Pat Shannan's MUSINGS
And The Beat Goes On
As I muse along in the solitude of my library, I wonder where it all started. Sometime in the 1850s, I now reckon, with the culmination in 1861. Lincoln, in his puritanical, maniacal quest to "preserve the union," did not hesitate to instill tyrannical means. He had previously admitted that he would do anything necessary to achieve that goal. This included shipping all the slaves back to Africa, if necessary.
But the problem ran deeper than that. The original thirteen and all the states that followed had begun to join the union eighty years earlier with the understanding that this was a coalition of states and not one nation under federal rule. When the balance of power became overwhelming with, once again, Taxation without Representation, eleven Southern states said, "We want a divorce!" The eleven, in a matter of a few months, got that divorce - on the legal grounds of Breach of Contract. They simply moved out. Call it desertion, if you wish, but it was under the law. (Secession was and still is constitutional.)
Lincoln went berserk. One of his imperious orders was an attempt to quash the First Amendment by shutting down newspapers critical of the administration, such as the Chicago Times, because it was exposing the government's total disregard of constitutional protections.
Maryland was about to become the twelfth state to bolt. In order to quash such thinking, the federal tyrant jailed dozens of the state legislators to stop any such vote in their state House. Then he put the habeas corpus laws on hold to prevent their release. Maryland was never able to vote to secede legally but remained in sympathy with the Southern cause
In April of 1861, the Confederate States of America was a new nation, and any foreign (i.e. federal) troops therein were ordered to leave. But Lincoln, in his desire to gain political advantage with the northern newspapers by forcing the South to fire the first shot, refused to remove his troops from Fort Sumter, off the near coast of South Carolina. By continuing to ignore the Confederate warnings, Abe's ploy finally worked. On April 12th, the Confederate Army took action to drive the foreign troops out of their new country, and Lincoln had his war.
Has everyone forgotten that it was the North that invaded the South? They logged it in history as the "Civil War," but Southerners have always preferred the term, "The War of Northern Aggression." It was neither. It was more accurately "The War of Federal Aggression," and it has not ceased to this day.
Let's stop and think about the facts and not the learned rhetoric from the public schools. Lincoln is renowned for freeing the slaves - on January 1st, 1863, with the Emancipation Proclamation. But what did that accomplish? It legally freed the slaves inside the ten-square-mile area of Washington D.C., the only place the out-of-control, self-appointed czar had jurisdiction. Not only did his edict not have any legal power within the Northern states, what fool would think that it had anything whatsoever to do with the laws of France, England, Spain, or any other foreign nation? Then could it possibly have any legal impact on the new nation called the Confederate States of America? It was a joke, a hoax, a public relations move that had all the noise but no lawful power outside of the District of Columbia. And it worked.
With this in mind, let us consider another piece of presidential subterfuge of the times. In 1861, Lincoln suckered hundreds of thousands of men from Minnesota to Maine to march with arms to prevent the granting of this divorce to the Southern states. Did no one pause during this mass hysteria to say, "Have we gone crazy?" The Northern states had no fight with their brothers, uncles, and cousins living in the south. Yet they submitted to the conscription and 350,000 of them died during the next four years. It was a federal war for which Lincoln's troops legally should have been gathered from no more than the area of Washington D. C., and which, of course, would have made the invasion of the South a phffft and certainly would have been finished after one flimsy battle.
But what a snow job Lincoln performed on the Northern people, coercing a million Northern Christians into becoming cannon fodder against Southern Christians with whom they had no real argument.
My great-great-grandfather was one of those suckers. He was a foot soldier with General Sherman, as that scoundrel burned out innocent women and children from their city and farm homes across the South - from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. (Hey, Jesse: Don't the current descendants deserve some reparations?) Is it any wonder that my ancestor became the renowned town drunk of Sibley, Illinois during the last decades of the 19th century. He could have been trying to forget the criminal atrocities in which he had participated as a foreign mercenary.
I was born a "Yankee" in Illinois a century later, proud to be an American, but I am prouder to say that I had other, more honorable relatives on the side of liberty. My 6-great uncle was Major Thomas Hinds, who was Gen. Andrew Jackson's right-hand man at the Battle of New Orleans. The next year, "Uncle Thomas" (I am reluctant to call him "Uncle Tom") took seven-year-old Jefferson Davis by horse and wagon from Mississippi to Kentucky to attend school. On the way he stopped at "The Hermitage" outside of Nashville to spend a few days and to introduce the lad to the first of seven presidents that he would later know. In 1817, Mississippi became a state, and Hinds County, the home of the capital city, was named after my ol' Uncle Thomas.
