Chapter 1 Why This Book
© 2002 Frank Conner

"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was."
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera

"If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them."
- Something of Value, by Robert Ruark

Today the U.S. social fabric continues to be shredded by a series of battles in a cultural war that was proclaimed clearly as such in the late 1980s. Today we see almost-daily battles over: preferential treatment of "victim" groups; the banishment of Christian values from the mores enforced by federal, state, and local governments; unlimited sex and violence in our mass-entertainment media; the steady destruction of the family; theoretical rehabilitation versus real punishment of criminals; a socialist government versus a constitutional republic; environmentalism as a means of totalitarian control; animal rights; and on and on and on....

Actually, this cultural war has raged unabated since the 1830s, when Northern liberals decided to supplant Christianity with secular humanism as the official religion, and they selected the religious South as their battleground. To under-stand what the war is really all about, we shall review the battles of Northern secularism against Southern Christianity-many of which have been fought under the banner of black civil-rights.

As those battles continue today, the opinion makers are attacking the Old South with ever-increasing rancor. They are deliberately distorting and smearing the South's history almost beyond recognition. For example, nowadays black activists routinely compare the Confederate soldiers with World-War-II Nazi concentration-camp guards; and the news media broadcast such unspeakable comparisons as straight news.

If all of that were simply a matter of childish name-calling, perhaps the white South would do best to continue ignoring it. But as this book points out, the present-day vilification of the Confederacy is part of a long-term ideological war being waged against the conservative white South for the purpose of destroying the Southerners as a people and rendering them socially, politically, and economically impotent. Therefore the white South should take those attacks against the Confederacy very seriously, for its own future survival. The main argument supporting those attacks is that the 1861-65 "Civil War" was fought and won by the North primarily for the purpose of freeing the slaves; and it was fought and lost by the South primarily to defend slavery-a sin of such magnitude that it now justifies the use of any and all epithets to demonize the Confederates.

The liberals' second supporting argument: the Southern states were so eager to wage bloody warfare against the North to promote slavery that they attempted unlawfully to secede from the Union, and then started the war by gratuitously bombarding and capturing a peaceful U.S. Army garrison at Fort Sumter in the mouth of Charleston Harbor. This cowardly sneak attack fully justified the North's awesome retaliation; and all of the ensuing bloodshed was exclusively the fault of the South.

The third supporting argument: the white South has always been bitterly prejudiced against the blacks-while in sharp contrast, the North has not exhibited any such prejudice. Thus the Northern liberals have been fully justified in using the full powers of the federal government to intrude frequently into the affairs of the white South for the sole purpose of benefitting the blacks. And because the white South is the unique repository of racial prejudice in the United States, it richly deserves whatever chastisements may now be heaped upon it by the federal government, the news media, the civil-rights activists, and its other antagonists.

These arguments are stated or implied in most of the contemporary history books, and are aired frequently in the classrooms (Northern and Southern), in newspaper editorials, on TV, in motion pictures, and in the courtrooms. Thus, the liberals' three main arguments are increasingly accepted as inarguable fact; and their proponents use them as weapons to discredit and suppress the culture and values of the traditional South.

There is only one flaw in that approach: not a single one of those arguments is true.

But if such be the case, why then are those arguments so pervasive? Because he who wins a war gets to write the history books about it. In starting and then waging the "Civil War" to its gory conclusion, the U.S. government perpetrated sins of a magnitude and quantity unparalleled in American history. Thereafter, the government wished desperately to hide those sins beneath a heavy coat of whitewash. Since most of the accredited historians were (and are) Northern liberals (later joined by Scalawag liberals-i.e., Southern turncoats) in full sympathy with the nationalist aims and actions of the federal government, they have cooperated willingly to supply the whitewash ever since the war.

Legitimate historians draw their facts from believable primary sources (such as the U.S. War Department's The War of the Rebellion; Hay and Nicolay; etc.). However, to make the North come out looking good after the "Civil War," the mainstream historians were very selective about the facts they chose; and where necessary, they distorted many of those facts drastically.

Most Southern historians kept their heads down and their mouths shut from the end of the war until the end of the 19th century, because the North still held the South in the iron grip of poverty-with the ever-present threat of further government intervention.

Much later, in the 1960s, the teaching of history in the North and the South fell under the despotic control of the Gramsci Marxists (where it mostly remains today). But during the first half of the 20th century, a few respected Southern history professors found a window of opportunity and researched facts about the war which the party-line historians had ignored so carefully for so long. Accordingly, those Southerners' works-which are built upon legitimate primary sources-draw a very different picture of the relations between the North and the South since the 1830s.

