First Southern National Congress News Release

I was born and raised in Louisiana and have made my home in Tx for aproximately 18 yrs. And To Be A Part Of "The Ron Paul R3VoLuTiOn is a truly historical time for me as well as for ALL of us who remain true to the U.S. Constitution.

cultural differences between the South and the rest of the country. That is what lead to the original revolution, the "civil" war, and the next revolution. Speaking in generalities the average southerner is much more inclined toward individual liberty for all than the average person in the rest of the country. And, I too tend to discount any information that is tainted with stereotypical rhetoric like the above comment. We want to be left alone and be free to live our lives, and have been looked down on for that for the last 300 years.

Thank you Dr. Paul for making me act on what I already knew was right.

www.SouthernNationalCongress.org

Let them know Doc Smith sent you. After all... it is politics. ;-)

With Warmest Southern Regards...

A history lesson...

First, please don't misunderstand what I am about to say; I make absolutely no excuses whatsoever for the institution of Slavery. I view it as a vile institution and a crime against the Constitutional Principles we are working to restore, but I am also aware that there are facts that have been intentionally hidden for political purposes.

Most people in the South, including the leadership of the Confederacy, realized that the institution of slavery was rapidly dying and would be extinct within a decade or so due to the fact that it was becoming an unprofitable form of agricultural production. By 1840, the institution of slavery was becoming unprofitable, it was ending. That eventuality was being planned for and if you read many of the writings of the period there was a Southern plan for emancipation that didn’t include the Northern idea for complete and total deportation of any freed slaves, but sought to educate and prepare the slave population for a productive freedom and integration into society. Jefferson Davis stated that no matter who won the War, that Slavery would eventually become a defunct institution.

The concern of many in the South was the method of emancipation. In the writings of Jefferson Davis you will find he was of the opinion that the slaves should be well prepared for freedom; that they should be educated and made aware of the responsibility of freedom. Instead, the War of Northern Aggression released the slaves into a life filled with generational poverty, hatred and hardship. If you read the Slave Narratives you will see that many former slaves felt that they were recklessly thrown into a freedom that was far from free. Another interesting fact is that while the North supposedly freed their slaves, the fact is that they simply sold them to Planters in the South and in South America.

By the time of the War, the South had freed almost 300,000 slaves and had assisted them in transistioning into Southern Society. In the larger cities of the South, many freed Slaves became very wealthy business men and women. Another shocking fact is that most Southern States had laws which would allow any Slave to gain freedom if it could be proved he/she would not be a burden on the State. More than any other people in the South, the slave population were highly skilled in all manor of agriculture, architecture, building, iron works, brickworks. Great strides had been made in the Southern Emancipation effort, indeed there were more Southern Abolitionists than there were Northern.

It would surprise those who, as we have seen, ardently supports the commonly held and accept view of history to find that Virginia and several other Southern States found it necessary to pass legislation to allow freed slaves to return to slavery. Virginia had so many freed slaves requesting to return to that institution that the legislature had to craft a law that would allow such a conversion. The passed a law that would not only allow a freed slave to return to the life of slavery but that the freed slave could actually choose the master he wished to own him.

The reason for this is that some Slaves who received freedom found life in free society too hard and sought to return, many did, but most did not. It is also never mentioned in accepted history that there were laws that prescribed the treatment of Slaves in the South. Owners were bound by law, some were indeed lawbreakers and harsh taskmasters, of that there is no doubt, but on the whole the owners of Slaves abided by these laws.

In reading the accounts of both slaves and slave owners you will find that the vast majority of them did follow a very strict code of what they considered stewardship over their slaves.

Few know that Slaves were entitled to payment for any overtime they worked beyond their normal work schedule, they were also alloted private plots to grow their own crops, which they could sell at market. Owners were required to feed, attend to the health of their Slaves, properly clothe their Slaves. There were laws against harsh treatment of Slaves. Once again, there were those who were cruel, but the majority of Slave owners viewed Slaves under a Paternal Order.

Perhaps one of the most damning collections of documents can be found in what is called the Slave Narratives, but they are damning not to the South as much as of the North. Certainly slavery was a hideous institution, but the impression of that institution by our current “accepted and approved” history doesn’t quite stack up to the facts of reality. In many of the narratives of former slaves you will find a very, very different story not only about the institution of slavery, but about the South and how those former slaves viewed their Northern “liberators”. The truth is far more damning of the North than slavery itself was to the South. Another shocker is to read just how Unionist armies treated Slaves in conquered territories of the South it was, to be restrained, despicable, to say the least. Not to mention the general atrocities committed by Union armies on the general population of the South.

