by Paul H. Yarbrough (February 2024)
Recently on a Fox News program, The Five, one of the regulars, Judge Pirro, was launching her rapid-fire boisterous opinion regarding Republican candidate at the time Nikki Haley. At the time Haley was only a few days past her “controversial” comment that: “The ‘Civil War’ was not about slavery.” The verbal assault by Pirro was criticism of Haley’s weak showing against Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary. “Even a third-grader could have answered,” was Pirro’s stated condemnation of Haley.
Pirro probably was a typical non-Socratic (back door affirmative action) female law school student. But who knows anymore with the millions of attorneys who mostly are poseurs and half-baked students of the law? Most attorneys today, I suspect could not pass a simple ten-point test my peers and I had to pass on the Constitution when we were freshmen in high school. Forget Socratic methodology.
The Fox viewers were left with the suggestion (demandingly) that Haley was childish in her views. Each of the other participants seemed to nod in agreement with the Judge, i.e. slavery indeed did cause the war! Regularly this sentiment is flashed about our happy land without any concept as to how such an idiotic action could happen.
So how could it be that the “five” concurred? They probably have been subject to the same public education and consequently, public view that most of their Yankee cohorts have. Probably they believe such nonsense because they believe their own press and have read such nonsense as television history rather than studying from skilled history teachers of the arts and humanities.
Just look at what passes on television and online for history experts. The socks far outweigh the buskins (the real experts will understand this point).
The same can be said of the squalid halls of the universities with their “tenure” system which supports educated flaks, fools, and frequently downright liars. Difficult to determine socks from buskins with this bunch.
Too scathing? Too abrasive? Really? Those whom I scathe are the same jerks who with a straight face will tell you that your children should be allowed to “change their sex surgically,” or men can marry men and women can marry women. NO insult is too scathing or abrasive for such a class or sort. They promote plenty of other lunacies, to be sure, but that trans-surgery business puts them in the Frankenstein-creep academic thuggery room alone.
To be honest, I doubt Haley knows any more than any other conservative pretenders know about what that often erroneously called “Civil War” was fought for. That sobriquet Civil War should tell you something about her absence of knowledge of wars and insurrections; but then it was a madman (you know who) who suctioned life into that erroneous term in order to bring a New England Yankee war onto one of the greatest civilizations in world history—the American South.
Yes, the American South. The people and culture who did not own people as souls but possessed them via circumstances of the contemporary times, times that would become history and judged in the past by mendacious “Republicans” (not “republicans”) from the North and in the present by the contemporary presentists, whose sanctimony would shame 19th-century liberals like Dickens or Lord Acton. The same American South that the Yankee slavers (Biblically called man-stealers) became wealthy from, via the New England Yankee slave-trade’s chattel and their work product from the South that built Northern textile mills. That is, the Yankees made money on the front end and the back end of the slave while the South in the interim at least provided labor, food clothing, and shelter to him (and to that end only 10-15% of Southerners possessed slaves).
And for the record, not being locked up, unless being criminals, the only thing preventing the slaves from walking away was they had to walk North to be free but the North didn’t want them. The madman and his friends were clear on the worth to them of the Negro in the 19th century.
More than once the madman pointed out the inferiority of the Negro relative to Caucasians.
So, with such a madman leader what would one expect? He even lied (or was indeed mad) when he referred to the states as a “Nation” in 1776 in his grand address over the bodies of several thousand men of both blue and gray; an address that modern Democrats and Republicans would add as a 67th book to the King James Bible if they could—believing themselves gods themselves.
An address that H.L. Mencken scorned (remarkedly well) as no more than mendacious poetic drivel.*
So, a war to save a nation from being a union (which its members no longer wanted) was fought to “free” slaves who for the most part could have walked away, unless they were in jail.
This lie was no accident, and has survived like a disease, until this very day—a Nation! Not a Union. Karl Marx, the political Doctor Kevorkian of the day, reveled in the blessing of Lincoln’s victory that the young western hemispherical republican union (he called a nation), one that had only a few years earlier lived under the epithet of “The Era of Good Feeling” so-named for essentially the absence of political partisans during the period. Marx wrote of his thrill to the madman. He and the madman exchanged letters frequently in 1865.
So, what was Haley’s strategy? Had she learned the truth? Or was she taking a chance on gaining some support from South Carolina’s gray souls who knew that the flag of the Cross of St. Andrew was honorable and the online and television “teachers” were phonies and the universities had allowed them to graduate gloriously with a universal education. Who knows?
