By Al Benson Jr.

So you were told in your government school “history” class that Southern secession was illegal--that Jeff Davis and all those nasty Southern folks were really nothing but traitors to the glorious Union. You see the same thing in “news” articles and on the Internet. Unfortunately, over the years, I’ve heard many born and raised in the South parrot the same line. They should know better, but thanks to the benefits of a government school “education” they don’t have a clue.

Frank Conner, in his excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 which I read back in 2003, dealt in some detail with the alleged treason of Jefferson Davis.  In referring to the leadership in the North he noted: “They believed the most logical means of justifying the North’s war would be to have the federal government convict Davis of treason against the United States. Such a conviction must presuppose that the Confederate States could not have seceded  from the Union;  so convicting Davis would validate the war and make it morally legitimate.” Interesting thought, if you are a Yankee with a Marxist mindset. However, in truth, nothing could validate the War of Northern Aggression in such a way as to give the North moral legitimacy.

Although the Northern leaders planned to seize the moral high ground with a trial for Davis, that prolific South-hater, Thaddeus Stevens, couldn’t keep his big mouth shut, and he was wont to let the cat out of the bag. Stevens’ rants against the South and her people had become legend, and Stevens, at his most charitable, said “The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy…This can be done without violence  to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern states were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war…No reform can be effected in the Southern states if they have never left the Union…” And, although he did not plainly say it here, what Stevens really desired was that the Christian culture of the Old South be “reformed” into something compatible with his personal beliefs. Stevens would have made Robespierre look like a right-winger!  No matter how you cut the mustard, the feds tried to have it both ways--they claimed the South was “in rebellion” and had never left the Union, but then they claimed the South had to do certain things, pass certain amendments--in order to get back into the Union they had never been out of. Strange, is it not, that the “history” books never seem to pick up on this. But, then, they give us “all the history that fits” (the agenda).

At any rate, the Northern government prepared to try President Davis for treason while they had him in prison. Mr. Connor observed that: “The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced ‘Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten’.” According to Mr. Conner, U.S. Attorney General James Speed appointed a renowned attorney, John J. Clifford, as his chief prosecutor. Clifford, after studying the government’s evidence against Davis, withdrew from the case.  He said he had ‘grave doubts’ about it. Not to be outdone, Speed then appointed Richard Henry Dana, a prominent maritime lawyer, to the case. Mr. Dana also withdrew. He said basically, that as long as the North had won a military victory over the South, they should be satisfied with that. In other words--you won the war, boys, so don’t push your luck beyond that!

Conner also informed his readers that: “In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn’t touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North’s best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression--even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally.” None of these bright legal lights from Yankeedom would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. It’s not that they were all dumb, in fact, the reverse is true. These men had sense enough to know a dead horse when they saw it--and they were not about to climb aboard and attempt to ride it across the treacherous stream of illegal secession. They knew better. In fact, a Northerner from New York, Charles O’Connor, became the legal counsel for Davis--without charge! That, plus the celebrity jurists from the North that held their noses and walked away from the case, told the federal government that they, in reality, had no case against Davis or secession and that Davis was merely being held as a political prisoner. Most folks, even in the North, already knew that.

Author Richard Street, writing in The Civil War back in the 1950s, said exactly the same thing. Referring to Jeff Davis, Street wrote: “He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn’t dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no ‘rebellion’ and that the South had got a raw deal.” You can’t say it much more directly than that.

At one point, the federal government intimated that it would be willing to offer Davis a pardon, should he grovel a little and ask for one. Davis refused--to his credit.  He demanded that the government either give him a pardon or give him a trial.  Mr. Street said: “He died, unpardoned, by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing.” If Davis was as guilty as they claimed--why no trial???

Had the federal government had any possible chance to convict Davis and therefore declare secession unconstitutional, they would have done so in a heartbeat.  The fact that they hemmed and hawed around for two years and finally released him without benefit of a trial that he wanted, proves that the North had no real case against secession. Over 600,000 boys, North and South, were killed or maimed so the North could fight a war of conquest and class struggle over something the South did for self-preservation, that was neither illegal or wrong. Yet the North claims the moral high ground because they, supposedly, “freed the slaves” when all they really did was to transfer ownership from private to federal hands. What a farce!

By Al Benson Jr.

