Big Confederate Gun Goes Home

 
By Brian Hicks
The Post and Courier
Charleston, South Carolina

MOBILE, ALABAMA - The Confederate sloop of war Alabama traveled the world during the Civil War, making life miserable for many mariners, but the feared raider never actually made it to the state from which it took its name.

But now, thanks to the efforts of Hunley project conservators, Mobile has one of the Alabama's big guns.

Scientists at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center this week sent one of the ship's cannons to the Alabama port city after a six-year restoration project. The 1862 gun, made in Liverpool, has been restored to look almost new, which was no easy feat.

Paul Mardikian, senior conservator on the Clemson-sponsored project, found human remains and 19th-century paint on the cannon as his crew worked to rehabilitate the weapon, which was pulled off the Alabama wreck in the English Channel.

"This is a beautiful gun with an incredible history. We are lucky it survived," Mardikian said. "When you look at this, and find the inscription that says, 'Liverpool, 1862,' and realize this gun was responsible for sinking battleships, it's what really makes this job incredible."

The ship was built in 1862 in England under an assumed name -- the British did not particularly want their alliance with the Confederacy known. Shortly after it was launched with Capt. Raphael Semmes at the helm, the Alabama became the most fearsome ship on the high seas. In two years, it claimed 60 ships worth more than $6 million combined.

Then it was caught by the American sloop of war Kearsarge coming out of Cherbourg, France, where it had stopped for repairs. The Union vessel sank the famous ship in about an hour. A French Navy mine hunter found the wreck in 1984.

See the complete story here: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/feb/06/big-gun-goes-home/

Abraham Lincoln Destroyed George Washington's America

From The Barnes Review
http://www.barnesreview.org/

GEORGE WASHINGTON, WHILE FLAWED, AS IS ANY HUMAN BEING, was surely the best president the United States ever had. Abraham Lincoln may well have been the worst president—although there is no shortage of runners-up for the title, such as GeorgeW. Bush and Bill Clinton, and others. Lincoln certainly brought more destruction on the country than any other president. There is a myth that Lincoln fought his war against the Southern states to end slavery. He did not. That was an afterthought, in a bid to rally support in the Northern states (some of which themselves had slavery). He fought his vicious war supposedly to “preserve the union.” Having voluntarily joined the union, didn’t the states have the right to leave? Was it worth the cost in blood? Some say slavery wouldn’t have ended without the war, but that’s not true. Britain and many other countries stopped slavery without a war. In addition to the vast cost in human lives, Lincoln’s war completely changed the nature of the U.S. government—elevating the federal government’s importance in some decidedly unfortunate ways. Many other presidents were mediocre or tyrannically followed in Lincoln’s footprints. So why is Lincoln’s birth celebrated on George Washington’s birthday?


BY CHUCK BALDWIN

What began as an observance for President Washington but has since the 1980 smorphed into the generic “Presidents Day” (it will be Feb. 15 in 2010), a politically correct celebration of mediocrity that forces our nation’s greatest president to be lumped together with incompetents such as George W. Bush, Ulysses S. Grant, FDR and Woodrow Wilson.

On the occasion of Presidents Day, a USAToday/Gallup poll asked the American people to select the greatest president. The top five presidents, according to the poll, are (in order): Ronald Reagan (he was rated No. 1), John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington.

Can you believe it? Washington was rated fifth. Fifth! With a vote total of only 9 percent, no less. Washington is positively the greatest American to ever live—bar none. It is no hyperbole to say that without Washington, there would be no United States of America. Washington almost single-handedly kept a struggling Continental Army (along with a fledgling nation, for that matter) together. Take away Washington, and there are no stories of Valley Forge, the crossing of the Delaware River, no Yorktown victory.

