Henry’s The Story of Reconstruction, 549.

29 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction, 553.

30 Ibid., 92.

31 Ibid., 478.

32 Ibid., 560.

33 Ibid., 497.

34 Ibid., 566.

35 Ibid., 29.

36 Bowers, Claude, The Tragic Era (New York: Halcyon House, 1929), 217-8, The author cites Walter F. Fleming’s Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 522-3.

37 Kennedy & Kennedy, Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2018), 179-99.

38 Kennedy & Kennedy, Punished with Poverty-The Suffering South 2nd ed., 13, 56, 149, 152 footnote, 407. See also Kennedy & Kennedy, Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home, 115, 124-5, 195, 345.

39 Livingston, Confederate Emancipation Without War, To Live and Die in Dixie, 468.

40 Bauer, Elizabeth Kelley, Commentaries on the Constitution 1790-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 64.

41 Floan, Howard R., The South in Northern Eyes-1831 to 1861 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1958), 11.

42 Lincoln cited in Alexander H. Stephens’s, Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (1870, Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1994), Vol. II, 617.

43 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction, 362.

44 Ibid., 364.

45 Fogel & Engerman, Time On The Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1974), 40.

46 Henry, Robert Selph, The Story of Reconstruction, 365.

47 Ibid., 138.

48 Postmodernists, neo-Marxists, and leftists in general do not want tools that aid in understanding, they want weapons to destroy their opponents. Truth, facts, and logic will never win against an opponent who has an emotional argument combined with a vast media to promote their emotional argument while censoring or slandering our counter argument. Conservatives have yet to learn that the truth can also be presented as an emotional appeal if we have a media to present our emotional but true argument to the public.

49 The justification for the term Lincoln’s war is documented in Chapter 32, Timeline Lincoln’s Secret War Conspiracy.

50 During Modern Era Reconstruction (post-1965) international Globalists became a part of America’s ruling elite.

51 Bradford, Dr. M.E., Against the Barbarians and Other reflections on Familiar Themes (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992), 245.

Chapter 2:

RECONSTRUCTION—TYRANNY AND RACIAL HATRED—THEN AND NOW

That the Southern people literally were put to the torture is vaguely understood, but even historians have shrunk from the unhappy task of showing us the torture chambers —Claude Bowers⁵²

YANKEE GENERAL SHERMAN’S admissions about his war crimes committed during the War is the best example of the North’s pure hatred for the Southern people. General Sherman admitted that 80% of the physical destruction his Army inflicted upon the South’s civilian population was unnecessary as a war strategy. He said that only 20% of the war’s destruction has inured to our advantage, and the remainder is simple waste and destruction.⁵³ The valuation of Southern private property by the end of the War, excluding capital investments in slave property, was 59% of what it was in 1860⁵⁴ and increased to only 63% by 1870. In 1880, the value of farms in the eleven Confederate States was only 67% of the 1860 value. The value of farm implements was only 45% of the value of such implements in 1860.⁵⁵ The destruction of the South was so great that, by 1900, the South had barely reached the same level of economic development it achieved in 1860. The prior data represents only the property/economic damage inflicted on a people who only asked to be left alone to govern themselves and resolve their social issues in a manner that would benefit all its citizens—free and slave.⁵⁶ But far greater than property and economic damage was the human cost of the Yankee Empire’s illegitimate invasion and conquest of the once free and self-governing people of the South. But worse was to come. The Republican Party’s Reconstruction came after Lincoln’s war.⁵⁷

CULTURAL GENOCIDE PRACTICED BY AMERICA’S NEO-MARXIST POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT

THE REMOVAL OF GENERAL LEE’S MONUMENT IN RICHMOND, VA

The destruction of our honorable Southern Heritage is justified by the outpouring of vicious anti-South fake history and other neo-Marxist propaganda. It merely proves that Reconstruction never ended. Cultural Genocide is used by tyrants to remove from the minds of an occupied people the memory of past glories and days of freedom. Monuments to past heroes are a vivid reminder to the occupied people of the possibility of regaining their lost freedom—therefore, tyrants (or their agents) will attempt to eradicate all such heroic symbols of past freedom.