The city of Jackson, named after "Old Hickory," of course, was burned and pillaged by Sherman's troops twice in the summer of 1863, thereby becoming known as "Chimneyville." The only public building to be spared was the City Hall, where the Masonic meeting place just happened to be upstairs. What a coincidence.
In 1894, Mississippi adopted as its standard the present official state flag, which emphasized the battle flag of Confederacy. For the next 95 years or so, nobody voiced any public objection to it. Then the KKK and a few skinheads began to appear on the news parading along with the battle flag, and the NAACP decided it was a "hate" symbol.
Political pressure was brought in South Carolina to remove the flag from the Capitol Building in Columbia. The Georgia legislature, with enough members of slave heritage, pulled a fast one on the voting populace and slipped through a measure to replace the Georgia flag with a more "acceptable" one. (We immediately proposed that the KKK should now wrap itself in that new flag in order to see how long it would take Georgia to replace it again.)
After a year or more of town hall debate around the state, Mississippi put its flag issue to a vote on April 17th. The result was a resounding 2-1 to keep the state flag as it had been flown since 1894. We reckon this is indicative of what would have also resulted in South Carolina and Georgia, had the issue been put to the people.
Isaiah 59:19: When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the lord will raise up a standard against him.
Immediately following the April election results, Mississippi's only black Congressman, Bennie Thompson, announced that he would refuse to fly the flag from the state that elected him in his Washington office. "We will now have the sole distinction of having a Confederate battle symbol on a flag that can only further divide a diverse population," Thompson said.
With a tidal wave of letters, Thompson was informed that it was the Stars and Stripes - the U. S. Flag - and not the Confederate flag under which the slaves were imported from Africa. Many urged him to take down the U. S. flag to satisfy his racist cravings and informed him of the thousands of black troops who fought for the South for the cause of freedom and states rights and not for that of slavery.
Said one supporter of African heritage, "We were not like the segregated black Massachusetts battalion as depicted in the movie, `Glory.' My ancestors fought right along side of our white brothers for the cause of freedom. We were the integrated army!" Another retorted to Congressman Thompson, "The only thing that is dividing this `diverse population' is your racist rhetoric. I am appalled that a member of the U.S. Congress would be so daring as to not display the flag of the state which elected him to his position. If that is the case, you should take down your American flag. After all, it honors a constitution which counted your ancestors as 3/5 of a vote-in essence, 3/5 of a person."
Robert Hitt Neill tells of the time years ago when he was at the Tennessee Mountain Writer's Conference, along with several other authors, including Alex Haley, the celebrated author of Roots. Watching a TV news show, the group saw a demonstration in one southern state against the "Rebel" flag being part of that state's flag. Then the very next story was about a famine in one of the African countries, with graphic pictures of dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses, and dying people with flies all over them, too weak to brush them off.
Mr. Haley said in a low, serious voice, "Every time an American black sees a story like that they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it." Then he pointed to the TV screen and continued, "Because there would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there."
And so, the beat goes on, as if a vote the other way would have solved anything. And as I muse along, I have just reminded myself of the change in the meaning of words in recent years. You may be shocked to learn that I used to be a gay person and never had to hide in the closet about it. Maybe you were too. Then the disgusting sodomites stole that beautiful word from our language in order to enhance their position in society, and now we cannot communicate with it anymore.
I am also a lifelong racist who used to be better than average at it and took great pride in the challenge - the "fastest guy in Raintree County" - participating in the sprints and hurdles in AAU meets around the country. But my favorite race was the challenge to the braggart who thought he had the hottest car around. I collected many a five-dollar wager that I could outrun his '57 Chevy or Studebaker Golden Hawk on foot for twenty yards. It really was a sucker bet. While the proud driver sat there spinning his tires, I was across the finish line first every time! (Actually, I did not go totally undefeated, but the only competitor to win that bet was a powerful two-wheeler named Harley Davidson. Sooner or later, we all bite off more than we can chew.) It was a long time and 45 pounds ago, but if that's not being a racist, and a professional one at that, what is?
Check your older dictionaries. You will be surprised to find that the word "racist," as it is known today, cannot be found. It was coined during the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s and was never known by any definition until the publications of the next decade.
With all of this in mind, and with reference to Congressman Bennie Thompson, we can only conclude that his is a niggardly stand. Look it up. It's another great word that has not been stolen yet.