A lesser man would doubtless have succumbed to the call of many to institute a monarchy in America. A lesser man could not have delivered the greatest-of-all-presidential addresses that we find in his “Farewell Address. ”Washington’s Farewell Address became the guiding light and compass for American policy and philosophy for many generations. In fact, it is the abandonment of the principles of that address that is systematically destroying this country. Therefore, a return to the wisdom of that address would doubtless return our country to its former greatness.

There is only one “Father of His Country,” and it is Washington. Yet, in the minds of today’s Americans, Washington is inferior to the likes of FDR and JFK.

Furthermore, the Gallup survey concludes that both Democrats and Republicans (and conservatives and liberals) share special infatuation with Lincoln. I have witnessed the veracity of Gallup’s findings. Go to just about any private Christian school and one will find Lincoln idolized almost to the point of deification.

The same is also true in state schools, of course. Now, virtually everyone is saying that the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Lincoln’s vision. They might be right. But just exactly what does that mean?

According to the current edition of Newsweek magazine, “We are all socialists now.” The article states, “The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” It continued, “Whether we want to admit it or not . .. the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.”

Again quoting Newsweek: “The architect of this new era of big government? History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion. Bush brought the ‘Age of Reagan’ to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton’s ‘End of Big Government’.”

Unfortunately, Newsweek is dead right. By the end of two George W. Bush terms and one Obama term, the United States will resemble socialist France far more than the independent nation envisioned—and created—by Washington. Yes, in a very real and practical sense, this really is Lincoln’s America. More than any other single person, Lincoln shaped and formed modern America.

It was Lincoln who was the first president to flagrantly and deliberately violate his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. His disregard and contempt for the Constitution cannot be overstated. In order to “preserve the union,” Lincoln destroyed the very principles upon which the union was created. His audacity is without equal. Of course, he was more than willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of America’s finest and best to destroy Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that the states of our union are “free and independent states.”

I invite all those Lincoln apologists out there to seriously answer this question: Does a husband who beats his wife have the right to force her (at the point of gun) to remain married to him? (Even the God of the Bible, Who cast marriage in the most sacred terms, recognizes the right of lawful separation.)

If you answer no, how can you continue to justify Lincoln’s actions? In a political and governmental sense, that is exactly what Lincoln did. Forced union, of any kind, is slavery. In the name of emancipating slaves, Lincoln enslaved an entire nation. It was Lincoln who, for all intents and purposes, destroyed federalism and limited government in America. In fact, on December 15, 1866, renowned British historian Lord Acton wrote a letter to Gen. Robert E. Lee. In the letter, Acton said, “I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

It was Lincoln who first established the nanny state, Big Government, Big Brother etc. Everything that Big-Government presidents such as Wilson, F.D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Bush I and Bush II and Barack Obama learned, they learned from Lincoln. That is why these men love to quote Lincoln so much. What is appalling is the manner in which the American people (including professed Christians) have allowed the “politically correct” propaganda machine to brainwash their reasoning. Conservatives and liberals, and Democrats and Republicans, now embrace Lincoln’s America. As Newsweek said,

“We are all socialists now.”

What could prove to be a very interesting and even promising note, however, is the fact that more than 20 states have recently proposed (or are in the process of drafting) resolutions advancing their individual state sovereignty. What do these states see coming? Do they see socialism’s twin sister, oppression, lurking around the corner? Are these states looking into the future and preparing to take a stand for freedom and independence? What an exciting prospect. Perhaps the great country that Washington birthed is not dead after all.

CHUCK BALDWIN is a nationally known pastor, radio broadcaster,  and writer from Pensacola, Florida.  He was the nominee for President of the United States by the Constitution Party 2008.

See more of Chuck's writings at www.chuckbaldwinlive.com.

See The Barnes Review article here:  http://www.barnesreview.org/html/july2009lead_124.html

Confederates Remembered in Comanche County, Texas

This colorful monument, erected in 2002 and dedicated on March 24, 2002, stands in front of the Comanche County Courthouse, Comanche, Texas. The recent date on the monument is a testimony to the fact that even as we are approaching the sesquicentennial of the War Between the States, the noble Confederate cause - the struggle for freedom from an oppressive centralized government - is not forgotten.