Read the Census data of 1860, the North repelled the possibility of free black immigration. In that year the black population in the North was 1.7%, strange that there was so little migration allowed into the North if the North was so concerned with the plight of Slaves. Do some research and find out just how the freed Slave were treated in the North, then read the Slave Chronicles and see how they were treated, for the most part, in the South.

To the surprise of many Northerners, especially the radical Northern Abolitionists and radical Republicans, there was no slave uprising when the War began. Not only that, but proportionally, there were a miniscule number of slaves, perhaps 10,000 at most, who ran away from the plantations. On the contrary, even when the majority of white plantation owners and managers left to join the Confederacy, the slaves remained without compulsion. What was even more surprising was the number of slaves who volunteered for service in the Confederate Army.

Read a booklet written by a Slave named Harrison Berry in 1861 called: Slavery and Abolitionism, as Viewed by a Georgia Slave, an amazing little book that completely contradicts and flies in the face of the accepted history of the South, the Union and Slavery. Read the 1864 report called: The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana it will make you sick. A British observer, Captain Fremantle witnessed an unusual site in a captured Northern town, he states that he saw a Confederate soldier leading a captured Union soldier down the street all alone, but the strange part of it was that the Confederate soldier was black. He went on to say: "This little episode of a Southern slave leading a white Yankee soldier through a Northern village, alone and on his own accord, would not have been gratifying to an abolitionist, nor would the sympathizers both in England and in the North feel encouraged if they could hear the language of detestation and contempt with which the numerous Negroes with Southern armies speak of their [Northern] liberators."

Former Slave and Legislator Richard Harris elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1890. On February 23, 1890 he delivered a speech on the floor:

"Mr. Speaker! I have arisen here in my place to offer a few words on the bill [raising funds for a Confederate Monument]. I have come from a sick bed, perhaps it was not prudent for me to come, but Sir, I could not rest quietly in my room without contributing a few remarks of my own. I was sorry to hear the speech of the young gentleman from Marshall County. I am sorry that any son of a soldier should go on record as opposed to the erection of a monument in honor of the brave dead. And, Sir, I am convinced that had he seen what I saw at Seven Pines and in the Seven Days' of fighting around Richmond, the battlefield covered with the mangled forms of those who fought for their country and for their country's honor, he would not have made that speech.

When the news came that the South had been invaded, those men went forth to fight for what they believed, and they made no requests for monuments. But they died, and their virtues should be remembered. Sir, I went with them. I too, wore the Gray, the same color my master wore. We stayed four long years, and if that war had gone on till now I would have been there yet. I want to honor those brave men who died for their convictions. When my mother died I was a boy. Who, Sir, then acted the part of a mother to the orphaned slave boy, but my "old missus"? Were she living now, or could speak to me from those high realms where are gathered the sainted dead, she would tell me to vote for this bill. And, Sir, I shall vote for it. I want it known to all the world that my vote is given in favor of the bill to erect a monument in honor of the Confederate dead."

On the day of the vote, former Slave John Harris was joined in equaled zeal by 6 other Black Representatives in the Mississippi Legislature to pass the bill for the Confederate Memorial. It is amazing how much history has been deliberately buried and suppressed.

I make no excuses what so every for slavery, nor racism, but when history is twisted for political means, by anyone, it is nothing more than a social construction intent on a particular type of control, primarily lending more power into the hands of politicians who are only too happy to legislate, regulate and ban any type of freedom they possibility can. Falsehoods about the actual history of the period are widespread and generally accepted, but in face of the facts those falsehoods are revealed for what they really are and no more.

Had the South wanted to "save" slavery they could have easily done so by simply taking Lincoln up on his offer and remaining in the Union with a lot less hardship, death and destruction. If slavery had been the issue then why would Lincoln ever try to make such a deal with the South?

So too, if slavery had been the cause of the North, then why on earth did Lincoln's "emancipation" only effect those slaves in the Confederacy and not in those areas under the control of the Union. All slaves within the areas that the Union Army controlled were not included in the "emancipation". Lincoln had not only the power, but the authority to free those within Union Occupied areas of the South, but he did not extend freedom to them...WHY?

