by Leonard “Mike” Scruggs
No serious student of the Civil War believes that the Union invaded the South to emancipate the slaves. Such ignorance, however, is commonplace. This propagandistic version of the war is commonly taught in public schools, and, in ignorance, even in many Christian schools. Yet it has little basis in fact. Slavery was an issue between the North and South, but not in the propagandistic, fabricated moral sense usually assumed. The extension of slavery into new territories was an issue. The Northern States wanted to preserve the new states for free labor without unfair competition from slave labor, but they also feared the possible social consequences of bringing in large numbers of blacks into the new territories. Most Northern legislatures severely restricted the entry of blacks, slave or free, into their states. Southern political leaders, on the other hand, felt that legislation preventing Southern immigrants from bringing their slaves into the new territories violated their property rights and was designed to assure Northern dominance in the new states and the national Congress. It was in the latter sense a matter of political numbers – part of an ongoing struggle for legislative dominance in Congress. It was the fear of unfettered Northern political dominance that made limited Constitutional government and States Rights paramount to the interests of Southern states.
Southerners believed they were being forced to submit to a government whose character had been sacrificed to sectionalism. This sectionalism had been most flagrant in the protective tariffs passed to benefit Northern industry and imposed against strong Southern opposition beginning in 1824 (indeed, South Carolina nearly seceded over the issue; refer to the Nullification Crisis of 1832). This culminated in the passage of the Morrill Tariff, signed into law on February 2, 1861, which imposed tremendous hardship on the South for the benefit of Northern industry. This legislation nearly tripled the tariff burden on the South and virtually compelled the cotton producing states to secede. The immediate cause of armed conflict beyond the bloodless Fort Sumter confrontation was, however, Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops on April 15 to put down the “rebellion” of seceding states and assure the tariff was collected.
Woodrow Wilson was once asked how the role of slavery became so distorted and exaggerated as a cause of the Civil War. Wilson gave this succinct answer: “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery.”
Reference: Excerpt from Leonard “Mike” Scrugg’s book: THE UN-CIVIL WAR: SHATTERING THE HISTORICAL MYTHS (the Foreward)
——————————————————————————————-
THE CONFEDERATE FLAG IS NOT A SYMBOL OF RACISM
There are those who say that the display of the Confederate Battle Flag is insensitive. They say it is a symbol of slavery and offends many people. But their offense is based on ignorance of its true origin and history. Their offense is based on decades of unquestioned propaganda attempting to justify an unjust war and its deplorable tyranny and conduct.
One of the underlying causes of the war was the growing religious difference between the North and the South. By 1850, the original Calvanism of the New England Puritans had been in steep decline for generations. The Calvanism and orthodox Christianity of the Puritan fathers was being eroded and displaced by Deism, Unitarianism, Universalism, and Transcendentalism…the antecedents of modern liberalism. A few strong bastions, like Princeton, remained, but the majority of Scripture, the sovereignty of God, and the centrality of Christ’s redeeming grace were fighting a losing battle against secularism and numerous heresies. The godly zeal of the first Puritans had been replaced by zeal to reform society by government force. On the other hand, the South was not only holding fast to traditional Christian teachings, but was experiencing a dramatic revival, culminating in more than 150,000 conversions in the Confederate Army alone during the war. And so, when it came time to decide on a design for the Confederate Battle Flag – to identify the Confederate troops on the battlefield – the CSA (Confederate States of America) looked to the St. Andrews flag, adopted by the Scots to identify themselves as a Christian people. St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland. (When Saint Andrew was to be put to death and martyred, he requested to be crucified on a diagonal cross. He, like his brother Peter, felt himself unworthy to be crucified on the upright cross of Christ. And so, the Confederate Battle Flag or “Southern Cross” was adopted with the intention of signifying the Christian heritage of the Southern people. “The flag should be a token of humble acknowledgement of God and be a public testimony to the world that our trust is in the Lord our God,” explained the designer of the flag, William Miles.
The men who carried the Southern cross into battle never meant it to be a symbol of slavery. Their letters and diaries prove it was far from their minds. Not many of them owned slaves or favored its continued existence for very long in the future. Less than 25% of Southern households owned slaves. So far as slavery was concerned, they only wanted the right to deal with it in their own way, in their own time, state-by-state, just as the Northern states had done. The Union Army did not invade the South to free slaves. They invaded the South to prevent the political and economic independence. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation came after more than 19 months of war (with the South having the upper hand) and did not actually free any slaves in the Union or Union-held areas of the Confederacy. It was done as a war measure in hopes of causing disorder and mayhem in the South. Only later was the slavery issue used in an attempt to give tyranny a pious justification.
The right to define the meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag, or any flag, belongs to those who, by their history and by the blood they shed in loyalty to it, own its heritage, Radical and lawless groups often display the United States flag, but this does not change its true meaning to fair-minded people. Nor should fair-minded people rightly associate the Confederate Battle Flag with evil. Groups such as the NAACP and SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group) have no right to define the meaning of Confederate flags any more than the French have the right to define the meaning of the Italian flag or any other flag but their own. Redefining and slandering someone else’s heritage and symbols is incredibly arrogant and stirs up needless strife. Honorable people pursuing a just and civil society do not seek to dishonor and marginalize the heritage and symbols of others. To Confederate soldiers and their families, the Confederate Battle Flag symbolized their Christian heritage and resistance to tyranny. They were fighting for the right of Southern States and their people to determine their own political destiny, just as their Revolutionary War forefathers had fought the British. They were fighting against the evil of unjust taxation and many other abuses of power perpetrated by Northern political factions, in violation of the US Constitution and the compact that brought the States together in the first place. They were fighting to free themselves of a Northern political dominance that had enriched the Northern states at the expense of the Southern states, thus oppressing them unfairly. After many years of hardship and blood spent on the battlefield, the Southern Cross came to symbolize the courage and blood of the Confederate soldier and the Southern people. They believed in the justice and righteousness of their cause, and when the surrender at Appomattox came, they gave up their regimental banners with tears and heartbreak.
Those in the South and those whose ancestors served the Southern cause, we must honor the memory of those fallen in the great struggle beneath the Southern Cross.
The Reverend James Power Smith, the last surviving member of Stonewall Jackson’s staff, had this to say in 1907: “No cowardice on any battlefield could be as base and shameful as the silent acquiescence in the scheme which was teaching the children in their homes and schools that the commercial value of slavery was the cause of the war, that prisoners of war held in the South were starved and treated with barbarous inhumanity, that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were traitors to their country and false to their oaths, that the young men who left everything to resist invasion, and climbed the slopes of Gettysburg and died willingly on a hundred fields were rebels against a righteous government.”
Let us ask these questions: How long would a prosperous or social peace based on such disrespect for truth last? How long would a peace built on suppression of a people’s cherished heritage last? How long would a peace built upon suppressing the memory, valor, and virtue of the revered forebearers of a great number of the Southern people last? Does anyone outside of a madhouse believe such reckless villainy would not, in a very short time, reap a whirlwind of social destruction? What could possibly be a surer cause of social strife, bitterness, and economic and political turmoil? Can anyone believe that peace and prosperity can be achieved by discarding the heritage of a numerous people to gain political favor of another? It is more likely to shatter all hope of peace. Can a society set itself against tolerance and mutual respect and have peace? No fair-minded person can accept such corrupt reasoning.
Reference: Excerpt from the BOOK – THE UNCIVIL WAR: SHATTERING THE HISTORICAL MYTHS, by Leonard M. (“Mike”) Scruggs. (Chapter 1)
Tenth Amendment Keepers 