The inscription reads:

CONFEDERATE

 VETERANS

NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD, NOT FOR

PLACE OR RANK, NOT LURED BY

AMBITION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY,

BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO DUTY

AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT, FOR FOUR

WEARY YEARS THESE BRAVE MEN

SUFFERED ALL, SACRIFICED ALL, DARED

ALL, AND FACING DEATH CARRIED THE

BANNERS OF THE CONFEDERACY.

THESE SOLDIERS OFFERED THEIR LIVES

ON THE ALTER OF THEIR

COUNTRY'S LIBERTY

DEDICATED BY

THE SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS

2ND TEXAS FRONTIER DISTRICT CAMP 1904

AND PATRIOTIC CITIZENS WHO

GENEROUSLY CONTRIBUTED

A.D. 2002

1861 - 1865

Mr. Lincoln's War - An Irrepressible Conflict?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”
—London Times, November 7, 1861

“The preservation of the union is the supreme law.”
—Andrew Jackson, December 25, 1832

The Civil War was the greatest tragedy ever to befall the nation. Brother slew brother. Six hundred thousand of American’s best and bravest died of shot, shell, and disease. The South was bled to death, invaded, ravaged by Union armies, occupied for a dozen years. Under federal bayonets, her social and political order was uprooted and the 11 states that had fought to be free of the Union were “reconstructed” by that Union. America’s South would need a century to recover.

Thirteen decades after Appomattox the questions remain: Was it “an irrepressible conflict”? Was it a necessary war? Was it, as Churchill wrote, “the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass-conflicts of which till then there was record”? Was it a just war? What became of the great tariff issue that had divided and convulsed the nation equally with slavery in the decades before the war? Are there lessons for us in this most terrible of tragedies where all of the dead were Americans?

After any such war, it is the victors who write the history. That has surely been true of the Civil War. Among the great myths taught to American schoolchildren has been that the “Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln, was elected to free the slaves from bondage, that America’s “Civil War” was fought to end slavery in the United States.
 This is fable. Even the name given this terrible war is wrong. A civil war is a struggle for power inside a nation like the War of the Roses, or the horrible war between Bolsheviks and Czarists in Russia, “Reds” and “Whites,” after Lenin’s October Revolution. The combatants from 1861-1865 were not fighting over who would govern the United States. The South had never contested Lincoln’s election. The South wanted only to be free of the Union.

The war was not over who would rule in Washington, but who would rule in South Carolina, Georgia, and the five Gulf states that had seceded by the time of Fort Sumter. From the standpoint of the North, this was a War of Southern Secession, a War to Preserve the Union. To the South this was the War for Southern Independence.

The Birth of a Myth

At the dedication of Gettysburg Battlefield, on November 19, 1863, three years after Lincoln’s election, the Great Myth was born. There, Abraham Lincoln declared that the war had been, all along, about equality.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

But four score and seven years before Lincoln spoke was 1776. The “new nation” may have been “conceived” in 1776, but it was not born until 1788 after the ninth state had ratified the Constitution. In that Constitution, freemen, black and white, were equal. But slavery, the antithesis of equality, was protected. By Benjamin Franklin’s compromise, slaves were to be considered as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in the House. Painful to concede, it is more truthful to say that slavery, the essence of inequality, was embedded in the Constitution of the new nation.

Moreover, in reaching back to 1776, Lincoln had invoked, in defense of a war to crush a rebellion, the most powerful brief every written on behalf of rebellion. The Declaration of Independence is not about preserving a union. It is a declaration of secession; it is about the “Right of the People to alter or to abolish” one form of government “and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers on such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” It is about a person’s right “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

There's much more.  Read the full article here:  http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2009/02/12/mr-lincolns-war-an-irrepressible-conflict

Killing and Plundering in Port Gibson, Mississippi

Directly across from the Claiborne County Courthouse, Port Gibson, Mississippi, is this very imposing Confederate Monument. It honors the soldiers from Claiborne County who fought to defend their homeland against Northern invaders during the War Between the States. The monument was dedicated Oct. 26, 1907 in a fitting ceremony led by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.