And today the descendants of Karl and the madman revel in the national state conquering the republic union that is now The Deep State. And that—THAT, is what the war was “about.”
And a P.S. to Al Sharpton, Shelia Jackson Lee, Jesse Jackson et al: If you want reparations, try tracking down the African tribal leaders who seized and sold their African neighbors to the Yankee and European traders in the first place. Now, there’s a place where civil war was rife.
*But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of every day! The doctrine is simply this: the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination— “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege. —H.L. Mencken
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Paul H. Yarbrough has written for The Blue State Conservative, NOQ, The Daily Caller, American Thinker, The Abbeville Institute, Lew Rockwell, and more. He is the author of 4 novels: Mississippi Cotton, A Mississippi Whisper, Thy Brother’s Blood, and The Yeller Rose of Texas, in addition to many short stories and poems.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
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14 Responses
I agree with most of your comments, however, the War was over both slavery and economics. The South wanted their rights, as set forth in the Constitution, with a minimal amount of interference from the Federal Government. The North wanted to control all of the commerce they could, being the greedy rats that they were.
As for Nikki Haley, she speaks with forked tongue! I would not let her get near or pet any of the animals I have ever owned – much less vote for her!
She is mostly being funded with Democrat money. She is a Trojan horse with a turban hair cut,
Chuck, I couldn’t agree with you more! The comments on the author’s piece last month proved that slavery (and the economics of slavery) was indeed truthfully the largest cause of the war.
And I would also never cast a vote for Nikki Haley. She’s a backstabbing globalist-loving democrat-supported candidate.
To Chuck and “Never Nikki”
be assured that nothing I ever wrote or said “proved” the war was about slavery. You must have misread.
As far as a “war about slavery”please tell us all how such a war could come about under a “federal” system. Also I suggest a research of Lincoln’s Corwin Amendment,
And please reread this article as to :
, i.e. slavery indeed did cause the war! Regularly this sentiment is flashed about our happy land without any concept as to how such an idiotic action could happen
And today the descendants of Karl and the madman revel in the national state conquering the republic union that is now The Deep State. And that—THAT, is what the war was “about.”
What a coincidence! Yesterday (31JAN24) my brother in Nevada sent me the link below, describing in detail how Protectionism and Tariffs were what caused South Carolina to fire on Fort Sumter. I was born and raised in the great State of Georgia and never heard a peep about any of it. Honest historical research is catching up with old Abe.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/01/31/lincolns-tariff-war/#more-327687
The South was paying for 70% pf the Union’s federal costs.
Prior to the South firing across the bow of the Yankee ship entering the harbor after agreeing (CSA and USA representatives were discussing terms of secession so as to avoid war— in Washington at the time) Lincoln and the old Union had abandoned every fort in the South and the CSA agreed to paying it for its costs– except the two where Lincoln could collect “his tariffs ” (his words) —Pensacola and Sumter.
The Union was warned not to sneak provisions to the troops in the Fort. Charleston would provide food etc until the left.
The firing on Ft. Sumter resulted in an exchange of fire that had zero casualties for both sides.
However, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to attack the South. At this point Virginia, N.C., Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the previous 7 members of the CSA.
As Robert E. Lee said “A Union held together with guns and bayonets has no appeal for me.”
PS: During four years of war there was not a single slave “uprising” which Lincoln thought would happen. Thousands of Southern blacks, free or slave, served the Southern Confederacy either in or out of the army
South Carolina had been mulling over and threatening secession over tariffs since 1832.
If slavery was the issue, it was the worst excuse for a Civil War ever. The Civil War was the most disastrous American war ever fought – over something all of the other Western Countries eliminated peacefully from their dominions in under 50 years.
My consideration for those who repeat the “Civil War was caused by slavery” (forgetting the absurd moniker “Civil War”) is just how did such a war “against” something begin?
This nonsensical ruse began when Lincoln (Dishonest Abe) used it—AND he knew it
Paul, I need to introduce you to my neighbor who hates Lincoln with a passion. She says it was not a Civil War because the Confederate States had withdrawn and formed their own nation and that we have not been a Republic since because the Southern states were forced back in at the point of a gun. I also think she’s right by stating the colonies would never have formed a federal nation if they knew in advance that they could never leave no matter what. I think slavery still would have eventually died out, but it would have taken longer. Slaves might have been given the opportunity to work their way out or slavery, which probably would have been more humane.
