Yes, Virginia....there are different types of patriots.....

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     Yes, Virginia, of course I remember you.   You still believe there is an entity that lives and is known as Santa Clause among the American children, and others.   Thank you for allowing me to post a bit of the letter you wrote to me.

     "Dear Gringo Viejo,

                There is much written about patriots, especially when we are studying about the Revolutionary War with England.   Then my grandparents told me stories about the Civil War, and one pair said that the Northerners were patriots because they were defending the unity of all the States of America.  I know I am only 12 years old, but like my mother says, 'I can get my brain around all of that'.

    My great-grandfather says, (and my Grampa Lou and Granma Lannie agree) that the Northerners who fought were patriots, but the Southerners who fought for the Confederate cause were also patriots.  In a way, I understand, but in another way....it becomes complicated.   You can tell that both sets of grandparents believe their side was right still, but they are not angry, one to the other.
        Also, I looked up the population of the United States at the time of the Civil War and found out that with the African American and the Native American population included, there were only 35,000,000 people.   The Northern part had 23,000,000 and the Southern part 12,000,000.
     The North, as best I can tell, had a lot more industry.  The South had more "tradition".  I think I know what "tradition" is, I have seen Fiddler on the Roof twice, but "Tradition" cannot win something stupid like a big War.  So why did the South fight a war they could only lose, and for a cause that was not defendable, like slavery?   Pardon the little girl in me, but a lot of good people in the South died for nothing....nothing at all.

     Still, Gringo Viejo, it seems strange, maybe spooky, when monuments can be torn down when they honour local and regional heroes and notables....(these are my Social Studies teacher's words and they seem to make sense to me).   She said, and her teacher's aide, a really cute boy just out of college said the same thing.   And yet they say the Northerners did what they had to do.

       Are these wars, wars like this, not avoidable?  It looks like, to me, that both sides were right and both sides were wrong.   Why aren't the Southern people going to the North and demanding that the Northern Civil War monuments be torn down?

        Is Robert E. Lee a bad man?  Is Stonewall Jackson a bad man, he was a Presbyterian pastor, after all?  Is Jefferson Davis a bad man?   Is James Ewell Brown Stuart a bad man?

Thank you for helping me with these matters, Gringo Viejo.  How are things down at your little adobe place in Mexico.  Be careful and please respond a soon as you can, because this will be my theme project for this new semester.
Virginia

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     El Gringo Viejo studied these words carefully.  Virginia is a special person, and when she was much younger had the audacity to write to the New York Sun newspaper and ask if there were a Santa Clause.  Her father had whimped out and told her, after she asked him, to instead, ask the Sun if there is a Santa.  He told his daughter Virginia, "If you read it in the Sun, then it is true."

     So, since I assured Virginia myself that there certainly is a Santa Clause, she came back to me to solve this other problem.   We must address this matter to Virginia and not to the OROGs (Order of Readers of the Old Gringo).  Her questions are all salient.   My answers begin:

Dear Virginia,

     It is complicated and yet there are answers that might make sense.   Let me tell you, to further complicate the issue, that my mother was from the South....Tennessee...and she had 5 men in the generations one and two back from her birth who died in defence of the South and Tennessee.  None of these men owned slaves of any origin (Those men had surnames of Neal, Limbaugh, and Grant).   Three were officers of middling rank, and two were non-commissioned officers.
     After the War, two of El Gringo Viejo's great uncles who had survived the War, approached an old Tennessee man who had prime property.  My uncles had no money to speak of, since the War had just ended, but they had their youth and their innate willingness to work 18 hours a day.
      The brothers entered into a contract of "slavery" of a sort, known as "bonded indenture", working for seven years on the condition that after those seven years, they would each be delivered of  300 acres each of prime "bottom land" for farming.   This was (and still is) the most beautiful soil and setting one could imagine, with the Smokey Mountains in the very near distance. 
       They did other work to larder the cupboard, while keeping their eye on that trophy, land that would produce, with luck, bounteous crops of tobacco, corn, oats, and even cotton and tomatoes.  Then, shortly after the end if the War and early into the process of reclaiming that beautiful property, two Old Negro Men came to the cabin to talk to my great-uncles.   They identified themselves and platicated for a bit before finally declaring that they had been Slaves of the wife of one of the deceased Confederate Veterans.   They had come to claim the rights they had as slaves of that woman to be buried in a Christian manner.  They demanded this even though they had been manumitted (freed) before the War.

     The boys checked out the story of the Old Negro Men and assured themselves that they were true and truthful persons.  Several of the older Negro and Caucasian citizens who had lived in and  about Winchester said that they were known persons of good repute.   Our understanding is that they still sleep in the Neal Cemetery out north of Winchester, twixt that city and Estill Springs.  Although they were old upon arrival, neither died in the 19th Century....each died in what is called in the old Southern language, "...the nineteen aughts", or the first decade of the 1900s.   Both arrived at, or crossed 100 years of journey on this Planet.   According to my Aunt Maggie and her friends, they conducted themselves as the gentlemen they were. 