Also, why, in the Slave Narratives, did a majority of slaves HATE and CONDEMN their Northern Union "liberators", calling them "blue devils"? Why, when the war began, did the vast majority, perhaps as many as 99% of the slaves choose to remain on the plantations instead of running away to the North, they were certain at liberty to leave since the majority of white plantation owners and white males had volunteered to serve in the Confederate Army? The slaves could have easily overrun the plantations in the absence of the white male owners, they could have plundered those plantations and simply ran away, but they choose to stay en masse.

If the North really cared about slavery or slaves then why did the Federal Union government and the Northern states allow nearly 1/4 of freed slaves to die within the first decade after the War? Why did the Northern States prevent, with "black code" laws, the freed slaves from entering their borders or settle in their States?

Slavery was horrible, of that there is no doubt, but the facts of that period have been so distorted by revisionist/unionist history that few are willing to scratch the "accepted history" to dig beyond the lies into the truth. Ignorance seems far more easy to swallow than the truth of history.

Alexis de Tocqueville stated upon his visit to the United States during the early 1800s that: “the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do in almost every Southern State.”

A famous Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, concerning the treatment of freed blacks in the North: “the free colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse, and their lot worse than that of the slaves.”

The Northern historian Frederick Law Olmsted was shocked to find the closeness of the relationships between slave and slave owner when he visited the South. He was surprised to see blacks and whites sitting together, not only in church, but also on trains and horse trolleys. Another Northern visitor to the South was equally surprised to find that the babes of white plantation owners were suckled at the breast of black nursemaids, he expressed his revulsion and contempt at the practice, but it was commonplace in the South to see such inter-racial practices.

In “The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South, Stampp states: “ Visitors often registered surprise at the social intimacy that existed between masters and slaves in certain situations. A Northerner saw a group near Natchez after hauling their cotton to market. Here they assumed a “cheek by jowl” familiarity with perfect good will and a mutual contempt for the nicer distinctions of color. This type of relationship could not be enforced with a whip, but it existed and was based on respect and love. Not only Northern historians but also Yankee soldiers spoke with contempt about the closeness of the relationship between slave and master.”

Union Pvt. John Haley of Maine, in his diary stated: “Two-hundred years of slavery have not elevated the nigger or his master. The only advancement has been in the way of unnatural selection; the line of demarcation between white and black in not as positive as true virtue demands, but is dimmed by a kind of neutral tint that cannot but be regarded with suspicion”. Indeed, whites in the North viewed the close relationships between slaves and their masters as something to be reviled and held in contempt. In the North, the whites kept the line of separation very clear and hard, there was no such intermingling in Northern society as there was found in the South.

I suppose a good place to start is to ask yourself how freed slaves were treated in the South as opposed to how they were treated in the North? I think you will be very surprised to find that in the South, freed blacks were welcomed as a part, a productive part of the comities in which they lived, while in the North they were ostracized and their presence was criminalized with some of the harshest penalties imaginable.

Another interesting fact is the actual physical health conditions of slaves and freed blacks in the South opposed to the North. Among whites in the North and South, 1 in 1000 was deaf, dumb, blind, suffering from various diseases. For the few freed blacks in the North that number was 1 out of 500 while, in comparison, slaves in the South only suffered such conditions in the number of 1 out of every 1464 persons. Now, if the slaves in the South were treated so badly, so cruelly, and then why was their health even better than those of the white population?

Now, I am sure that people would find it shocking to find that over 70% of those former slaves in the Slave Narratives presented not only favorable statements, but even very loving statements concerning their treatment by their owners and about their owners themselves. That should be shocking, especially since we have build our understanding of slavery and the South around a book [Uncle Toms Cabin] written by a woman who have never been in the South or even had contact with a slave.

Many of the slaves in those two massive volumes stated that they felt they were much better off in slavery than many, in fact the vast majority of poor white Southerners. In fact many of them expressed the regret that they were freed in the manner in which they were emancipated. The South, as I stated, had been preparing for emancipation for years, but the leadership in the South recognized that if such liberation was not done properly that the freed slave would only suffer horribly, which they did, in massive, unbelievable numbers. The fact is that the black population of America today still suffers from the effects of a poorly thought-out and poorly executed emancipation. Yes, there is no doubt that there was evidence of mistreatment, cruelty and yes murder, but the evidence state that such actions were the exception, not the rule.

