Defending the Union?

This monument to the Union Veterans of the War of 1861-1865 stands beside the Cortland County Courthouse, Cortland, New York. The inscription reads:

CENTENNIAL OFFERING OF

CORTLAND COUNTY

TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE

WHO FOUGHT IN DEFENSE

OF THE UNION

1861 - 1865

A.D. 1876

This is such a very sad monument to an utterly needless war.  The monument, erected only 11 years after the War to Prevent Southern Independence, attempts to justify an unnecessary war by calling it a war to "defend" the Union. 

Actually, the Union, and the United States, were not in need of defense from the Confederate States because they were not under attack. It was the northern Union which was the aggressor in this unfortunate conflict, which resulted in the deaths of 620,000 American soldiers, plus countless thousands of innocent civilians, utterly destroying cities, villages and farms throughout the South.

Most historians agree that had there never been a so called "American Civil War," slavery would have soon ended peacefully in the South, just as it had ended in the North. Few people seem to remember that Massachusetts was the first state to legalize slavery, and that all of the slave ships which ever sailed from America were under the United States flag and from northern ports such as Boston, New York and Providence.

No slave ship ever sailed from the South, or under a Confederate flag. In fact, the Confederate Constitution outlawed the salve trade (the importation of new slaves) and many of the Confederate leaders were actively working toward a gradual emancipation - just as had happened in Europe and the northern states, and as was still happening in South America. In none of these other places was a war necessary to end slavery, and it would not have been necessary in the Confederate States of America.

Without the attrocities committed by the Yankees in this this War of Northern Aggression, and the subsequent punitive "Reconstruction," race relations would be much better today throughtout the United States. It is also quite possible that the Confederate States would have peacefully returned to the Union if only Lincoln would have ended the unfair taxation in which the Southern states paid up to 85% of the national budget, which was spent mostly in the North. Instead, Lincoln planned to raise the unjust tarrifs against the South by 40%, and then he called for an army to collect those taxes. That's when, and why, the South seceded. The terrible effects of Lincoln's misguided war are still being felt almost 150 years later.

South Dakota Monument and America's Manifest Destiny

On a recent western trip I was impressed by this monument in Clark, South Dakota honoring veterans from Clark County who fought for American expansion from the War of the Rebellion (1861-1865) to present. Plaques on all sides of the monument give tribute to Clark County citizens who have fought in America's wars.

I found the plaque to the War of the Rebellion, pictured below, to be particularly revealing. This small county in what was then the Dakota Territory, sent a very large number of soldiers to the "War to prevent Southern Independence." This was a full quarter-century before South Dakota was granted statehood in 1889. It was also during the same time of the Indian Wars in which the United States systematically slaughtered the Plains Indians, breaking treaty after treaty, in order to steal their land and their gold.

Actually, these two wars were both parts of the United States' much larger, campaign of conquest, which also included the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and others. President Ulysses S. Grant acknowledged as much when he said, "The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war."Spurred by the zealous but misguided notion of Manifest Destiny, and through relentless decades of wars and atrocities, the United States evolved from a confederation of sovereign, independent states into a world-wide empire with an all powerful centralized government.

William T. Sherman: Mad General - Mass Murderer

The kindest thing that could possibly be said about General William T. Sherman is that he was stark, raving mad. If he was insane - as many contemporary newspapers alleged and as he actually once claimed to be - then it might offer the only lame defense for the dastardly deeds of the United States’ most infamous war criminal.

Commanding General of the United States Army during the War Between the States, William Tecumseh Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, and this statue to him stands in Zane Square Park, in downtown Lancaster. According to Lancaster's official travel guide: "Due to strong southern sentiment, more than 100 years passed before a Sherman statue was unveiled on July 2, 2000 during Lancaster's bicentennial celebration."

Sherman, with the blessing and enthusiastic approval of General Ulysses S. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln, waged "Total War" against defenseless civilians throughout the Confederate States of America, 1861 - 1865. It was truly a "War of Northern Aggression" against a people who only wanted to be left alone.