Claiborne County was the scene of two important battles of the War. The Battle of Grand Gulf, April 29, 1863, on the banks of the Mississippi River, was counted as a Confederate victory although it allowed Union General U.S. Grant to move his troops past the fortifications and land them at Bruinsburg. This helped set the stage for the infamous Siege of Vicksburg and the opening of the Mississippi for the invading Yankees. The former town of Grand Gulf is now Grand Gulf Military Park with a museum, historic buildings, hiking trails and an observation tower with an outstanding view of the Mississippi River.

The Battle of Port Gibson was started by Northern aggressors near the A. K. Shaifer house, May 1, 1863. A Union victory, the battle resulted in 1,648 casualties, all of them American - 861 Union, 787 Confederate.   Three of my great uncles, two from Alabama and one from Georgia, were among the Confederate soldiers who survived the battle.  All three were later captured in Vicksburg.  They were the lucky ones.  Others of my kin had already been killed in Mr. Lincoln's War.

A portion of the Port Gibson battlefield is now preserved within the Vicksburg National Military Park.

Below is an eye-witness account of the aftermath of the Battle of Port Gibson, written by two Union Soldiers:

“Early next morning, May 2d, we advanced with a strong skirmish-line in front, and entered Port Gibson at 9 A. M., where we found the public and private buildings crowded with rebel wounded. The Regiment stacked arms on the side-walk, under the shade-trees. The enemy had retreated over the south fork of Piere River, destroying the bridge after them. The following morning we crossed the river on a pontoon bridge, marched all day, and crossed the north fork at Grindstone Ford in the evening, and camped near the stream.

"The provisions that we started with had lasted up to this time, but we had cut loose from our base, which prevented us from getting another supply. Orders were therefore issued to subsist on the products of the country through which we marched; and from that time forward until the siege of Vicksburg, foraging parties, or perhaps better known as "bummers," were sent out daily, to procure all the provisions and forage that was required for the army. They left camp every morning, in advance of the infantry, and a curious sight they were to behold, as they galloped by at full speed, mounted on such "critters" as they could gather up on their expeditions. They were dressed in such clothes as suited their fancy - the Union blue, the rebel gray and butternut, with a considerable number in citizens' attire.

“They were a jolly, mischievous set, eager and ready for any adventure. No sooner were they beyond the lines than they began their work. They slaughtered the pigs in the pens; the cattle and horses were driven from the fields; smokehouses and cellars were ransacked for flour, meal and bacon; the chickens and turkeys were captured in the yard; the mules were hitched to the family carriage, and the provisions stowed away in it, when it was driven to the next plantation, where the same ceremony was repeated. Toward evening the foragers returned to camp, driving the cattle before them, followed by a long line of vehicles of every description, loaded with all kinds of provisions, which was equally distributed among the different regiments.”

--Maj. John A. Bering & Capt. Thomas Montgomery, 1880, in History of the Forty-eighth Ohio Vet. Vol. Inf.

The invaders saw themselves as "... a jolly, mischievous set, eager and ready for any adventure.” In truth, they were a brutal force of murderers, marauders and plunderers. When the Yankees arrived at Port Gibson they found a beautiful, prosperous and peaceful town. Two days later they went on their "jolly" way, the Yanks left behind hundreds of dead and wounded. The innocent, civilian surviviors – including old men, women and children, both black and white – were left destitute and hungry.

Port Gibson, the third oldest town in Mississippi, is still a lovely place. However, in many ways it has never fully recovered from the devastation of the War to Prevent Southern Independence.

