Intro to ‘Purging History’
John R. Houk Editor
Posted June 10, 2017
Those horrible White slave owners of American history should
be purged, right? NO!
Ending slavery was an awesome end result of the Northern
States defeating the Southern States by the end of 1865. Regardless of the
immoral slave culture these Southern Confederates tried to perpetuate, many
were great Christians and supporter of the heritage of the Declaration of
Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
The break-away Confederate States had their capital city in
Richmond Virginia. The Confederate’s primary general was Robert E. Lee from
Virginia. Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson was raised in what is now West Virginia,
but was a part of Virginia at the beginning of the Civil War.
Why the emphasis on Civil War Virginia? George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all came from Virginia – former British
Colony turned into one of the original Thirteen States. Those three Virginians
were extremely instrumental in the formation and founding of the sovereign United
States of America.
Washington:
Commander-in-Chief the Revolutionary War army that ultimately prevailed and
forced the recognition of an independent United States; President of the
Constitutional Convention AND the first President of the United States.
Jefferson: Writer of the
Declaration of Independence; Revolutionary War Foreign Diplomat; much of
Jefferson’s Virginia legislation influenced the U.S. Constitution but not a fan
of the Constitution central government yet an ardent supporter once ratified
AND third President of the United States.
Madison: Madison was
involved in Virginia politics during the Revolutionary War widely influential
in writing Virginia’s new State Constitution; wrote the drafts of the U.S.
Constitution and designed the Bill of Rights – hence known as the Father of the
Constitution; one of the principle writers of The Federal Papers used to
encourage the ratification of the Constitution AND the fourth President of the
United States.
Now I realize my little synopsis of Founding Father heroes
of our American is hardly complete. Also I realize that many other influential
Founding Fathers both in and out of Virginia are not mentioned. MY POINT is
leading to the fact these remarkably influential Virginia Founding Fathers ALL
were slave-owning Plantation businessmen of their day.
Should we allow the hysterical American Left to purge their
names from U.S. history?
Justin Smith wonders why We The People of America allow
Confederate history to be scrubbed because of slavery? Here are some
introductory words from Justin Smith:
This piece is by no means intended
to defend the evils of slavery or the sins committed by slave owners. It is
simply an attempt to illustrate the fallacies relied upon by the Left as they
attempt to portray the Civil War only in the context of the slave issue; it
truly was much more complex than most people understand, and this one article
barely scratches the surface. Now however, the past is being improperly used as
a tool of commie progressives to undermine America, as much as they are allowed
by the normal population of America.
I hope this peaks the curiosity of many and moves them to halt these sort of movements whenever they arise near them or in their home towns.
I hope this peaks the curiosity of many and moves them to halt these sort of movements whenever they arise near them or in their home towns.
JRH 6/10/17
***************
Purging History
By Justin O. Smith
Sent 6/8/2017 4:20 PM
Monuments honoring heroes of the Confederate States of
America, American heroes in fact, are being removed from the public square, due
to a successful presentation of oversimplified arguments and lies by the same
progressive Leftist Democratic apparatus that seeks to fundamentally transform
America. These assaults on the Southern heritage by politically correct
propagandists and arrogant activist ideologues are assaults on our American
culture and heritage, or "AmeriKKKa" as the Left calls America; and,
it is nothing short of a cultural cleansing campaign, a purging of the truth
and history and a national disgrace.
In 2015, the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP called for the destruction
of the Stone Mountain Confederate Monument,
that honors Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall
Jackson. They wanted the nearly 2000 square feet and 12 feet deep carving
"sandblasted away".
In February, the city council of Charlottesville, VA sought to remove Robert
E. Lee's likeness from its 100 year resting place. They have been temporarily blocked by a lawsuit filed by
the Monument Fund and 29 other plaintiffs.
Soon protests arose in Charlottesville and NAACP President Rick Turner told the crowds:
"I think a decision must be made to remove the statue by any means
necessary."
However, the City of New Orleans successfully removed the Battle of Liberty Place obelisk
on April 24th and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard
on May 11th and May 17th, consecutively. The statue of Robert E. Lee was removed
from New Orlean's Lee Circle on May 19th, while other efforts are appearing
nationwide, in places like Houston and Baltimore.
[Blog Editor: A great pro-history article at The Federalist.]
Starting in 1784, Thomas Jefferson and many righteous men
afterwards attempted to abolish slavery until the end of the Civil War,
including former slave owners such as James Madison. It is worth observing that
while General Ulysses S. Grant owned one slave
and his wife owned four slaves until 1859, General Robert E. Lee never owned
any [Blog Editor: The no-slave claim is disputed. WaPo says yes & another
source implies no. The “no” is
representative of R.E. Lee’s disposition against slavery
even though he managed his wife’s inherited slaves as a Plantation owner until Lee freed them by order of his
father-in-law’s will.].