General Sherman was personally responsible for the pillaging, plundering and burning of countless undefended cities, towns and homes. He and his barbaric Union troops brought wrought total destruction on farms, livestock and civilian food supplies. They turned thousands of women and children out into the winter cold, leaving them to fend for themselves with no food and no shelter. He and his troops hauled thousands of wagon loads of stolen Southern goods back to the North. They gang raped both black and white women and slaughtered thousands of innocent Americans, including old men, women, and children of all races.

Sherman had no shame. Here are some of his own words that illustrate his maniacal lust for blood. In a letter to his wife he said of the southern secessionists: “why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . . . Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources"

In an order to one of his generals, Thomas Ewing (Order #11) Sherman said “There is a class of people (in the South), men women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.”

And again to his wife he wrote from north Georgia, “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash.”

Sherman once declared, "The Government of the United States has in North Alabama any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war – to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . . war is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact.... We will . . . take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper,"

Sherman's own words condemn him.

Some of the people who were exterminated by Sherman's army in both Georgia and Alabama were my own kin, including my great, great grandfather and two of his brothers, uncles on both sides of my family, plus several cousins. Not a one of them was a slave owner. They were poor farmers whose only crime was that they were defending their homes and families from a hostile, invading, foreign army.

It is beyond my comprehension to understand why some people today think of Sherman as a great war hero when to me was the personification of evil - a shameful dark stain on the history of the United States.

The people of Lancaster, Ohio honor this mad man with a historical marker that spins the memory of Sherman’s despicable deeds by calling him: “a four star military genius … a brilliant commander and grand strategist who revolutionized war by incorporating psychological and economic warfare into his military tactics.”

After his atrocities against the people of the Confederate States, Sherman continued his maniacal murders by overseeing the genocide of the Native American population in the West in Indian Wars. Of the Plains Indians he said, "It is one of those irreconcilable conflicts that will end only in one way, one or the other must be exterminated . . . . We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to the extermination, men, women and children" ... "The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year," wrote Sherman. "They all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers."

William T. Sherman wrote his own epitaph - “Faithful and Honorable.” A more fitting epitaph would be “Insane and Conscienceless.”

As a current resident of the state of Ohio I can only hang my head in shame.

Political Spin on a Union Monument

The inscription on the Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Oswego, New York, is typical of the political spin placed on such monuments in the North. The men from Oswego County who fought during the war of 1961-1865 were not "defending" the Union. The United States was not under attack.

The Confederate States of America no more wanted to conquer and rule the North than the American colonies wanted to capture Great Britain during the American Revolution. The conflict was entirely a "War of Northern Aggression," a term which is still in wide use in the South.

The southern states, which had a small minority of the nation's population and votes, were paying as much as 85 percent or more of the national budget through unfair trade tariffs. Abraham Lincoln, discounting the Southern vote, campaigned on a pledge to greatly increase those already lopsided taxes against the South. After he was elected, the southern states seceded, and did so with more just cause and with firmer legal standing than had the original 13 colonies when they seceded from Great Britain in 1776.

Upon taking office, Lincoln called for an army to invade the Confederate States of America. When almost all of his advisors were against the war, Lincoln responded, "If the South goes, who will pay for the government?"

I have visited and photographed scores of Union monuments but have never seen one which proclaims that the North fought to free the slaves. No one thought that to be the case at the time. In his campaign for president, Lincoln had been adamant that he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it was already in practice. After all, Slavery had been legally practiced in every northern state and the North was still in the process of gradually phasing slavery out.

The slavery pretense for the war was tacked on in what Lincoln called a "war measure," long after the war began. My own Confederate great grandfather, and two of his brothers, were all three killed by Union troops long before Abraham Lincoln gave his Emancipation Proclamation, which did not free a single slave, including thousands of slaves in several Union states.

Monument to a War Criminal - General Philip H. Sheridan

This imposing monument to Union General Philip Henry Sheridan stands in the traffic circle in the center of downtown Somerset, Ohio, Sheridan's home town.