For example, the Southern states did not secede from the Union in 1860-61 because they thought the institution of slavery was threatened-it was not; slavery was specifically protected by the U.S. Constitution. Without a war, the North could not possibly have rounded up enough free states to ratify a constitutional amendment ending slavery until the very-late 1800s-by which time the South would have found a way to emancipate the slaves gradually. The South knew that.

The South seceded because the Republican party's platform for the election of 1860 spelled immediate and irrevocable financial doom for the South if Lincoln were elected president and the Republican party gained control of Congress, and the Southern states then remained in the Union. Lincoln was elected; the Republicans won control of Congress; and the Southern states began to secede.

Lincoln's first inaugural address notwithstanding, the Southern states had every legal right-under the U.S. Constitution-to secede from the Union and form their own nation in 1861. Even a brief study of the history and content of the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution makes that point unquestionably clear. The Confederate States of America was a legitimate separate nation which made every effort to go its way in peace.

The United States of America did not invade and conquer the Confederate States of America to free the slaves. Although Lincoln announced his clear intent to wage war against the South in his first inaugural address, he said up front that it would not be for the reason of ending slavery (because he knew that most Northerners would not risk their lives for that cause, which was of no interest to him, either). He announced that the war would be fought to "preserve the Union."

The primary purpose of the "Civil War" was to drag the Southern states back into the Union at bayonet point, so the Northern capitalists could then squeeze the South dry financially, and in that process become fabulously wealthy themselves. Had the South remained free, most of those capitalists would have lost vast for-tunes; and as a consequence, they would have blamed President Lincoln for that disaster, and hung him out to dry politically.

The war was started single-handedly by President Lincoln shortly after he took office, to shore up his excruciatingly vulnerable political position at the beginning of his first term, and to pave the way for his reelection in 1864. He rigged a trap for the South. When Lincoln took office, the principal U.S. Army commanders recommended that their garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina be evacuated immediately, because it was now located in a foreign country. Instead, Lincoln sent U.S. Navy warships with 500 additional soldiers and much additional war-materiel to reinforce the garrison. That was clearly an act of war on Lincoln's part.

When the warships were en route to invade Charleston Harbor, Lincoln informed the Confederacy that he was about to resupply Fort Sumter peacefully or by force. Lincoln had left the Confederates no practical recourse but to fire upon and capture the fort (which refused to surrender) before his warships arrived to join the battle. The Confederates captured the fort. The Northern newspapers screamed that the South had made war against innocent Union soldiers. Having thus gotten his excuse for war, Lincoln unconstitutionally called up Northern armies and sent them to invade and conquer the Confederate States of America.

Did the U.S. government change its reason for fighting during the course of the war, as evidenced by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? The Great Emancipator himself admitted that the document was unconstitutional, written solely for propaganda purposes. It had been drafted very carefully to avoid freeing a single slave owned by any slaveholder in any region where the U.S. government then governed. (Sometimes Northern armies did "free" the slaves in the Southern states they overran, however-for the purpose of impressing those blacks into the Union Army's labor battalions.)

The South did not-as is argued today-fight the war for the purpose of advancing the institution of slavery. When the Northern armies invaded the Con-federate States of America at Lincoln's command, the Southerners fought desperately to defend their nation, their homes, and their families against the bloody onslaught of a cruel foe who was intent upon subjugating or destroying them. That was the South's reason for fighting the war. The Southern slaves understood that, and most of them cooperated fully. With old white men, women, and children then running most of the plantations and farms, the slaves could-with impunity-have staged an insurrection, bringing the war to a swift close. But they did not. The black civil-rights activists of today carefully ignore those points.

Until now I have enclosed the term, the "Civil War," in quotation marks. That is because most dictionaries agree that a civil war is a war between two factions within a country for control of the government of that country. Obviously that is not what happened here. The Confederate States of America-a separate nation-never had the slightest desire to take control of the U.S. government; it wished merely to coexist peacefully with the United States. Yet "Civil War" is the propaganda name the North has bestowed upon its war, in order to help clean up its own image-the name which greets you in every history book and almost every other reference to that war. The name is a blatant lie; yet it is used almost universally.

The United States of America attacked and conquered the Confederate States of America for the purpose of forcing the Southern states back into the Union at bayonet point and converting them into dirt-poor agricultural colonies of the Northern capitalists. Thus, a more-honest name for the war is the "War of Northern Aggression;" and that is what I call it henceforth in this essay.

In waging that war to further his own political career, President Lincoln was directly responsible for the deaths of 623,000 men, the maiming of hundreds of thousands more, and the destruction and destitution of the South. And with that war he destroyed forever the unique principle upon which the United States had been founded: government with the consent of the governed. Thereafter, the United States became just another bayonet-rule country which paid lip service to "freedom." But the rest of the U.S. government went along with Lincoln at the time-or found no satisfactory way to head him off at the pass; so when the war was over, they had to whitewash Honest Abe and his cynical policies in order to justify their own roles.