The radical Northern Abolitionists were horrified when they learned that not only did the slave population not rise up in rebellion against their Southern white owners, but that they remained and even volunteered to assist the Confederacy against what they considered invaders of their own country. Another interesting fact is that among the hundreds of thousands of freed slaves living in the South prior to the War, that most of them remained in the South and supported the Confederate cause. Those free slaves were free, they could have easily left the South when the War began and went North, but they remained and followed their conscience by supporting the Confederacy.

Remember, the white male population [age 16 and above] of the South left the plantations, small farms and the cities to serve in the War. The fact is that the Confederate government sought to limit the number of volunteers entering the Army during the first year, the countryside was bear of white men, and they all went to fight the War. There was so little oversight on the plantations that if the slave population wanted to revolt or leave it would have been relatively easy to leave without resistance at that point. The only white people left in vast tracts of the South were small children, women and the elderly. The only problem with leaving was not found in the South, but in the North. Have you ever wondered why the “underground railroad” didn’t stop in the North, but actually ended in Canada? The fact of the matter is that fewer than 10,000 slaves ever sought to escape by the “underground railroad” that was less than 1% of the entire slave population of the South. Even during the invasion of the deep South, with Union lines close at hand, few slaves choose to run-away to the Union Army even though it would have proved very easy and safe to do so.

If you read the 1850 U.S. Census, you will find that many of the former slaves were some of the wealthiest people in major Southern cities, including New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, Atlanta, Richmond, and Baltimore. In fact, in my own city of Charleston, SC during the 1850s, former freed black women were not only some of the wealthiest, but one out of four freed slave women in the city were also slave owners themselves. I have met and interviewed the descendents of many of those freed slaves, read their letters and journals, and the plantation records of those owned by former slaves in this State, it is an eye-opener, to say the least. By 1840, there were over 500 former slaves that owned huge plantations in South Carolina and also engaged in slave ownership themselves. Not only were the freed slaves in the South much better educated, in fact you will find that most of the slaves in captivity were well trained in numerous trades. As a class, freed slaves in the South were not only much better off, but better treated and educated than those in the North.

Yes, there were laws, passed not only by the South concerning slaves fighting for the North but vice-versa. If you read the Congressional Official Records: War of the Rebellion, you will find that there were numerous cases of Union Soldiers invading plantations, not liberating the slaves, but raping, plundering, sodomizing and pressing black males into service. Any slave that was caught “deserting” the Union was summarily hung or beaten to death. Another good read on the abuses and crimes committed by the Union is “Union Army and Navy Excesses in the Official Record.”

In Virginia, Union General Innis Palmer wrote to General Butler in 1864, in the letter he states: “The negroes will not go voluntarily, so I am obliged to force them. The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers [slaves] has been of some difficulty. They must be forced to go. This may be considered a harsh measure, but we must not stop at trifles”

The truth of the matter is that the slaves feared their Union “liberators”; they had heard the stories of those slaves who escaped the grips of the Union Army. There was so little respect shown to the slave population by the Union personnel and the treatment, on whole was so despicable that few slaves considered such a freedom as an option. The reports, in the Official Record, describe the Union Army and Navy’s treatment of those slaves they pressed into service as fare more harsh and cruel than anything the slaves face on the plantations.

There is a very good little book written by Harrison Berry in 1861 entitled “Slavery and Abolitionism as Viewed by a Georgia Slave”. The mere fact that a slave could actually read and write smacks in the face of the commonly held belief that slaves were prohibited from such education. Sure, there were laws against it, but you will find that not only were slaves educated, many times with the plantation owners children, but that they also attended Southern churches with whites, of course the Reconstruction period put an end to that with the Union League’s attempt to spawn extreme racial strife in the South. A Special Senate Committee later, in the 1890s, found that the KKK would have never been formed in the South had it not been for the horrendous acts of burning, murder and racial conflict that the Union League committed in the South after the War.

There were thousands of black Confederates, estimates are nearly 200,000 by the end of the War. They were armed, yet instead of turning on their Confederate compatriots, they fought bravely against the invading hoard of Union soldiers. Indeed, there is ample evidence that Union morale was severely lowered by the fact that blacks were fighting against them. It is common to find such stories in the letters of Union soldiers and the impact black Confederates had on the Union soldier.

