A Primer in Lost Cause Mythology...

From the comments section of TBoMK…Feel free to comment and have fun.

Son, Terry’s Texas Rangers are stil thriving in our country…er, state. You might want to temper your language, and watch with whom you pick fights. And ‘the perpetration of slavery” is the most evil lie perpeptuated about the cause of the War of Northern Aggression, for that is exactly what is was. Lincoln imposed some of the harshest taxes and levees and fines on the Southern states. Basically these were crippling sanctions, and no one was immune. We ARE doomed to repeat history – look at the state of our nation now, with government breathing down our necks, just as the Federal Government was breathing down the necks of my Confederate and Texan ancestors in the mid-1800s.

MIND THIS WELL: only 6% of citizens of the Confederate States of America owned slaves. SIX PERCENT. Some Union scholars put the number higher (of course), but the highest number of slave owners, either as a whole of the population or as a percentage of actual fighting soldiers, is STILL LESS THAN 1/3. Less than 1/4 of Texans owned slaves in the mid-1800s, and of those, most owned less than 5.

Still very, very much a minority. I have also seen it postulated that almost all Southerners who didn’t own slaves still “aspired” to the institution of slavery. Um, no, they didn’t. They were either too poor, with absolutely no hope of owning enough land to require slaves to even think about actually owning slaves, or they were against it for humanitarian reasons. I should also mention, that while few, there were African-American slave owners, Negroes who owned other Negroes. Many wealthy Northerners owned slaves.

The South as a whole was slowly freeing its slaves, as mechanization was making its way south. Slavery was being seen as a human and economic detriment by Southerners. Negroes were less welcome in the North than they were in their “oppressive South.” In New York, lynchings were common, as the white citizens and immigrants resented the Freedmen moving North and taking their jobs. Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman welcomed the blacks…simply for their votes, and later in the war, to use as cannon fodder, as the ranks of white soldiers were dwindling quickly from battlefield casualties and desertions (many Union soldiers found out the truth about the lies they had been fed, lost their enthusiasm for their “cause” and deserted in large numbers).

New York City was a terrifying place to be a person of color; much more terrifying than under the cruelest Southern overseer’s thumb:

“Hard as it is to believe today, the illicit slave trade was booming in New York City in the years just before the Civil War. Horace Greeley called the city a “nest of slave pirates.” The roughly 12,500 blacks in the city faced pervasive discrimination. Segregation was common; blacks were excluded from white churches and theaters. From the time the first horsedrawn streetcars began running, blacks were barred from riding in them. When a court in 1855 affirmed their right to use public transport (in a case brought by a young lawyer named Chester A. Arthur), most streetcar companies simply ignored the ruling. In 1860, city voters rejected a bill that would have given blacks the right to vote without meeting property qualifications. When war broke out, three regiments of black volunteers offered their services to the Governor of New York, with all expenses to be paid by the black community. The Governor declined. ” (from “The Cleveland Civil War Round Table”)

Many large northern cities and states were feeling this way towards people of color – Philidelphia, Boston, New Jersey. The racial tensions were higher in many areas of the North than they ever were in the South. Were there horrible, horrible things visited upon the African-Americans? Yes. Was slavery in any form a horrible institution? Yes. I am not defending slavery, nor the people who owned slaves. I have ancestors who owned slaves. I am not proud of that aspect of them, but I am proud of their loyalty and patriotism, and their refusal to allow someone to trample the Constitution. I am proud of my Texas. These are the aspects that I am defending. But you should have guessed that by now, as hopefully you may be seeing that the War was not fought over slavery.

Famed abolitionist and supposed “good friend” of Mr. Lincoln, Fredrick Douglas gave a scathing indictment of Lincoln’s racial policies in an April 14th 1876 speech, at which President Grant was in attendance. “He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the coloured people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country.” It was a well-known fact that Lincoln was a the first White Supremacist to hold office in the White House. His own law partner went on the record:

“…On giving blacks the rights to full citizenship Lincoln stated on September 18 1858, “If the State of Illinois had that power, I should be
against the exercise of it. That is all I have to say about it.”
and:
“Lincoln’s preferred solution to the emancipated slave problem was not assimilation into society, but rather deportation or colonization.
December 1, 1862 in a message to congress he stated, “I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.”
and:
“Lincoln also believed in white supremacy saying, “I as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the
white race…I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes.”