    And now, Virginia, concerning attitudes at the time:   My mother felt than the assassination of Lincoln brought something worse than what Lincoln intended in order to put an end to hatred and belligerence of the War Between the States.   I well remember the oft-spoken old saying in the South, that being, "At the end of World War II, Germany received the Marshall Plan - At the end of the War Between the States the South received Reconstruction."    Reconstruction was a bottomless pit of Hell and badgering and capricious enforcement of floating military judicial rules.  In Texas, the Reconstruction lasted for a decade.

     My father said that his father said that Lincoln was an egomaniac who wanted to bring on a war so as to assure his position.   My father lost two uncles in the War Between the States fighting on the Union side, Regiment 96 of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.  One was in northern Virginia (New Salem Church), a month before the engagement at Gettysburg and the other a month after Gettysburg at a place in southern Virginia.   It indirectly killed my great-grandfather Hubbard (Banty) Newton at the age of 57 over the (what he considered) useless loss of his two sons.

     So, there we have it.   A father who had real live Yankee blood (Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania), and blood spilt by blue-clad boys fighting the Confederacy, and he said that his Father's father faulted Lincoln.   And then we have a mother who declared that the South would have been better off had Lincoln remained in office after the War.

     And then, considering the issue of the imbalance of power, we need to recognise certain realities.   There were many causes to the War Between the States.  One was that the South wanted absolute Free Trade and hard currency.  This was because the South exported everything from high quality dried and salted fish, and tobacco, cotton, and a myriad of other things.
       The Northern financial interests wanted high tariffs, low and punitive quotas of imported goods, and a flexible monetary system.  The industrialists also a resolution of the problem created by the Southern railways.   That problem was brought on because the South used the English 5 foot gauge, and the North used "standard" gauge (4feet 8inches).  To wit: 

     Using historical freight traffic records, recent research has shown that the conversion to standard gauge instigated a large shift of North–South freight traffic away from coastal steamships to all-rail carriage.^[12] These effects were especially strong on short routes, where breaks in gauge were more expensive relative to the total cost and duration of carriage. However, the data indicate that the gauge change had no effect on total shipments, likely as a result of anticompetitive conduct by Southern freight carriers which prevented the railroads' cost-savings from being passed through to their prices. This research suggests that had Southern carriers not been colluding, the gauge change would have generated a sharp reduction in freight rates and immediate growth in trade between the North and South.

     This is an unknown fact, but it is published in the generally leftist Wikipedia, of all sources.  But, we shall be contradicted, undoubtedly.  It must be pointed out, in any regard, that many, many Ph.d dissertations have been written concerning this topic.  Almost all agree that the Southerners wanted to obstaculate, as much as possible, the movement of people and freight via rail.  In other words, more of a local service, and little concern for trans-continental transportation matters.

     The Northern industrialists knew that unification by rail transportation of the powerhouse of a very strong Southern agricultural engine and the almost equal industrial ability in the North would mean that the World would quickly have to yield to the American Prosperity Engine.

Hattie McDaniel and Vivien Leigh when
"Mammy" breaks the news, "...you just had a baby;
you're not going to have no 18 inch waist no more!"

     The Southerners had a feudal concept of the organisation as life.    They believed in Traditionalism over profit, and the The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer as the standard of life, and toleration of the Protestants and the Romans.  Negroes were seen as almost all being inferior intellectually  (watch it, because Lincoln and almost all Northerners believed this as well) and we (the Southern white person) must guide and protect them.   Of course, laterally, we have to submit that about one-third of all Negroes in the South  had been manumitted by the time the War Between the States broke out.
     Margaret Mitchell, in her book Gone With the Wind, pointed out that frequently the number one Man and the number one Woman among the Slave and or Freeman group actually had considerable sway and latitude in terms of "running the show" of a household and / or a plantation.  This was represented in the movie when "Mammy" was lacing Scarlett into her corset, all the while scolding her, even as Scarlett howled in pain, demanding that it be laced tighter.

     After riding around the plantation of information, opinions, and beliefs several times myself, I have arrived at my point.  Many people in the South thought that their first responsibility and loyalty was to their hearth and home and State.   Robert Edward Lee was offered the command of the Union Armies at the period just before the War Between the States broke out.  He advised his commander, General Winfield Scott and the Commander in Chief, Abraham Lincoln during a personal meeting between the three that he would have to wait for the wishes of Virginia, because should Virginia secede from the Union, he would be obliged to serve his State.
     Even the construct of how people thought of Statehood could be discerned by the way they referred to the name of the Nation.  Until fairly deep into the 20th Century, the United States Department of State would write or say, ".....and the United States of America are in agreement with the position of the United Kingdom concerning the issue at hand."   The concept of a free-standing State and its sovereignty was commonly accepted.  Southerners especially always assumed that each State in the Union had as much power as the central government in Washington, District of Columbia, and as much importance as any other State, large or small.