Monuments matter:

Reconstruction was not a time of rebuilding the destroyed South. It was a time in which the conquered and occupied people of the Confederate States of America were forced, at the point of bloody Yankee bayonets, into a political torture chamber. Most white Southerners were disfranchised and turned into political vassals of the supreme Federal Government controlled by the Republican Party. Illiterate former slaves were placed in positions over experienced and educated local Southern political leaders. Uneducated and ill-prepared former slaves were manipulated by local scallywags and Northern carpetbaggers to establish a system of fraud, corruption, and lawlessness unheard of in Western Christian civilization. Those who had little, or no taxable property were given the ability to set the tax rates on those who had taxable property, while those with taxable property were not represented in the government that imposed confiscatory taxes. The 1776 war cry of the American Colonies—No Taxation Without Representation— became the complaint of black and white Southern property owners. It was a time in which a spontaneous Southern resistance movement developed.

Unlike the false narrative of the Yankee Empire’s postmodern propagandists, the post-War Southern resistance movement was not directed at the newly freed slaves. It was a resistance movement that was, in essence, a tax revolt and a revolt against lawlessness and the political enslavement of formerly free people. It was a torture chamber that no American, other than Southerners, ever endured. It was a time of vicious anti-South slander—a ruthless slander that the South, then and now, was prevented from adequately answering. The evil inflicted upon We the People of the South continues today and is used as an excuse to inflict the latest stages of the Yankee Empire’s campaign of anti-South cultural genocide during Modern Era Reconstruction (post-1965).⁵⁸

RECONSTRUCTION, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S NEVER-ENDING OPPRESSION OF THE SOUTH

Judge John H. Reagan described the purpose of Reconstruction as:

The plan adopted for the restoration of the Union and the pacification of the Southern people was to deprive them of all political rights…⁵⁹ [Emphasis added].

Reconstruction never ended. It continues in cities and States not only in the South but, today, its impact is felt in every state of America’s centralized, all-powerful, tyrannical indivisible Union. Key elements of Active Reconstruction (1866-77) included themes that are familiar to conservative Americans at the beginning of the 21st century. During Republican-enforced Congressional Reconstruction (herein referred to as Active Reconstruction), the South suffered from out-of-control taxation, fraudulent elections, normalized and accepted fraud/corruption among elected officials, and the use of racial hatred to exploit blacks for the political benefit of party politicians. A glance at today’s news headlines will demonstrate that these key elements are currently at work in the South and throughout these United States.

To the average conservative American, the era referred to as Reconstruction was a time of rebuilding the South after the so-called Civil War. To the average liberal, it was a time of glorious experimentation for social equality—an effort that was destroyed by hateful, evil, racist, white Southerners. The latter is the description of Reconstruction taught by America’s postmodern (neo-Marxist) educational system. America’s ruling elites in government, Globalist financial elites, postmodernist academia, and the mainline media benefit from their monopoly of facts about the War (the so-called Civil War) and Reconstruction.⁶⁰ Reconstruction continues today. It began as Active Reconstruction (1866-77), the post Active Reconstruction era referred to herein as Passive Reconstruction (1877-1965), and Reconstruction in the Modern Era (post-1965). In the following pages, we will not explain the causes of the War, but we will explain the consequences of the War and subsequent Active, Passive, and Modern Era Reconstruction. The unacknowledged consequence of Lincoln’s war and the Republican Party’s Reconstruction Plan was the destruction of America’s original Republic of Sovereign States and the illegitimate construction of the current unconstitutional supreme Federal Government—also referred to herein as the political status quo or the Yankee Empire.

Before Lincoln’s war and Republican-enforced Active Reconstruction, the United States government as designed by the Founding Fathers was a constitutionally limited Republic of Sovereign States. It was a system of government in which We the People, through our sovereign States were the ultimate decision-makers regarding matters that affected our local communities and families. After Lincoln’s war and the Republican Party’s imposed Active Reconstruction, the Federal Government unconstitutionally morphed into America’s centralized, supreme government holding the final authority to determine the limits, if any, of its powers. It became a government that could violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of Freedom of Religion by simply declaring a crisis. It evolved into a government that could deny the Biblical admonition that children are a gift from God to parents by declaring that children belong to the government. Republican-created Active Reconstruction continues, in its modern form, today!