There is, in fact, so much testimony that totally contradicts the accepted history that we should wonder why that accepted history continues to be propagated in this country? That is a question that every American, especially every black American should be asking.

You state that the idea of mutiny and revolt among the slaves was not a realistic idea; well it was not my idea, but that of the Northern Radical Republicans and Abolitionists. They thought the slaves would rise up in a similar manner as those did in Jamaica and Haiti. The fact is that the Northern Abolitionists fully expected such a “mutiny” among the Southern slaves and when it didn’t materialize, even when the Union Army “liberated” vast areas of the Confederacy, they were not only perplexed, but also extremely angry. While you are under the impression that the South was a massive “police” state, especially during the War, preventing slaves from leaving en masse, then you are gravely mistaken, the vast majority of white males, as I stated, were fighting the War, mainly in the Northern part of Virginia.

I think you have bought into a painted story, your people, as well as my wife’s people, were not as uneducated as you have been led to believe. Many were much more highly trained in trades than 92% of Southerners who were extremely poor, uneducated and scraping to eek out a living. Many slaves were highly skilled, not only at agriculture, but also in masonry, carpentry; they were metal smiths, potters, plasterers, artisans and even engineers in bridge construction, water-works and iron-works. Proportionally, the slave population was far more educated and skilled than the majority of whites in the South. Come to Charleston, I will show you some of the most wondrous works of skilled hands in the world, and those creations were made by slave hands, who, from every account that I found, not only enjoyed their crafts, but were highly sought after in this city. You really have been spoon-fed a crock concerning your own people’s history and their contributions, not only to the South, but also to civilization. I am sorry to bust your bubble, but without the black population, even in the horrible grasp of slavery, this country would be nothing today.

I could go on and on, there are volumes of real history to be found if we would only look.

the argument is not whether slavery was evil, we know that fact, but if we are to understand the intricacies of that institution and the social structure built upon it then would it not behoove us to investigate the facts regardless of the emotions we may have on the subject? Are we to blind ourselves to the reality of the period because we hold a deep repulsive emotional response to the subject? I prefer to delve into the facts regardless of my own personal feelings on the subject and let the fact speak for themselves, not regarding a moral judgment on the subject, but to actually find out what that life was like.

Oh, there is no other judgment of the institution of slavery but condemnation, of that we agree, but that is not what I am seeking to explore. I think you also have the wrong impression of what I am saying. I am not making excuses for the institution of slavery, I am however, saying that the picture we have been taught over the years has been distorted and it has painted to show the North as heroic while portraying the South as totally cruel. After all, the whole intent of the original article was about the Confederate Battle Flag and the generalization that it is a symbol of hate.

My points have been in response to the original article, which sought to condemn a piece of heritage, the Confederate Battle Flag while it seemed to ignore the rest of history that surrounds that period. Particularly the acts of the federal government under Radical Republican rule. The vast majority of history takes a view that the North was heroic in its actions when just the opposite was true, and that is what I find offensive.

Yes, Africans were kidnapped from their land, tortured, murdered by Northern slave traders. Africans were also involved with the slave trade in Africa, raiding neighboring tribes, kidnapping people not only to enslave them but also to sell them to slavers. There were no innocents involved in the slave trade, whether that trade was trans-Atlantic or internal in Africa itself. There were very few hands without the guilt of slave blood during that period and centuries before.

I am not seeking to make a moral judgment about slavery, there is absolutely no room for a moral judgment for it was completely and absolutely immoral, that is not the argument that I have sought to impart. I have sought to explore the facts behind the institution, behind the social structures of the period, the reality of that life without bringing the need to judge it on its morality because it is already condemned. The point is to understand the attitudes of that period, the way those attitudes expressed themselves in that society.

Slave owners were people, some good some very bad. On a whole however, I have found that even though they were engaged in that horrible act of slavery, which was an economic institution, there were those who followed a very specific code of stewardship over their slaves. I have read the codes of stewardship and it contradicts the impression that every slave owner was cruel and harsh in their treatment of their slaves. I mean I grew up thinking that every slave was whipped, starved, sold off when they came of age being separated from their families, but when I began to research the issues of slavery I found a very different story.