Why did the U.S. government free the slaves after the war? It was the Northern-based Republican party-with Lincoln at its helm-which prosecuted the war against the South. During the war, the Radical Republican leaders saw clearly that they would lose control of the federal government as soon as the Southern states were forced back into the Union, because the Republican party would be numerically smaller than the combined Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic party when they were reunited after the war. The Republicans could retain power in the postwar era only by preventing most of the white Southerners from voting (as Democrats); while at the same time freeing the slaves and enfranchising them to vote (as Republicans). That was the noble reasoning behind the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and behind the imposition of Reconstruction upon the South. Those measures gave the Republicans the time they needed to increase their constituency into a majority, through patronage and other means.

Some Northern states refused to go along with the Republicans' raw power play, so the Radical Republicans in Congress had to resort to wildly unconstitutional chicanery to ram their program of enfranchising the blacks through the political machinery. But the Republicans' strategy eventually succeeded so brilliantly that-except for most of Woodrow Wilson's two terms in office-the Republican Party kept control of Congress or the presidency or both (usually both) from 1865 through 1932.

In return for the Southern black vote, the Republicans systematically condemned most of those ex-slaves to lives of near starvation.

Since the 1830s, the Northern liberals have consistently used the blacks as a political weapon against the white South. But by their actions (as opposed to their rhetoric), the liberals have demonstrated consistently that they care little or nothing about the true welfare of the blacks.

The history of the South from the 1830s until now consists primarily of two wars waged steadily by the North against the South. One is an economic war by Northern capitalists (often with the cooperation of the U.S. government and later the leaders of the "New South"), to control rigidly the economy of the South. The other is an ideological war waged by Northern liberals to discredit the history and heritage and culture and religion of the South, and convert the white Southerners into Northern-liberal-wannabes. The main objectives of the ideological war have been: (1) to discredit the white Southerners; (2) and thereby discredit Southern Christianity; (3) which would clear the way for them to discredit Christianity throughout the United States; and (4) replace it with their own religion of secular humanism as the official religion of the U.S.

The strategies and tactics (but not the real goals) of those long-term wars against the South were described clearly by Radical Republicans Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens at the conclusion of the War of Northern Aggression. The Northerners are now in the process of winning their ideological war.

Only a handful of Southern leaders, such as Ellis Arnall (governor of Georgia from 1943 to 1947), have ever been willing to acknowledge-even fleetingly-the existence of either of those wars. Most Southern politicians have found it politically expedient to pretend that nothing was (is) happening, so they would not have to try to do anything about it.

For example, during Reconstruction the Northern capitalists rigged the railroad freight-rates such that it would cost Southern manufacturers a great deal more to ship any given load of Southern manufactured-goods to the North than it would cost to ship Northern manufactured-goods of the same type to the South. That was one of the many ways by which the Northern capitalists prevented Southerners from competing with them successfully. The U.S. government enforced that ploy, and most Southern politicians kept mum about it. But finally-nine de-cades later-Ellis Arnall mounted a powerful campaign against the Northern railroads; and in 1945, he embarrassed the Roosevelt administration into agreeing reluctantly to equalize the freight rates (eventually).

However, no Southern leader has yet found a politically-acceptable way to combat-or even identify publicly-the Northern liberals' sustained ideological war against the South; thus, most Southerners remain unaware of its existence. They believe (innocently) that all of the disasters befalling the South since the 1830s have been unavoidable accidents of history.

The realities underlying those disasters have been exposed by Southern historians in bits and pieces. Although a few of those historians have discussed those bits of history bluntly, most-with an eye to the realities of an academic career-have been exceedingly circumspect. In addition, however, liberal historians have let slip-inadvertently-embarrassing details which illuminate true motives. Here I have simply pulled together a number of those important bits and pieces into one book.

This historical essay attempts to identify the true dilemma faced by the contemporary South, by providing a skeletonized history of the relations between the North and the South from the 1830s until 2000. In it I editorialize from the Southern viewpoint, just as the mainstream historians editorialize-equally-heavily-from the Northern-liberal viewpoint in the American-history texts you'll find in the classrooms of all our high schools and colleges. I make no more effort than they to provide a neutral, unbiased view. The differences between us are that I acknowledge freely what I am doing; and I try to editorialize only from the facts.

I make use of another favored tactic of the liberal historians: in discussing the relations between the North and the South, they focus their spotlight upon the activities of the Southerners, and they try to make us look like evil personified; but they keep the Northerners in the shadows. It turns out they have an excellent reason for doing that. So I focus primarily upon the actions and motives of the Northerners; and by comparison, they make the Southerners look like a bunch of saints.