Reconstruction is divided into three eras of American history. Active Reconstruction (1866 to 1877) was the time in which the Republican-controlled Congress used military occupation, bayonet rule, and slanderous anti-South propaganda to control its newly conquered Southern territories (formerly the Sovereign States composing the conquered and occupied sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America). Passive Reconstruction, part of which, includes a time referred to as the Progressive Era. Passive Reconstruction (1878-1965) was a time in which the ruling elites in Washington (political, financial, and social) enacted Federal legislation to gain control of America’s banking system via the establishment of the Federal Reserve, expanding Federal powers via Federal Supreme Court decisions, and Progressive legislation ending with the passage of the 1964-5 Civil Rights Acts. During Passive Reconstruction, the South suffered widespread poverty which was intentionally imposed upon the South.⁶¹ Modern Era Reconstruction (post-1965) is a time in which the ruling elites found it politically advantageous to break the post-War North/ South bargain for reconciliation⁶² and imposed a modern-day version of Active Reconstruction on not just the South but on all of America. The recent destruction of the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington National Cemetery is a good example. Designed by Moses Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran, the monument was proposed by Union veteran and President William McKinley. It was an attempt to heal old wounds and unite the country. Its destruction is a reflection of our times; when government elitists hire Woke radical leftists to promote malice, hatred, antagonism, bitterness, and resentment. What message is being sent when monuments meant to heal are destroyed? America must regain its senses and bring back to the fore the shared values derived from our Christian Western heritage.

The story of Reconstruction is the story of the intentional destruction of America’s original Constitution and its replacement with a living Constitution that, as Thomas Jefferson warned, can be molded like a lump of clay to any shape that today best supports the progressive, liberal, neo-Marxist agenda. This new Constitution can be used to support the latest social fad advocated by social justice warriors in Washington’s political and bureaucratic Deep State and its sycophants (propagandists) in academia and the mainline/digital media. Before Lincoln and the Republican Party’s Active Reconstruction, the idea of using the Federal Government to harass parents complaining about the teaching of Critical Race Theory or Drag Queens in local schools was impossible. Yet, in the Modern Era Reconstruction (post-1965), such use of the FBI or armed IRS agents is not only possible—it is occurring. In Modern Era Reconstruction, the citizen’s right to privacy as declared in the Fourth Amendment is routinely violated by Federal agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA).⁶³ Reconstruction that was imposed upon the defeated and occupied South by the Republicancontrolled Congress set the stage for the ultimate destruction of local self-government and the rise of an empire—the Yankee Empire.⁶⁴ As predicted by General Robert E. Lee in 1870 with the destruction of States’ Rights, the Federal Government has become aggressive abroad and despotic at home.

How did the United States of America get to the point where leftist (neo-Marxists/postmodernist) activists masquerading as social, political, or judicial experts violate with impunity the most basic principles in the Constitution? They routinely violate constitutional rights if it serves their purpose of advancing their postmodernist, neo-Marxist, progressive agenda. Thomas Jefferson warned about the impending consolidation of ultimate political power in the Federal Government, The judiciary branch is the instrument which, working like gravity, without intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated mass.⁶⁵ Jefferson’s warning came early in American history, long before Lincoln’s war. After the War, General Lee was asked by Lord Acton what would become of America with the defeat of the South, the destruction of States’ Rights, and the concentration of political power in Washington. Lee predicted that, with the destruction of States’ Rights, the United States would become aggressive abroad and despotic at home.⁶⁶

As General Lee predicted, America’s unconstitutional supreme Federal Government, created by Lincoln and a Congress controlled by the Republican Party during Active Reconstruction, became oppressive at home. News headlines in the 2020s are vivid evidence of this truth:

• FBI Whistleblower Claims DOJ Used Counterterrorism Tools against Parents in Response to School-Board Memo⁶⁷

• States’ Lawsuit Reveals Feds Pushed Censorship Tools to Big Tech⁶⁸

• Biden Military Vaccine Mandate Was a Way to Purge Patriots⁶⁹

• Transgender Federal Assistant Secretary of Health supports normalizing transgenderism⁷⁰

• Biden’s Department of Justice raids home of Christian pro-life advocate⁷¹

None of the above-listed transgressions of basic constitutional rights was possible