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National NewsConservative News
Decatur (AL) Paper Combines Ignorance and Arrogance (Part I)
By Mike Scruggs
Posted on: November 23, 2005
Part I of II
The Decatur Daily, an Alabama newspaper undoubtedly ambitious to be recognized for its efforts to enlighten Southern minds with politically-correct dogma, recently unleashed a poorly informed and morally
arrogant editorial against a proposed Confederate monument in Lawrence County. The editorial first served up the usual self-righteous misrepresentation of the “Civil War” as a morality play in which a noble Union Army fought to emancipate downtrodden slaves from evil Southerners. Then the editors reminded their hapless readers that the South had to be conquered (and hundreds of thousands of people killed) to “save” the Union. To this they added an incredibly arrogant insult to every Alabamian and every Southerner, at least those who have not surrendered mind and soul to the truth-suppressing tyranny of politically correct reconstruction. The editors claimed that the cause of the South was “morally wrong.” They even suggested that a monument should instead be built to commemorate the Union.
The historical ignorance of the editors of the Decatur Daily is appalling. No serious student of the “Civil War” believes that the Union invaded the South to emancipate the slaves. Such ignorance, however, is commonplace. This propagandistic version of the war is commonly taught in public schools and in ignorance even in many Christian schools. Yet it has no basis in fact. Slavery was an issue between North and South, but not in the propagandistic, fabricated moral sense usually assumed.
First of all the motivation of most Northerners toward slavery before and after the war was not of the high moral tone usually believed. The Free State versus Slave State controversy can best be summarized by an October 16, 1854, quote from Abraham Lincoln himself speaking in Peoria, Illinois:
Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted with them
Most Northern states did not want blacks within their borders, and Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Oregon had strict laws to enforce this bias. As an Illinois Legislator, Abraham Lincoln, fully approved of such laws. The “underground railroad” for escaped slaves went to Canada because the intervening Union states did not want blacks in their territory. Even after the war voters in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Kansas refused to extend the right to vote to blacks.
Some of Lincoln’s public and private remarks are shocking to those who have been taught the whitewashed version of American history that lifts up Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. In an August 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois, Lincoln had this to say:
I have no purpose to introduce political equality between the white and black races… I as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary.
In September of 1858 in Charleston, Illinois, Lincoln met Judge Douglas’ implication that his opposition to slavery might result in equality for blacks with this response:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.
Lincoln was for gradual, slave-owner compensated emancipation of slaves, a common sentiment in both North and South. But he did not believe the black and white races could coexist in the same country. He favored deporting them and colonizing them in the Caribbean, Central America, or Africa .In his famous Cooper Union speech on February 27, 1860, he advocated the peaceful “deportation” of blacks so that “their places be…filled up by free white laborers.” In his December 1, 1862, message to Congress, Lincoln reassured them that his previous position on the subject was unchanged: “I cannot make it better know than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.”
In early 1861 to insure the South that slavery would not be endangered, the U. S. Congress, now composed of only Northern states passed a Constitutional Amendment that would have forever prohibited any Constitutional change that interfered with slavery in any state!
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of such State.
It was then sent to the States for the required three-quarters approval. Two days later the newly elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, promised to support this Amendment in his inaugural speech. First, self quoting what he had written to New York Tribune Editor, Horace Greeley:
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Later in the speech he specifically promised to support the Amendment with these words:
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution…has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service… I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
The Amendment became a moot issue after the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South. On July 22, 1861, the now Northern-only Congress passed a joint resolution stating the purpose of the war:
“Resolved…That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, not for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.
In other words the Northern Congress stated in this resolution that Union and not interfering with the institution of slavery was the purpose of the war. Their statement about maintaining the supremacy of the Constitution was truth and logic turned on its head, but that is another issue and another story.
Mike Scruggs is a retired financial consultant and corporate business executive. He holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BS from the University of Georgia. He is a USAF combat veteran of the Vietnam War, holding a Distinguished Flying Cross and Purple Heart. He was recently Chairman of the Board of a Classical Christian School and is a former Republican County Chairman. He writes and lives in Hendersonville, NC.
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