The ultimate purpose of the liberals in replacing Christianity with secular humanism as the official religion of the U.S. was/is to pave the way for a totalitarian socialist government here-which is the deadly enemy of everything Southern; so I tell how the liberals have gone about installing socialism in the U.S., and I describe their successes to date.

The point of this book is to provide an overview that identifies the vitally important trends in the relations between the North and the South which illuminate true motives, to develop a clear picture of the South's future. I did no original research in compiling the book, so it is not intended for the further edification of historians or other scholars-except possibly for the sheer novelty of reading a contrary viewpoint presented just as passionately as the prevailing one. Beginning with Chapter 11 (at the start of the War of Northern Aggression, when things get really ugly), each chapter refers the interested reader to a few texts for verification and further detail; and there is a bibliography at the end.
I wrote this book for those Southerners who, with sharp anxiety, have observed the steady deterioration of their quality of life for the past thirty years or so, all the while wondering why the South's own institutions have ignored or abetted that deterioration, rather than acting to halt it. I wrote it for Southerners who love their region, but wonder whether the South of the not-so-distant future will be a fit place for their children and grandchildren to live and do business. I wrote it to identify the perils they face, the precise nature of those dangers, and the motivations of the various groups who have brought those dangers to the South. All of that is interwoven inextricably into the history of the South: thus this historical essay.

My secondary purpose is to alert the conservatives in all regions that the liberals have spent the last 170 years building an ingenious trap to render helpless anyone who objects to socialist government, by labeling such dissenters as states'-rights racists. The South is the liberals' perennial battleground; but the victories which liberalism gains there are inevitably inflicted upon the rest of the nation thereafter. Accordingly, he who acquiesces in the destruction of the Southern values is also acquiescing in the inevitable adoption of nationalist and internationalist totalitarian-socialism by the United States of America. There is no middle ground. Therefore, those legions of "conservatives" who refuse to defend conservative values in the South because they fear that they themselves will be labeled racists are signalling clearly their abject surrender to ideological liberalism and its socialist government which encroaches relentlessly upon us all.

In general, the Southerners have been honorable people; thus, they assumed automatically-against all evidence-that the people of the North would be equally honorable in dealing with them. That assumption has placed the Southerners at a terrible disadvantage in dealing with the Northern liberals (and the growing numbers of Scalawags) who have no honor, and who demonstrate each day that they will use any means at hand to destroy the traditional white South.

Because the South has failed to acknowledge (much less defend against) this deadly long-term ideological warfare, the Southerners are no longer a people with a homogeneous heritage, who base their values upon proven traditional principles derived from the teachings of Christianity. Soon they will experience the terrible social and economic costs resulting from their destruction as a people. Under the continuing relentless assault of the ideological liberals in government, and the news-and-entertainment media, and the public-education system, the Southerners will lose their bearings completely, and degenerate into an agglomeration of guilt-ridden individuals with no values or self-confidence or worthwhile motivation.

Poorly educated per liberalism's ideological diktats, future Southerners will be unfit to compete successfully in the global economy-and will serve merely as a docile low-wage labor pool, vulnerable to any outside entrepreneur or local demagogue who wishes to exploit them. On average, their real personal incomes will continue to shrink. They will generate no leaders capable of governing effectively within the region, or of defending the South's interests in the national and international arenas. Their quality of life will continue the sharp decline begun in the 1960s, as the liberals continue to enforce their fatally flawed utopian agenda. Illegitimacy, poverty, functional illiteracy, and crime will continue to pervade the South-especially its big cities.

And no-the Republican party will not come dashing to the South's rescue: contrary to any campaign promises, the Republicans are as loath to trigger the wrath of the liberal-dominated news media as anyone else. And Southern politicians of all labels have learned to walk very carefully so as not to get crosswise with the black civil-rights leaders. If anyone is to resurrect the Southern values and way of life which are now so rapidly disappearing, it must be ordinary Southerners who believe that our own culture is too valuable and unique an asset to throw on the trash heap.

The South's only real weapon to counter the cultural and economic wars being waged against it will be a firm grasp of true Northern and Southern history, such that Southerners may readily perceive the actual motives underlying the relentless flow of liberal propaganda being presented to them as news, entertainment, and public education. Only then will Southerners be able to identify and discredit the lies which constitute that propaganda-lies which are intended to guilt-trip them into holding still for their complete destruction as a people. And only then can truly concerned Southerners prepare an ideological counterattack to discredit the liberals, and get them off our backs once and for all. This book attempts to provide that necessary Northern and Southern history.
 

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