Anyone that has taken the trouble to really check into the career of “Honest Abe” and who has not been conned into buying all the glitz about his wonderful, compassionate, Christian character, has got to realize that, in regard to Mr. Lincoln, the American people have been sold a bill of goods rivaled only by those who sell shares in the Brooklyn Bridge.

Within the past few years some really informative books on Lincoln have appeared, among them Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked. These will give you a view of Lincoln that the establishment historians would rather you did not have, as they tend to throw hot water on the Lincoln snowman, causing his legend to begin to melt around the edges.

Then, a couple years ago, Donnie Kennedy and I wrote Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists. This book shed new light on Mr. Lincoln’s Marxist proclivities and friends, both in the Union armies and the Republican Party--hardly the “party of small government” as we’ve been told.

Interestingly enough, although the establishment historians have all rushed to defend Lincoln’s name regarding his leftist associations, the leftists, themselves, have had no trouble embracing Mr. Lincoln. They have done it willingly from Karl Marx on.

In an article in Newsweek for January 12, 2009, leftwing writer Christopher Hitchens made this comment: “When Barack Obama booked rooms in the Hay-Adams hotel, one both hopes and believes that he remembered what John Hay wrote of Lincoln (“The greatest character since Christ”) but also, in this time of capitalist crisis, bore in mind what Henry Adams said about the warmest friend of Lincoln and the Union being Karl Marx.” That one rather startling little quote should provide a starting point for those who want to do some research into what Lincoln was really all about.

Research has shown that Marx, Engels, and the vast majority of the radical socialists, communists, and other revolutionaries both in Europe and America supported Lincoln and the Union cause with little reservation. And the Marxists have little trouble admitting this.

In an article on http://www.marxist.com which appeared back in November of 2002, writer Alan Woods said: “The American people and above all the American working class have a great revolutionary tradition. On the basis of great historical events they are destined to rediscover those traditions and to stand once more in the front line of the revolution, as they did in 1776 and 1860.”

I think this Marxist writer is way off base about 1776, but he’s on target about 1860, not that the average working man was a fomenter of revolution, but Lincoln and the new Republican Party were. They had a vision for the future of this country that can only be described as radically socialist--the states were to be reduced to mere vassals of an all-powerful federal government in Washington. The concept of the sovereign rights of the individual states was to be put to rest forever. That was what Lincoln sought. It was the same thing Marx had sought in Europe and then supported when Lincoln did it here.

In 1848 Germany was made up of a whole batch of separate, semi-autonomous states, and this was one of the things the 1848 socialist revolts there sought to change. The socialists wanted what they called “democracy.” And their claim was “All Germany is declared to be a united, indivisible republic.” Does that sound familiar to anyone? How about “one nation indivisible” does that sound familiar? It’s what Marx wanted in Germany. It’s what Lincoln wanted here. It’s a totalitarian concept.

Interestingly, the concept of secession was viewed by Lincoln, Marx, and Hitler in exactly the same way. They were all opposed to it. Do you wonder why?  States that can secede if they wish are not under the control of a centralized government, hence they cannot be coerced against their will to do what their rulers want them to do, even if it is against their best interests.

Interestingly, not all young folks have bought the Lincoln myth. On a site called http://answers.yahoo.com  people were asked, in 2008, what impact Abraham Lincoln had on the world.  One thoroughly brainwashed person wrote: “he unified the United States after the civil war and abolished slavery.” Sorry, folks, but that one’s a bit inaccurate. Another responder named Rachel was much more on target. She wrote: “He showed the world that if you have enough military might, that you can subdue your own people at gunpoint, lie to them, and make them claim you’re a ‘great humanitarian’ after you’ve killed over 600,000 of them while also ignoring your constitution and grabbing powers that aren’t yours to claim and destroying and imprisoning anyone who challenges you.” She went on to note how the Chinese Communists put down rebellions “like Abraham Lincoln did” and they used that rationale when responding to US complaints about human rights. I don’t know if this girl was home schooled or not, but she sure has done the homework. Would to God all our young people had this much understanding.

I found it interesting that the Chinese Reds harked back to Lincoln to justify putting their people under oppression and that the US could not respond to that claim. They couldn’t because they knew it was true! And so Lincoln emerged, in the 20th century, as the icon of Communist governments, a position he holds with singular distinction for those who recognize what he was really all about.