Around the world, poor free people starved, even in the South, nearly 92% of the white population bordered, at times, on starvation. As I stated, nearly 70% of the Slave Narratives portray a positive view of their time in slavery, this doesn’t imply that slavery was good, but that they viewed their captivity in ways that we simply can’t understand today. Today, we can’t understand how a slave could volunteer to fight along side his master, or to simply volunteer to fight with the Confederacy, but it happened and there was a reason behind such volunteerism that we simply fail to grasp in our modern minds. We view slavery from a very different point of view today than it was viewed then, by both slave and free.

The code of duties of slave owners was very specific, while there were, as I said, exceptions to the rule; those duties compelled the slave owner to provide for the slaves under his responsibility. I was very surprised to learn about the social duties and responsibilities that slave owners were expected to maintain regarding their slaves. The duties included hours of labor, holidays, leisure time, the “Sabbath”, housing, clothing, payment for any overtime worked, the care for the sick and elderly and even the responsibility for those who were hired as overseers. While there has been a widely held view, a stereotypical view, of the inhumanity of the slave owners, the truth is far from that. I mean I held that view for decades until I began to read more on the subject. As I stated, I do not excuse the fact that there were acts of cruelty, but as a whole the picture that I see is totally different. This in now way excuses the horrible institution of slavery, but it should not exclude delving into the issue for factual information.

Slavery was a reality, that fact cannot be avoided or changed despite our emotional feelings on the subject, but we should not avoid the reality of that period just to mollify our emotional outrage on the subject. Once again, I have never said that slavery was a good thing, but that the picture that has been painted of it is erroneous. The subject, once again, is not the defense of slavery as an institution, nor is it that those who engaged in the institution were better or worse, the subject is whether the issue has been explored beyond the stereotypical understanding in this country.

By the way, in South Carolina, in 1830, the proportional percentage of white ownership of slaves was only about 1.4% of the white population, while the population of freed slaves who owned slaves was around 25%. Such facts underscore that even former slaves of the period viewed slavery in a very different way then we do today. I mean it boggles my mind that someone who was enslaved could turn around and enslave others. Certainly, some of those former slaves purchased relatives, of that there is no doubt, but here in South Carolina it was a practice that went beyond protecting those who were relatives, it was an economic system that they not only accepted, but many highly profited from during that time.

Of course, it is easy to forget that slavery was not just a white institution; it was also a long practice in Africa itself, whether it be by the North African Arabs or Africans Tribes themselves. In fact, slavery was practiced in Africa long before a white man set foot on its shores. The African kingdom of Ashanti was actually very upset when the British outlawed the slave trade because much of the wealth of that kingdom came from the trade of slaves. There is evidence as far back as the middle ages that West African kingdoms sold their own people to Muslim traders in exchange for goods. Slavery was a particular institution that had roots far deeper than those found in this country. By the time slavery was abolished in this country there were many more slaves owned by blacks in Africa then in the United States. This is a hard fact, one that is horrifying and astounding, but it wasn’t that whites or even Arabs of the period between the 1600s and the 1800s thought that blacks were a race to be singled out to be slaves, it was the fact that Africans were the only ones around the world who were selling their own people. That is a horrible and disturbing fact of that period. It is estimated that over 12 million Africans were sold by Africans, whether from competing tribes or inter-tribal trade.

Concerning the “happiness” of slaves, you state that you can guarantee that none were happy or none wanted to be slaves, how can you do that? Most slaves knew nothing else but the life they were born in, that was “normal” to them therefore they really had no relative concept of what freedom meant or how it would affect them one way or another. Once again, in the Slave Narratives, many expressed the attitude that they were better off under the slave system then under harsh circumstances of the emancipation. The knew nothing else, that is not an excuse for slavery, but fact of their lives at that point. They didn’t know what it meant to be free so it would have been relatively impossible for them to crave that which they had never had.

The question is what did freedom mean to those who were enslaved? While I condemn the institution of slavery, that does not mean that I must neglect the reality of the facts that history presents to us concerning that time and the institution of slavery itself.

It was common for elderly and dying plantation owners to include his slaves in his will, in most cases his slaves were freed upon his death. Not only was that common, but it was not uncommon for the will of the dead master to will his slaves land and money to start a new life in freedom.

Hannah Irwin, a former slave stated: “I suppose the Yankees was all right in their place, but they never belonged in the South. As for them setting me free! We on the Bennett place were free as soon as we were born. I’ve always been free!”

Aunt Adeline, a former slave said: “After the war many soldiers came to my mistress, Mrs Blakely, trying to make her free me. I told them I was free but I didn’t want to go anywhere, that I wanted to stay in the only home I ever known. Sometimes I was threaten for not leaving but I stayed on.”