She is right. If you will study the plantation system of the large plantations (and as a percentage large ones were few) for example Jefferson Davis’s in Mississippi you will find that the slaves were being taught how to live as free men: economics, labor, farming etc. The system of slavery was dying everywhere. It not only was wrong morally but practically. The South knew it was to end (the last country to end it was Brazil in 1888) but it had to be phased out. The concept of just freeing slaves without consideration of where they would work or how they would live would be tragic for them. The abolitionists for the most part (Lincoln included) wanted to simply send them back to Africa. They definitely did not want blacks up North or in the new territories. Most of the Northern states (most notably Illinois, Massachusetts) had passed laws excluding blacks from those states after having been “freed.” They were actually “freed” in the North through manumission. The Yankee slave owners were paid for their loss.
The states never formed a nation. They were a voluntary union. All had a right to leave if they wished. Three of them: Virginia, New York and Rhode Island put it in writing in their ratifications.
The war was something that came as a final act of the Hamiltonians (Hamilton was as big a liar as Lincoln) who were “nationalists” against the Jeffersonians (union republicans).
It was and always has been the case that the states created the union and not that the union created the states.
Thank you for your interest
1. The legal term for the war is “The War of the Rebellion”. The winner gets to name the conflict.
2. “Walking away” wasn’t so easy for the slaves. If they evaded the patrollers, who were organized all over the South for the purpose of assuring that slaves couldn’t leave the plantation or “owner’s” home without a valid pass, and if the slave managed to arrive in the North, there was the problem of the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s. That law imposed responsibility on all Americans for “catching” slaves who’d escaped. Advertisements for runaway slaves helped slave catchers in the North and South, who made their living by returning escaped slaves to the “owners”, acting somewhat like bounty hunters today who locate and arrest persons who jumped bail. (I know that now that some parts of the US don’t have bail any more, but did until recently.) Some escaped slaves traveled to Canada to assure their safety after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, because “walking away” in the United States did not assure their freedom from slavery.
3. The “peculiar institution” influenced and damaged society in the South. The stratified society, with 5% at the top who were slaveholders, resulted in serious poverty (trust me, my mom’s family was from West Virginia) which persisted for decades after the war. Lack of education and opportunity led to intractable poverty in the South for decades after the war.
4. The South believed that slavery needed to expand to survive. The national conflict over expansion of slavery to the West and Southwest was the proximal cause for the war.
5. The South had considered secession for decades. Differences of opinion between the South and the North on tariffs was also a huge bone of contention. The South had fewer manufactories and wanted lower tariffs to make imports less expensive, and threatened secession over the Congressional tariff bill in 1832.
5. “Madman” Abraham Lincoln asserted that governments do not make arrangements for their own demise. By waiting for itchy fingers in South Carolina
to pull the lanyard to fire the first shots, Lincoln assured that the rebels were in the position of being the aggressors. And yes, the Constitution was signed by representatives of the states, and the federal government is a creation of the states.
There were relatively few slaves who were propelled to Canada via any means, let alone the Underground Railroad. It did exist but was largely mythical in its effect. I meant that if the slaves wanted to walk away virtually en masse, probably they could have but they had nowhere to go. As for the Fugitive Save Act it was hardly enforced. One of the complaints of the South was just that. As to expanding slavery there was almost no interest in mass extension if for no other reason than there would be little or anything for them to do. Large acreage of crops were not going to be grown in Arzona. Actually, the South, generally had pointed out that this “expansion” would actually hasten the end of slavery. The North just did not want negroes (blacks) anywhere except in the South or repatriated to Africa (as did the abolitionists)
As far as extended poverty in the South for decades, TRUST me, I and my family are from Mississippi and the poverty and lack of education is a direct result of Yankee Reconstruction. I would highly recommend When in the Course of Human Events: Charles Adams. Might clear up some misconceptions you have. I would also recommend Up from Slavery: Booker T. Washington.
In 1860 there were about 4 million slaves in the USA.
If the enslaved did not agree to be enslaved, by what non-arbitrary ‘authority’ was that enslavement allowed, implemented?
All the considerations for continuation of slavery (historically, worldwide slavery was common practice) are unjustifiable EXCEPT if the only alternative is immediate killing of the recent captive.
Indentured servants and/or slaves with rights, (see Old Testament) are a separate category for consideration.
Pre and postmortem dissertations are deficient in not including slaves’ commentary. I suggest interviewing deathless Frederick Douglass, and Thomas Sowell.