Nikki Haley was right

The Civil War was not fought over slavery.  This is trivial to demonstrate.

Consider the Corwin Amendment:

The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that has never been adopted, but owing to the absence of a ratification deadline, could still be adopted by the state legislatures. It would shield slavery within the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment does not explicitly use the word slavery, it was designed specifically to protect slavery from federal power. The outgoing 36th United States Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, with the intent of preventing that war and preserving the Union. It passed Congress but was not ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.

Yeah, yeah - Wikipedia.  But the article plays it straight up.

So if the war was about slavery, why did both houses of Congress pass this amendment, and why did the President sign the bill, sending it to the States for ratification?  And oh by the way, Congress passed this without the Representatives from the seceding States.

And Abraham Lincoln - the "Great Emancipator" himself did not oppose the Amendment.

So the War was all about slavery, but Congress was playing 6-dimension chess or something, right?

[rolls eyes]

I'm no fan of Haley, but she is also right that the question was a liberal plant.  Her response might have been bad politics in 2023, but she is 100% correct on the facts.

But while facts are stubborn things, so is the ignorance and arrogance of the media (including the ostensibly conservative media). Remember, the history of that war as taught today is retarded.

A modest proposal to the Governor of Florida

Item the first: no Florida Law Enforcement personnel are allowed to work with the Gestapo FBI, under penalty of being dismissed from Florida employment, unless authorized by the Florida Governor.

Item the second: any Gestapo FBI Agent executing law enforcement actions on any citizen of Florida without authorized (by the Governor's office) are subject to arrest by the Florida State Police and prosecution under Florida law.

Actually, it would be nice if instead of "Gestapo FBI" it was "any Federal law enforcement employee".

Sure, sure, the Fed.Gov will fight this in (Federal) court.  Maybe the Federal Court will (shockingly!) rule in favor of the Fed.Gov.  This will just give the Florida Governor another bite on the same apple.  A Federal Court might issue a ruling, but (in Andy Jackson's wording let them now enforce that ruling).  Florida law enforcement will of course not enforce it, and for any Federal law enforcement you would need to refer to Item the First and Item the Second.

Next step, look at how many illegal aliens are apprehended in Florida and then released: these all need to be bussed to Washington D.C.

The Next, Next step is to look at all Federal property in Florida and seize sufficient property to compensate the citizens of the State against Federal impositions.  

This is a dance that can play out over years, to the detriment of the Democrats.

When you erase history it's awfully easy to look like an idiot

So General Lee's statue has been removed from Charlottesville's main drag.  People have been tossing the word "traitor" around quite generously.  Of course, to these folks it's Year Zero, and there's never been any history until today.  Or something.

And so they look like morons.  They literally know nothing.

To help you understand this, here is a parable:

Let me try to make the decline of history more concrete by way of an analogy. Imagine that you had fallen asleep in 2005 and stayed asleep until 2150. Further assume that when you woke up in 2150, everyone loved the Iraq War. Not just Rumsfeld-style liked it, but fucking loved it. They loved it so much, that if you dared to question the righteousness of liberating the Iraqis from bondage, you’d be considered unfit for civil conversation. Intellectuals in 2150 prove their intellectual-ness by signaling to each other they support the Iraq War more than other people. In other words, by 2150, mainstream opinion on the Iraq War would be such that Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 would – by 2150 standards – be considered only moderately pro-war. 

Regardless of what you think about the Iraq War in the present day, you’d have a pretty low opinion of history as practiced in 2150.

We have all sorts of historians today rewriting the history of that period, because Reasons.*  Color me unimpressed.

As it turns out, there are a ton of primary sources from the day that are available to us, that we can use to check today's historical narrative.  That war was a defining event for the people of the day, and like the Greatest Generation's memoirs of World War II there were many, many who wrote of their experiences in the American War of Southern Independence.**  We can use these memoirs to see just how retarded today's narrative is, if we are careful.

We want to choose quality sources, of course.  There are quite a lot that can immediately be discarded as hopelessly biased - pretty much everything from Jubal Early and the "Lost Cause" school, for example.  But how can we tell reliable sources from propaganda?

We want to look for a number of things: We'd like someone who understood history and how it is documented; a professional historian would be ideal, as he would be writing at least in part for future historians.  We'd like someone who participated directly, of course, ideally fighting against the side that he defends in his writing.  As lawyers like to say, this "admission against interest" gives a lot of credibility.  And since the claim here is that modern historians lack credibility, we want credibility uber allies in the memoirs we choose from the time.

