Pat Shannan's MUSINGS
Perpetual Deception
If you listen to the establishment media on the subject, you might think that the entire issue of the Civil War comes down to race and slavery. If you favor keeping Confederate history, it somehow means you are a white person unsympathetic to the plight of blacks in America. If you favor abolishing Confederate History Month and taking down the flag, you are an enlightened thinker willing to bury the past so we can look forward to a bright future under progressive leadership. That's it in the simpleton's nutshell.
Now, if your head is filled with bias from the revisionist history, the next few paragraphs from Llewellyn Rockwell will challenge your credulity. You won't read this version of events in any your children's conventional history textbooks, particularly not those approved for use in public high schools. You are not likely to hear about it in the college classroom either, where the single issue of slavery overwhelms any critical thinking.
The South attempted a peaceful secession from federal control, an ambition no different from the original American plea for independence from Britain. Let us remember, it was the federal army invading the South, not the other way around. But why would the South want to secede? If the original American ideals had survived to 1860, the southern states would not have made such a drastic move. But the Northern tariff loomed larger than ever before - imposed to benefit Northern industrial interests by subsidizing their production through public works. But it had the effect of forcing the South to pay more for manufactured goods and disproportionately taxing it to support the central government. This flew in the face of the original constitutional contract with the states - that of taxing by apportionment.
In effect, it was slavery of a whole new flavor. The South as a region was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.
"To gain an understanding of the Southern mission," says researcher and author Llewellyn Rockwell, "look no further than the Confederate Constitution. It is a duplicate of the original Constitution, with several improvements. It guarantees free trade, restricts legislative power in crucial ways, abolishes public works, and attempts to rein in the executive. No, it didn't abolish slavery but neither did the original Constitution (in fact, the original protected property rights in slaves).
"Before the war, Lincoln himself had pledged to leave slavery intact, to enforce the fugitive slaves laws, and to support an amendment that would forever guarantee slavery where it then existed. Neither did he lift a finger to repeal the anti-Negro laws that besotted all northern states, Illinois in particular. Recall that the underground railroad ended, not in New York or Boston - since dropping off blacks in those states would have been restricted - but in Canada! The Confederate Constitution did, however, make possible the gradual elimination of slavery, a process that would have been made easier had the North not so severely restricted the movements of former slaves." All of which leads us to . . . .