General Beauregard's statue was taken down in the dark of
night and Lee's was coming down, when New Orlean's Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D)
revealed an astounding level of ignorance of history, stating: "They may have
been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These monuments
celebrate a fictional sanitized Confederacy." Landrieu could not be any
more egregiously wrong.
On December 27th 1856, Robert E.
Lee wrote to his wife: "Slavery as an institution is a moral and political
evil in any country ... a greater evil to the white than to the black race ...
nearly two thousand years [of Christianity] ... and even among the Christian
nations what gross errors still exist!"
Many Confederate generals did not want to secede and neither
did Jefferson Davis. More than the issue of slavery that had profited both New
England slave traders and Southern plantation owners, the South saw secession
as a necessity in the face of the unfair tariffs the North had applied against
the South from 1828 to 1832 and beyond. And so, they too pledged their lives,
fortune and sacred honor as they seceded from an oppressive federal government
to retain their sovereignty, their Constitutional rights and a free government.
President Abraham Lincoln was not any "Great
Emancipator" himself. On August 22nd 1862, he wrote a
letter to Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, who
supported a general amnesty for Confederate officials and angered Northeners by
signing a bail bond for Jefferson Davis. In part the letter read: "If I
could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could
save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by
freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
So why do the Leftist mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter
castigate, impugn and demonize the character and honor of a noble man such as
Robert E. Lee, while giving Ulysses S. Grant a pass?
General PGT Beauregard was a St Bernard Parrish native and a
man of contradictions, who spent most of his non-military life in New Orleans.
He fired the first shots in a war to preserve states rights and slavery, and
yet in defeat, Beauregard argued passionately for the
right of black people to vote.
So, Beauregard is impugned, while a statue of Senator Edward
Carmack (D-TN) still stands in Nashville on the south side of Tennessee's State
Capitol Building. Carmack advocated for the repeal of the
15th Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote; he was
also the editor of the 'Nashville Tennessean' and a coward, who was shot and
killed, on Union St. in Nashville, as he hid behind Mrs. Charles Eastman
after firing on Duncan Cooper, his nemesis.
It is nearly impossible to find any truth behind the Left's
assertions, that they are campaigning against the "white supremacy"
symbolized by Confederate monuments, when most Confederate soldiers did not own
slaves by the time the Civil War was burning hot. To claim that the majority of
non-slaveholder soldiers, who fought for the South, could have fought and
sacrificed their lives and those of their families, so a minority of wealthy
aristocrats could retain the "right" to own slaves is preposterous on
any analysis.
The logic behind these character assassinations make it
inescapably clear that the Left will not be satisfied until every white figure
who doesn't pass their "progressive" scrutiny is cleansed from the
Southern culture and American culture too. How much truth must be sacrificed to
mold history to fit a single strain of a prevailing political ideology?
Mitch Landrieu and Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and many
other Democrats, along with some misguided and ill-informed
"conservatives" say that these men don't deserve to be honored. Who
does then?
President McKinley had fought against "Stonewall"
Jackson, as a teenager, in the Shenandoah. McKinley was at Antietam, the
bloodiest single-day battle of the Civil War; and at the start of the
Spanish-American War, when Southern volunteers and former Confederate soldiers
paraded through Atlanta to fight for a united America, McKinley removed his hat
and stood for the singing of 'Dixie'.
Nearly half of the fifty-five members of the Constitutional
Convention owned slaves or facilitated the slave trade. Is anything associated
with Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison and other Founders now considered to be immoral too?
Are Americans really going to allow more monuments to be
torn down? Are Americans going to sandblast Stone Mountain Confederate Monument
and even Mount Rushmore, sandblasting away our American Heritage? I say
"NO".
Left unrestrained, the radicals of this nation will attempt
to purge and destroy every vestige of anything remotely associated with any
slaveholder. Our Constitution and even our Declaration of Independence have
long been under their assaults, because both were written by white men and
slave-owners, and these amended documents halt their own authoritarian agenda.
They would scrap these documents altogether if they could, placing them in the
dustbin of history and divesting them of honor.
A history hidden away and purged is a half-truth and a lie,
no history at all. America's sins in slavery are despicable, abominable and
dark, however, Her inalienable rights that served as the mechanism to end
slavery are virtues to be praised, brilliant as a rising sun.
By Justin O. Smith
_________________
Edited by John R. Houk
All links as well as text
enclosed by brackets are by the Editor.
© Justin O. Smith