Is there such a source?  There is.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr. was a Harvard history professor, and first President of the American Historical Association.  Grandson and Great-Grandson of Presidents, he was from that Massachusetts Adams family,  He is more properly referred to as General Charles Francis Adams, having served in the Union Army during the war.

(Then) Capt. Adams of the 1st Mass. Cav. is second from the right.

And so to today's charge of Treason leveled against Robert E. Lee, what can we learn from General Adams?  After all, Adams ticks all the boxes in what we are looking for in a credible source from the day.

Adams wrote a book (actually the transcript of a speech he gave to the Phi Beta Kappa Society - another box for us to tick!) that is available for free download today: Shall Cromwell Have a Statue?  You can download it yourself (it's a pretty easy read), but Fosetti covered this years ago:

  The essay begins by questioning whether or not England should build a statue to Oliver Cromwell.  The purpose of the essay is really to discuss whether or not the US should build a statue to Robert E. Lee.  (Please keep in mind that Mr Adams fought on the Union side against Lee). 

Adams' answer is unequivocally "yes." 

He goes through a long argument about how Lee was not a traitor.  For if we wish to call Lee a traitor, we would have to call Washington, Cromwell, William of Orange and Hampden traitors as well.  Lee was loyal to his state, which was where he believed his primary loyalty lay. 

Then Adams tries to make a distinction between Virginia's decision to secede and other Cotton States' decisions to secede.  The latter states seceded when Lincoln won the election.  Virginia did not.  Virginia believed in secession (as did everyone who ratified the Constitution, according to Mr Adams).  Virginia was willing to let the other states peacefully secede, but did not wish to secede with them.  Only after the US government tried to re-supply Sumter, an act of war against a sovereign state (i.e. South Carolina), according to the logic of Virginia and the original understanding of the Constitution, did Virginia rebel.  According to Virginia, the North had effectively changed the Constitution at that point and Virginia seceded to defend the original Constitution.  Mr Adams understands this argument but sees it as hopeless outdated and out-of-touch.  Nevertheless, he sees it as consistent.  Lee then went with his state.

They should read Fosetti's review (or better yet, Adams' book) and learn what one of the best sources of the day believed.  Or they can keep calling Lee a traitor and keep sounding like morons.  Alas, my view of the world is so jaded lately that I suspect that I know how many people will choose.  That's why I have a tag for "Decline of the Progressive West".

* I think there's something to the idea floated on Instapundit that as long as the South voted Democrat, historians were happy to present a different history.  Now that the South reliably votes against the Democrats, it's book burning time:

But there’s also this: “Don’t overthink this, because it’s quite simple, really. When Democrats’ national position depended on unwavering support from ‘the Solid South,’ we got lots of pro-Southern propaganda: the Lost Cause, Gone With The Wind, Disneyfied Uncle Remus, etc. As a vital Democrat constituency group, southerners, even practical neo-Confederates, were absolved of all sins as long as they stayed in line.” If the south were still a vital constituency today, Democrats would sound like Bill Clinton did in the 1990s.

** It wasn't a Civil War because the Confederate States did not want to take over the north.  "War Between the States" is ambiguous, losing the underlying motivations.

Note: This is a repost from 2017 but is as topical today as then.

Great Great Grandfather's bloody day

159 years ago (well, last week) this was the view for my Great Great Grandfather (photo credit: The Queen Of The World.  Click to enbiggen):

It looks peaceful today, but 159 years ago it was a different story.  This is the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh Battlefield, looking west from where the 7th Iowa Infantry waited the charge of the Confederate forces.  My Great Great Grandfather stood there, and today I stood on the same ground.

The 7th  Iowa was at the center of the line.  This is what Great Great Grandfather would have seen looking to his right:

Peaceful today, not so much that day.  This was the view the other way:

Then all hell broke loose.  After 4 brutal hours, the 7th Iowa was forced back, regrouping at Grant's "Final Line" where they held the southern forces.  Barely.  Not all of the Union soldiers in the Hornet's Nest fared so well - 2,500 were surrounded and surrendered. 

It was quite a feeling walking that ground today.  Great Great Grandfather was a Kansas boy back when the war broke out.  Kansas wasn't a state then and so he couldn't sign up, so he and his buddies went north to Iowa where they enlisted in 1861.  He went all the way through the war - Ft. Donaldson, Shiloh, Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, Bentonville.  He marched in the parade in Washington D.C. and was mustered out.

