History - If You Still Are Believing What Your High School History Teacher Said ...

History all alone is just facts (or fiction) ... however, there is SO much to learn from it ... you know the quote:

Your future may depend on what you have picked up from the past. So when you hear the government or media saying something, and repeating it, and teaching it, and preaching it and THEN it is all included in text books .. until it is accepted as fact.

So do your own research, look for source material ... don't even assume I know what I am writing about.

With this in mind, I think it is very important to revisit what our high school history teachers taught in government schools, from government approved textbooks about the government.

Myth: The American Civil War was triggered by slavery.
NOTE: this name itself is erroneous as

1. the South did not at any time want to control the whole United States of America (civil wars are fought so that the winner takes ALL) 
2. the North used this term to project Lincoln's lie that this was a general insurrection (because he knew that "secession" was Constitutional).

The election of a sectional president (most of the 13 southern states had 0 votes for Abraham Lincoln) indicated to the southern states that the tariff tax rates (that hurt dis proportionally the exporting states in the south) were going to climb even higher and they as a minority region could do nothing to stop it. Their dream of a free trade zone would allow them to freely trade with the rest of the world.

Compare this mood to that of the northern states who at first declared in the newspapers that the southern states were free to leave (as most publications from December 1860 when South Carolina seceded to March 1861 when Lincoln was sworn into office after seven states had left. It took just the month of March 1861 for northern businesses AND Lincoln's cabinet to think through this scenario and fearfully contemplate the ramifications:

• no more trade restrictions that made foreign items expensive to southern customers
• no more free navigation of the Mississippi River for the "western" state's exports to the world (today's Midwest)

The northern manufacturers and government had some imagined and some more real fears as to what the future might hold.

In Al Benson's review of the book  Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States (Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) by Gene Kizer, Jr. he states:

"... Lincoln was greatly concerned that a separate Confederate States would basically operate on the free trade basis and thus many shippers would start doing business with the Confederate States to avoid Lincoln’s tariff. In regard to the tariff, he notes, on page 50 that: “It allowed Northern businesses to ignore market competition and charge right up to the level of the tariff. The higher a tariff they could get, through political manipulation, the more money that went into their pockets.

Preserving the Union, the North’s cash money machine–its suction pump, its cash cow–was critical, not just desirable. As the Northern businessmen concluded: ‘The Union must be preserved. Any other outcome meant economic suicide, which meant bankruptcy, anarchy, and societal collapse. Lincoln and the Northern Congress understood this completely’…” So, when push came to shove, it was all about preserving the Northern economy at the expense of the South..."

With this in mind, Lincoln went and found the fine print in the Constitution that says:

"ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8
The Congress shall have Power:

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions ..."

So Lincoln, the politician/lawyer, framed the exit of seven states from the Union as an insurrection. Lincoln never referred to these states as having exited, and yet after this war (better described as the War for Southern Independence (in the spirit of 1776)) the states were told there were conditions on their re-entry to the Union.

What can we learn from this?

If the government sees that there is any $$$ to be gained from your existence, it will lie its way toward keeping you from escaping its hold on you. Talk to ex-Patriots and how they had to part with a large amount of $$$ just to renounce their US citizenship to be freer elsewhere in the world. This parasite is hungry to be sustained, and will go to extraordinary lengths to survive, Even to wage total war that claimed 700,000 military deaths and unknown civilian deaths PLUS the destruction of the southern economy for decades to come.

What else can we learn? This war was not ignited by slavery, but by Lincoln himself refusing to call Congress to session while calling up 75,000 men from the remaining states .. only to then have four more states decide to leave. A peaceful exit was not allowed, as Lincoln said in his first inaugural address:

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. [so it is not about slavery]

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. [but states by "mere motion" lawfully agreed to join .. like a marriage, once the contract was violated by violence to one's person, separation and divorce may follow]

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. [so just let me collect my taxes and we all all good]

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution--which amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. [Lincoln would agree to making perpetual slavery possible in states that agree to return to the Union .. apparently, Lincoln just did not want black up north competing with the white man for jobs]

This leaves us with some questions:

• if the Union was so hot to free the slaves then why didn’t they start out by freeing those slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which, for various reasons, remained in the Union
• the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln declared it is “a fitting and necessary war measure for suppressing the rebellion.” ... slaves were not freed in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri, nor were they freed in that new Union state of West Virginia, nor were they freed in any territory the Union had recaptured from the Confederate States. That fact, alone, left 500,000 blacks in slavery in Union controlled areas. If the Union was so keen on ending slavery why didn’t they start in these areas?
• the percentage of abolitionists in the North was only somewhere between 2 and 5 percent and, ironically, “…many of them didn’t like slavery because they didn’t like blacks and did not want to associate with them.” ”…the North allowed slave states to be part of the Union, and the South allowed free states to be part of the Confederacy. The South anticipated that several free states with economic ties to the South would join the CSA and this bothered Lincoln greatly.” In general, the north did not want blacks there .. so why did they fight? Why is this considered a moral plus for the Union?
• the last four states that seceded to join the Confederacy never did secede over the slavery issue–they seceded because Lincoln planned to invade the South and they were not real happy at having their states invaded and overrun. What normal person could blame them? Lincoln realize that the only thing that could “preserve the Union” (and keep his tariff in place) was a war–and so Mr. Lincoln gave us a war.

Does this align with what your history teacher thought? I didn't think so.