1845 Claiborne County Courthouse, Port Gibson, Mississippi

Photos and Story by J. Stephen Conn

Quotes about the Confederate Flag

In my recent reading I have come across the two quotes below about the Confederate Flag.  It is heartening to read what these two respected leaders have had to say about the revered symbol of the Confederate States of America.

“The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag; it was sadly the Stars and Stripes."

--Alan Keyes, Ph.D, Harvard
Author, former United Nations Amasador and Assistant Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan






"The Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism … the flag does not offend me personally. I grew up in the South – in Texas. That flag doesn’t represent anything other than regional pride. It’s a time in our history that we just can’t erase.”

-- Laura Bush, former First Lady of the United States

An Ohio School Teacher, a Black Freeman, and the Battle of Fort Blair

Here at Historic Fort Blair, Baxter Springs, Kansas, Confederate troops lead by a former school teacher from Dover, Ohio and a free man of color from Missouri, were victorious in a battle against the Union army during the War Between the States.

On October 6, 1863, a Confederate cavalry unit of about 400 men, lead by Captain William Clarke Quantrill, a former Ohio school teacher, traveled along the Texas Road near the Missouri-Kansas border. Helping lead the way was Quantrill’s primary scout John Noland, a free man of African descent, who had joined the Confederate army because his family in Missouri was severely abused by Union soldiers. At least two other black men, John Lobb and Henry Wilson, and Cherokee Indian Adam Wilson were also members of the integrated Confederate company.

Upon approaching Fort Blair, Quantrill divided his force into two columns, one under him and the other commanded by a subordinate, David Poole. Poole and his men proceeded down the Texas Road, where they encountered Union soldiers. They chased the Union troops, killing some of them before they reached the earth and log fort.

Poole's column then attacked Fort Blair, but the garrison fought them off with the aid of a howitzer. Quantrill's column moved on the post from another direction where they encountered a Union detachment escorting Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt who was in the process of moving his command headquarters from Fort Scott to Fort Smith.

Most of this detachment, including the military band, Maj. Henry Z. Curtis (son of Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis), and Johnny Fry (first official westbound rider of the Pony Express) was killed.  Blunt and a few mounted men escaped and returned to Fort Scott. Blunt was removed from command by his superiors for failing to protect his column.  However, he was later restored.

The Union troops took such heavy losses in the Battle of Fort Blair that, to this day, some people tout the Confederate victory as a massacre. They did not call it a massacre earlier when Union soliders committed numerous acts of genocide against innocent Missouri civilians simply because they were suspected of sympathising with the Confederate quest for freedom from an out of control centrailzed government.  It was these Northern attrocities that caused the Confederates to take up arms and defend themselves.

In the spring of 1865, Quantrill rode into a Union ambush near Taylorsville, Kentucky. There, on May 10, he received a gunshot wound to the chest, leading to his death in a Louisville hospital on June 6 at the age of 27.

After the war, when veterans would hold reunions, Captain Quantrill’s troops came to be known as "Quantrill's Raiders." Historic Photographs of the reunions prominently show John Noland, the African-American Confederate scout, with his comrades in the group. At the reunions, Noland enjoyed recounting the story of how the Federals once offered him $10,000 (an enormous sum at that time) to betray the Confederates.  Being a man of honor and integrity, Noland scorned the Yankee bribe.  Other soldiers reminisced that when they were in battle Noland was a true leader, shouting commands than any other of Quantrill's men.

Some Northern apologists have tried to villify Quantrill and his men as blood thirsty, opportunistic outlaws. Those who have come to Quantrill’s defense include none other than a former president of the United States from Missouri, Harry S. Truman. He said, “But Quantrill and his men were no more bandits than the men on the other side. I’ve been to reunions of Quantrill’s men two or three times. All they were trying to do was protect the property on the Missouri side of the line.”

In truth, that’s what Confederates were doing everywhere that they fought in the War for Southern Independence – defending themselves, their families, and their property against a hostile, invading Union Army.

1901 Quantrill Raider's Reunion, Blue Springs, Missouri