On the drive back, The Queen Of The World wondered about all the men who died there.  None of them have Great Great Grandsons to remember them, because the war took from them everything they had and everything they would ever have.  I would quote from Abraham Lincoln's justly famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, but Mr. Lincoln is perhaps uniquely responsible for all those deaths, and that lack of descendents for all those men.

I also wondered on that drive back why I consider Grant to be a sympathetic character.  Long time readers know my opinion of Mr. Sherman, but for some reason I can't shake a somewhat favorable impression of Grant.  I need to do some pondering on this.

But like I said, it was a thrill to walk in Great Great Grandfather's footsteps on that battlefield.

The past isn't dead.  It isn't even past.

- William Faulkner

President's Day - Best and Worst Presidents

Today is (the observed) President's Day.  This is my annual posts of the best and worst Presidents.  The one addition this year is a Lincoln de-mythification from the son of John Tyler, America's tenth President: Lincoln The Dwarf.  This will give you a taste:

Tyler catalogued Lincoln's crippling deficiencies: He was coarse, too coarse to be a hero; his reputation for kindness and humanity was grossly overblown; he was an overrated statesman, a vacillator who had trouble making decisions. He was too deferential to his cabinet, indeed was dominated by its stronger personalities. He started the war, then meddled in its conduct, prolonging the bloodshed, was a poor judge of generals, and allowed political expediency to guide his appointments. In constructing his argument Tyler relied as much as possible on sources he considered unimpeachable, such as Lincoln's friends Ward Hill Lamon and William H. Herndon and distinguished Northerners like Charles Francis Adams.

Sharp eyed readers will recall that we've seen (Union General) Charles Francis Adams here before.

(originally posted 20 February 2012)

It's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln was the 12th, Washington is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today.  But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.

Top Five:

#5: Calvin Coolidge

Nothing To Report is a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.

#4. Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase).  He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.

#3. Grover Cleveland. 

He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now.  He continually vetoed pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later.  This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." 

#2. Ronald Reagan

He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above).  He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash.  It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.

#1. George Washington

Could have been King.  Wasn't.  Q.E.D. 

Bottom Five:

#5. John Adams.

There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2. 

#4. Woodrow Wilson.

Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918.  He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy.  The fact that Progressives love him (and hate George W. Bush) says all you need to know about them.

#3 Lyndon Johnson.

An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.

#2. Franklin Roosevelt.

America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, sending American citizens to concentration camps, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle.  At least Mussolini met an honorable end.

#1. Abraham Lincoln.

There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to.  Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history.  Along the way, he suspended Habeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit.  Needless to say, Progressives adore him.

So happy President's Day.  Thankfully, the recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue haven't gotten this bad.  Yet.

The Kingston Trio - Tom Dooley

Bob Shane - the last of the original members of the Kingston Trio - passed away this week.  It was a hit for them in 1958 - a huge hit.  It sold 6 million copies, won a Grammy, and is listed at position #198 (out of 600) on Billboard's all time Hot 100 chart beating hits like Bridge Over Troubled Water and American Pie.  By 1961, the Kingston Trio made up 15% of Capitol Records' revenue even with other stars like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

While it doesn't seem obvious that this is country music, allow me to make the case.  It won the Grammy for Best Country and Western Performance.  It's also a song that tells a story, something that country music excels at.  And not just a story, it's a story about a love triangle that led to a murder and a hanging.  It happened in Wilkes County, North Carolina.  Sounds pretty country to me.

Tom Dula historical marker

Tom Dula was a Confederate veteran, serving in Company K, 42nd North Carolina Infantry.  Discharged at the end of that war, he returned home and resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Anne Foster even though she had married another man.  Dula had a reputation as a lady's man, and soon also took up with Anne's sister Laura.  The story is that Laura got pregnant and she and Dula decided to elope.  Early in the morning of May 25, 1866 she slipped out of the family house and rode off on her father's horse.  Nobody ever saw her alive again.

A lot of folks thought that Anne killed Laura but since Tom still loved Anne, he took the blame.  Rumor had it that Anne knew where the grave was, and showed people where it was.  Dula's trial was a sensation, even making the pages of the New York Times.  His lawyer was no less than North Carolina's Governor who represented him pro bono.  He was convicted anyway, and convicted again in a second trial.  Anne was also tried but Dula testified that she wasn't involved and she was acquitted.   Dula was sentenced to hang.  As he stood on the gallows, his last words were said to be "Gentlemen, do you see this hand? I didn't harm a hair on the girl's head".

Now if that all isn't a country song, I don't know what is.  I mean, all it's missing is a pickup truck.