By every civilized standard, General Sheridan was a war criminal of the worst sort who brought shame and disgrace upon the United States of America. Yet, he was highly praised by President Abraham Lincoln and was actually promoted for his unconscionable crimes against innocent, defenseless civilians.

General Philip Sheridan is a celebrated "war hero" in Ohio and in the history books written by the northern victors in the War to Prevent Southern Independence, aka the War Between the States and the American Civil War.

In the autumn of 1864, after the retreating Confederate army had evacuated Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Sheridan and his 35,000 infantry troops utterly destroyed the once peaceful valley. Sheridan described his atrocities in a letter to commanding General Ulysses S. Grant. In the first few days he of his occupation Sheridan boasted that he "destroyed over 2200 barns . . . over 70 mills . . . have driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed . . . not less than 3000 sheep. . . . Tomorrow I will continue the destruction."

Sheridan's troops told of the wanton attack in their letters home, calling themselves "barn burners" and "destroyers of homes." One soldier wrote to his family that he had personally set 60 private homes on fire and opined that "it was a hard looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year" (winter). A Sergeant William T. Patterson wrote that "the whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens are aglow with the light thereof . . . such mourning, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy [by defenseless women]... I never saw or want to see again."

The innocent victims who lived in the Shenandoah were left utterly destitute - without shelter, without food, and without any means of growing new crops or livestock with which to feed themselves. The area was so completely sacked and devastated that Sheridan boasted "'... a crow flying over must carry it's own provisions."

Instead of being reprimanded for his horrific deeds, President Abraham Lincoln personally conveyed to Sheridan "the thanks of the Nation."

After having his fill of slaughtering Confederates, Sheridan turned his evil lust for blood toward America's western frontier. He was appointed as overseer of the Indian Territory where he supervised the genocide of Native Americans and coined the phrase, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

As an American, and a citizen of the State of Ohio, I hang my head in shame and weep for the America that might have been.

Story and photo by J. Stephen Conn

Lessons from an Ohio Monument to the War of the Rebellion

This very impressive monument stands in front of the old Wilson Childrens Home in West Union, Ohio. It was erected by the Honorable John T. Wilson as a tribute to the soldiers of Adams County, Ohio, who were killed or died during their invasion of the Confederate States of America during the War to Prevent Southern Independence.

It is interesting to note that the monument refers to the "War of the Late Rebellion." Apparently Mr. Wilson knew what many Americans today do not know - that our country did not have a "Civil War" in 1861-1865. The United States has never had a civil war - which is when two or more factions within a single country fight for control of the government. Instead, there was a peaceful and legal secession by several southern states over a complex variety of reasons, centering around States Rights and unfair taxation of the under-represented Southern planters.

To the Confederate States, that secession was a bid for independence from an out of control central government which had overstepped its Constitutional authority. "The North, which had become dependent upon heavy and unjust taxation of Southern agricultural production, mislabeled the secession as "Rebellion." When most of President Lincoln's advisers and hundreds of Northern newspapers argued that the South should be allowed to secede in peace, Lincoln replied, "If the South goes, who will pay for the government?"


The Honorable John T. Wilson, a wealthy business and civic leader from Adams County, spent $5,000 to erect the 50-foot monument in 1893 - almost three decades after the war had ended. By putting his name and bust at the base of the monument, it seems to me that Mr. Wilson was as interested in memorializing himself as he was in honoring the Union soldiers, but who am I to judge. Mr. Wilson lost his only son in the war - a fact which is not mentioned on the monument.

I also find it most interesting that this monument - like scores of others from the same era -gives no pretext that The War was about freeing the slaves. That politically correct "spin" did not become widely believed until later. John T. Wilson's son, like the other young men from Adams County, fought for no such just cause. Instead, they were pawns in the heavy hands of a federal government set on conquest and empire. Perhaps the average soldier was motivated by a misguided patriotism, but in reality they fought and died to satisfy the lust for power and greed of Abraham Lincoln and his minions.