Vice President Alexander Stephens said that slavery was “safer in the Union than out of it” and that “slavery was a drop in the ocean compared to other reasons for secession.”

From the Lincoln-Douglas debates – if there is any doubt, or any charge of my being a Confederate apologist, these are words taken from Mr. Linoln’s own statements made in public, and there are many such statements in many different venues that are consistent with these views:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

~ Abraham Lincoln, Debate with Stephen Douglas, Sept. 18, 1858, in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858 (New York: Library of America, 1989), pp. 636-637.

You need to ask yourselves…why would any man – the other 94% of the Confederacy, place himself in harm’s way, and risk his very life, on the field of battle, for the minority’s right to own slaves? Even if pressed into service, the vast majority would have surrendered or laid down their arms and fled back home. The battles of the Civil War were horrible, bloody, cruel affairs. They were most certainly not fought to prolong slavery. I have participated in re-enactments, and while I know they will never come close to the reality of the true battles, it does give one a unique perspective, and I can assure you the small fear I felt was magnified 1000-fold in the reality of the battles. No man would have faced that for the rights of the 6% of the wealthiest Southerners. No, sir, the Civil War WAS FOUGHT FOR STATE’S RIGHTS, AND STATE’S RIGHTS ALONE. The right to be a slave state was only ONE of the rights being fought for, and it was most certainly low on the priority list.

Many Negroes fought proudly, voluntarily, for the Confederacy. The monuments to these brave and loyal men are scattered throughout the South. I am proud of their service. True Patriotism and Loyalty is color blind, for both whites and Negroes.

So please, sir, get your facts straight before picking a fight with descendants of Terry’s Texas Rangers and the Confederacy. You might just be bringing a knife to a gun fight. Trust me when I say you do not want to piss off these ladies and gentleman – yes, there are fierce females who comprise the ranks of The Rangers. We can ride, shoot, drink, and fight as well as our ancestors. And we are as dedicated to their cause as they were 150 years ago.

Your beloved Lincoln was a White Supremacist monster, who preyed upon the uneducated masses and the Abolitionist’s sympathies for votes and money. He loathed and laughed at the Abolistionists, and didn’t even respect their cause enough to do it behind closed doors. He hid it poorly. Generals Grant and Sherman were both slave-owners before the war…can we say hypocrisy? And yet the lies continue, and people blindly believe what they read without doing some basic fact-checking and research on their own.

Shame on you for taking advantage of the same demographic and perpetuating The Great Lie of the bloodiest war of our planet’s history. The manner in which a war is fought directly reflects upon the leaders – all the way up to the generals and the President. Sherman burned, pillaged, and raped his way through the South, encouraged by Grant and Lincoln. Atrocities did happen on both sides, but when General Lee heard of them, he condemned them in the strongest of language and actions. Lincoln, who claims a conversion to Christianity late in life, was an Atheist at the beginning of the war, and his policies and letters and support of the heinous acts perpetrated by Shermann reflect that. Lee was a Godly, Christian man, and you may say what you will about religion, the tenets of Christianity, regardless of what man does under that guise, are solid, wonderful tenets for how to live a good life. Lee’s ultimate goal was to be as good a Christian as he could given the circumstances of his life.

Dear sir, if you have actually read this far, I will post links to my information, as well as the books by respected historians, North and South, so that you will be assured of my facts. I have only scratched the surface of solid, documented evidence backing up my statements. If necessary, I can provide documentation for more. And I say this with all seriousness, and no malice or challenge – I am happy to continue this debate and exchange of information with you. I welcome disproving The Great Lie.

Oh, I will also be sharing this with my Ranger compatriots. I may be late to this article, but you, sir, have stirred the hornet’s nest.

Yours truly, for Texas and for Dixie,
Angie Hipp
Texas Panhandle

Just a few of my sources, and thanks to them for their research in compiling this data:
Texas A&M University

http://www.tamut.edu/academics/mperri/TX/STATEHOOD.ppt

The Cleveland Civil War Round Table

http://clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/articles/society/nyc_riots.htm

Defending the Heritage Facebook page:

New York Tribune:
Lincoln’s letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley in 1862:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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 save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

Texas State Historical Association:

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/yps01

The Civil War Home Page (a bi-partisan, so to speak, venture of Civil War facts)

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html

The New York City Draft Riots of 1863: An excerpt from ‘In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863′
by Leslie M. Harris

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html