Tom Dooley (Songwriter: Thomas Land)

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

I met her on the mountain
There I took her life
Met her on the mountain
Stabbed her with my knife

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
Hadn't a-been for Grayson
I'd a-been in Tennessee

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
Down in some lonesome valley
Hangin' from a white oak tree

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to die...

The Queen Of The World recommended that I post this song.  She knows a thing or two about country music.

The Democrats' "Lost Cause" myth

We live immersed in a world of lies.  I've posted about how history as taught today about the Civil War* is retarded.  Nowhere is this on better display than the Wikipedia page about the "Lost Cause Mythos":

The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historical, negationist ideology that holds that the cause of the  Confederacy during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle primarily to save what they view as the beneficent and ethical Southern way of life,^[1] or "states' rights" in the face of overwhelming "Northern aggression." At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or denies outright the central role of slavery in the buildup to and outbreak of the war. [my emphasis on this last sentence - Borepatch]

This is retarded.  A simple scanning of the dates of secession confirms this:

South Carolina: December 20, 1860

Mississippi: January 9, 1861

Florida: January 10, 1861

Alabama: January 11, 1861

Georgia: January 19, 1861

Louisiana: January 26, 1861

Texas: February 1, 1861

Missing from this list is the Virginia Secession Convention which voted to remain in the Union on 6 December 1861.  Also missing is Lincoln's attempt to break the blockade of Ft. Sumpter at the beginning of April 1861.  Up until this point, secession had been limited to the deep south; after what was seen as an act of war by the Federal government against a state, four other southern states seceded.

Virginia: April 17, 1861

Arkansas: May 6, 1861

North Carolina: May 20, 1861

Tennessee: June 8, 1861

Kentucky: Ordinance passed by people in 1861

Missouri: Ordinance passed, but not presented to people

But this isn't the limit of the Wikipedia article's retardedness.  Look at that last sentence, and ponder that the following slave states never seceded: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky (mostly because of force of Northern arms) and Missouri (ditto).  So the best you can say is that 7 slave states seceded over slavery, 4 more seceded over Federal aggression (but not over slavery), two more never seceded at all, and two were occupied by the Federal army and so the issue became moot.

In a world where we're continually informed by our betters that we're not well educated enough to correctly interpret all the nuance of the world, it sure would be nice to get a little nuance from historians.  But they have their red, white, and blue cardboard history cutout and so we once again find ourselves swimming in an ocean of lies.**

Democrats don't seem to like nuance, no matter what platitudes they mouth.  It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to abortion or the Ivy League or antipathy to people who live in Fly Over Country or anti-American sentiment or pro-impeachment sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.***

The impeachment circus will circle back to bite them.  The word that nobody in the press is saying today is "Nineteen" - that's how many House seats Republicans have to pick up to win back the majority.  There are 29 Democrats holding seats in House districts won by Donald Trump in 2016.  It looks grim for the Democrats.

Nancy Pelosi started rolling out a Lost Cause mythos for the Democrats yesterday, with the "solemn" vote on a bag of nothing.  It will come to nothing, but the victory laps being taken by the Democrats show that politics is now a game of humiliating your enemies.  Unfortunately, people have noticed and the American electorate is pretty unhappy with the whole Democratic charade.  We shall see how many more than nineteen districts flip next year.

The Democrats will need their Lost Cause mythos.  Unlike the Civil War* one, this one will not be based on a noble cause like Virginia choosing to resist Federal aggression.  Rather, it will be based on a small and mean desire to humiliate an opponent.  Worse, it targeted an opponent who punches back.

* It wasn't a Civil War at all: the Southern states weren't trying to take over and dominate the northern ones.  They wanted independence.  My preferred name for that conflict is the American War of Southern Independence.

** Note that I say this even though I'm not southern.  I'm from firmly midwest yankee stock and grew up in Maine.  As I like to joke, where we were Boston was in the south and New York was in the deep south.

*** Yes, this was modeled on another famous quote.

How history is taught is stupid

Do tell.  For what it's worth, I can't find a reference to when she said this, and so it might just be another made up Internet meme.

"A double charge of canister at ten yards"

Pickett's charge made it all the way across these fields from the opposite tree line. First the Union artillery and then the Union rifles picked the Confederates to pieces. Only a few made it to the monument you see in the foreground where they were obliterated by concentrated fire.



The charge broke and fell back. As the survivors streamed into their lines a trumpet played "Nearer my God to Thee". This guy did a beautiful rendition.



It was very quiet, looking at just how wide those fields are.