Story and Photos by J. Stephen Conn

Monument to the Divided Southern Highlands

This monument in downtown Crossville, Tennessee, is a graphic illustration of "brother against brother" during Abraham Lincoln's War of 1861-1865. Many Southerners still rightfully refer to it as the "War for Southern Independence." The monument, erected by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, honors both Confederate and Union Dead from Cumberland County, Tennessee. Confederates are listed on the left and Union soldiers on the right.

Although Tennessee was a part of the Confederate States of America, Cumberland County was almost equally divided between Confederate and Union sympathizers. This was true in much of the country - especially in the Appalachian mountain region which includes East Tennessee. The monument is a vivid illustration of the division that The War brought to local communities as well as to the nation.

There were many reasons for the War Between the States. It is often stated that The War was fought over states rights - which is true. However, a more personally felt cause was unjust taxes against Southern planters. At the time that the Southern states seceded from the Union, they were paying more than 87% of the entire Federal budget in tariffs on southern grown agricultural products - especially cotton. However, less than one third of the nation's population lived in the South. The North, which held most of the votes in Congress, was taxing the South but spending virtually all of the tax money in the North, building railroads, canals, and infrastructure in northern cities.

The South's cause was even more just than had been that of the original thirteen colonies when they rebelled against Great Britain because of "taxation without representation." The tax on cotton was much higher than had been the tax on tea which inspired the famous Boston Tea Party. The mountain areas of the South were more severely divided because they were not as directly tied to the agricultural economy of the deep south. The hardy mountaineers were largely subsistence farmers, growing untaxed crops more akin to those raised by farmers in the north.

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Article and Photo by J. Stephen Conn

Naming the War of 1861 - 1865

In front of the Highland County Courthouse in downtown Hillsboro, Ohio, you will see this monument to the Highland County soldiers and sailors who fought for the Union (North) in America's War Between the States. I found it interesting that the monument refers to the conflict as the "War of the Rebellion." That's what the British might have called the American Revolution if the Colonies had lost in their struggle for independence.

America's war of 1861-1865 was not a true civil war, as it is commonly called. A civil war is one in which a segment of the population rises up in an effort to overthrow the government. The South had no such desire. They simply wanted to peacefully leave the Union, in a day when many people held a higher allegiance to their home state than they did to the nation. Some southerners still call the conflict the "War against Northern Aggression," which is an accurate name since it was the South which was in the defensive position.

The War also has many other names. Some of these include:

The War for Constitutional Liberty
The War for Southern Independence
The Second American Revolution
The War for States' Rights
Mr. Lincoln's War
The Southern Rebellion
The War for Southern Rights
The War of the Southern Planters
The Second War for Independence
The War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance
The Brothers' War
The War of Secession
The Great Rebellion
The War for Nationality
The War for Southern Nationality
The War of the Sixties
The Yankee Invasion
The War for Separation
The War for the Union
The Confederate War
The War of the Southrons
The War for Southern Freedom
The War of the North and South
The Lost Cause
The War to Prevent Southern Independence

In doing a Google search for these names I found that the three most widely used are:

1. Civil War
2. War of the Rebellion
3. War Between the States

Of these three I prefer the third: War Between the States. By the very definition of the term it was not a civil war. Also, it was not a war of rebellion because the so called "Rebels" did not start the war and they only fought defensively. The Confederate states simply wanted to remain free and sovereign states as outlined by the United States Constitution. Probably the most accurate of all the names in the first list is "The War to Prevent Southern Independence."

The original historical accounts attest to the fact that America's war of 1861-1865 was definitely "Mr. Lincoln's War." Mr. Lincoln alone is responsible for starting the war. He could easily have let the South go in peace, as most of his advisers and hundreds of northern newspapers recommended. Abraham Lincoln started and executed the illegal and unnecessary war, resulting in more than 620,000 deaths and the almost total destruction of the South, for only one reason - to prevent Southern Independence. He didn't want to lose the southern tariffs which provided more than 87% of the Federal budget - money which was spent primarily in the northern states. Mr. Lincoln's War to Prevent Southern independence was a war motivated by greed and the lust for power.

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Photo and Article by J. Stephen Conn