Betty Curlett said: “When Mars Daniel come home he went to my papa’s house and said ‘John, you free’ Papa said: ‘I been free as I want to be what I is’.”

Cora Gilliam, said: “I tell you lady, if the rough element from the North had stayed out of the South the trouble of reconstruction would not have happened. They tried to excite the colored against their white friends. The white folks was still kind to them what had been their slaves. The would have helped them get started. I know that. I always say that if the South could have been left to adjust itself both white and colored would have been better off.”

Now it is interesting to consider that in the North there were very militant, very radical abolitionists. The only problem is that those Northern Abolitionists had tunnel vision toward the South while ignoring the North. They were paid contributions by the very people, the Northern Industrialists, who bought, for their textile mills, Southern cotton picked by slaves and the Abolitionist also seemed to have a rather close relationship to the actual Shipping companies who traded in slave flesh up to the later part of the 1850s.

The problem about that was the Northern Industrialist and Shippers knew that the Abolitionists would never be able to emancipate the slaves in the South, but they knew that the Abolitionists could agitate politics to the point of war, and that is what the Northern Industrialists wanted, it would be the perfect time to plunder the wealth of the South.

Another heinous hypocrisy of the Northern Abolitionists was their attitude toward the child labor in the Northern Mills, why ignore one form of slavery while condemning another? Well, the answer to that is: “follow the money”. The horrible conditions that children, of both black and white, in the Northern Mills had to endure was far worse than the majority of Southern slaves had to endure. Children were whipped, maimed, killed in those mills, but the Abolitionists turned a blind eye, the same blind eye that they turned from the slave traders in the North.

By the way, it is estimated that there were close to 800 slave ships in Northern Ports, even up to the time of the War, the Northern Slave trade continued. Why would the Abolitionist focus on the South while conditions in the North were probably worse in terms of conditions, and was the main culprit in the slave trade? For every slave the Northern slaver ships brought into America, they sold 10 in the Caribbean and South America, but that fact was ignored the Northern Abolitionist and politicians.

It is a stance of intellectual bankruptcy to conclude the feelings of those who were held in the captivity of the institution of slavery when there are thousands of examples of testimony to the contrary. This does not presuppose that there were not horrendous examples of cruelty, but from my readings of existing documentation, there were far more examples of a reciprocal relationship between slaves and slave owners, between their families and the social structure of the period.

I am not a Southern Apologist for the institution of slavery, I am however a very proud Son of Confederate Veterans. The vast majority of Southerners were not slave owners, who cared less about fighting for the survival of slavery in the South, but fought for their country, under their flag, for the same reasons the Revolutionary War was fought.

By the way, there are also black Sons of Confederate Veterans who are just as proud of their heritage under the banner of the Confederacy. The South recognized as far back as the 1840s that slavery was a dying institution; it was an even heavy moral millstone around the necks of even slave owners of the period. It is hard to realize today that the South contained far more Abolitionists than were found in the North.

As I stated, there was a plan in place for the eventual elimination of the institution in the South, one which would ensure not only that the lives of former slaves would be secure in their freedom, but that they would be given every opportunity to succeed in that freedom and adjust to it as they integrated into the various communities. That plan however was preempted by Lincoln’s War machine, which was purely political and economical at its inception and had nothing to do with the plight of the slaves in the South.

There are also numerous, perhaps hundreds of freed Slave songs that give a very different view of slave life than the one we have been accustom to about the institution and the life of the slave.

For instance:

“I’ve hoed in fields of cotton,
I’ve worked upon the river
And I always thought if I got away
I would go back, no never!
But times have changed the old man
My head is bending low
My heart turns back to Dixie
And to Dixie I must go!”

What does all of this mean, well from my reading and research it shows that it is impossible for us in our modern mentality to impose out attitudes on factual history. We have absolutely no concept of the feelings, the attitudes and the reasoning of those who were held in slavery and those who held those people in slavery. We are quick to accept a history that has been carefully varnished over, but that polished history is not always in concert with the facts of the period.

It is, or at least it should be, obvious that slavery was not the only moral wrong that was committed in this country. The fact that the South was engaged in the dying institution of slavery, a moral wrong introduced into this country during the 1600s does not automatically make all other actions taken by the South morally wrong.

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"The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form." ~Jefferson Davis