     It is for these things and those reasons, Virginia, that the people who supported secession and the War of Between the States thought that they were patriots and not guilty of sedition and treason in any wise.   It has been my personal belief that had the South been allowed to drift on away from the Union of States to the north, that the two nations would have still remained close and perhaps even friendly, due to their sharing considerable common heritage.  In other words, being apart might have guaranteed their being closer together, especially on international matters.
      To be sure, Robert E. Lee was referred to by Gen. Winfield Scott as 'America's greatest soldier" after the War with Mexico (1846 - 1848), and Jefferson Davis had a very successful political career, including cabinet positions as Secretary of War and other high missions.  James Ewell Brown Stuart and Stonewall Jackson were, like Lee and Davis, good men defending their hearth and home.   It was a bad war. 

These are just a few of my observations, Virginia.  Perhaps we can cover some more again soon.
El Gringo Viejo

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Various Posts....some deferences rendered....some sociological and cultural observations about Texas

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     There are so many topics.  They are like the rain lilies that sprout with the rains that follow a drought.    I shall try to be brief with my impressions, although it is my opinion that they are salient observations for these times.

(1)   The "Texas Navy":   This body, augmented by the Cajun Navy from some country out east of the Republic of Texas, and even some from distant jurisdictions that have monuments to war heroes from a war long ago such as Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and other blessed places.

     These people went out when the water was still rising.   They did not ask, "How much is that house worth?"or "Are you legal, black, Indian, extraterrestrial?"

      They paid their own fuel and upkeep on John-boats, air-boats, kayaks, some pretty fancy middle-sized rigs, pontoon / party boats....and frequently worked 12 - 18 hours and/or through the night with cottonmouths - rattlesnakes - water moccasins looking for boats or logs or something upon which to cling.   Charge?  $00.00 USD.

(2)    Fellows from Rockport....which essentially no longer exists, down just north of Corpus Christi....went up to volunteer in Houston because......?   "Well, there wasn't anything down there we could do.  Everything is gone.  So we decided to come up here where there were still some people we could help."

(3)     Everybody knows that Texians are a bunch of racist Jethros and Bubbas and that they are a couple of hundred thousand years behind on the evolutionary charts.    Please remember, O! Ye who can well discern the mote in thy neighbour's eye and seeth not the beam in thine own.

     Scene after scene of Black African ancestried people helping Latinate and Brittanic looking people.  Real Jethros and Bubbas helping people of Black African Ancestry without a second thought....cradling their babies, helping their old ladies "aboard" whatever floating device was readily available.   Take all the groups and combinations of groups,  a bunch of Latinate people pushing an Anglo's fancy pickup up to high ground.....400 yards through chest-deep water. 

     A Black women, a little older than she might admit, on crutches being delivered to high ground and crutching her way up, still thigh deep in the water, and saying,"You all go on about your business, there's a lot of people back there (she swings her chin to a clear over-the-right-shoulder gesture) who need a lot more help than I need."   (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you........)   The White Boys did as they were directed, by the Southern / Texian Code, by their social superior....the Southern / Texian Social Law:  She was older and she was a lady.   Do what she says.

(4)     I shan't belabour the inter-ethnic, inter-racial unthinking Samaritanism that might surprise the East Coast - West Coast people who read this screed third hand.  (yes, we can track up to the sixth cyber-generation of our followers)   Here it is normal.  A profound statement was received by this listener one time several years ago, during a civil insurrection in Austin.  An old white cop, with whom I was riding as part of a sociology course in criminology, confided in me that, "I guess I am enough of a racist that I would shoot a white looter before a black one."   (Texian logic)

(5)   We were aghast to see Melania wearing shoes!!!!   Wearing Shoes!!!!!  Expensive, designer shoes!!!!!  And to a hurricane!!!!  Doesn't she know that you can't wear white after Labour Day? In other words we were fascinated that the Obsolete Press made over a previous First Lady as if she were the Queen of Sheba.....in spite of certain...uh....er....uh....physiological realities.  But, when it comes to accepting or rejecting the quality of of this or that First Lady of the American Republic, it seems that the Obsolete Press is much more concerned with whether or not the First Lady is a dedicated socialist and abortionist and "alternative lifestyle"advocate, than the positive things that a First Lady can convey to the American and World's population.
     She acquitted herself quite well in her tennis shoes and black baseball-style cap while she was on the ground....still looking better than certain other first ladies, some of whom had to run across the tarmac dodging sniper fire.  Don't you just hate it when the infantry helmets ruin your hairdo?
      
      Who knows?  When she goes bowling with some wounded warriors or something, and she is wearing bowling shoes....perhaps they will say....''Melanie goes grandma!!!"



(6)     There are various female-type OROGs, who have been drawn as a moth to the flame, and are burdened with the yoke of progressivism.   Most of the OROGettes are rightwing crazies.  But the former group will be glad when I throw the necessary bone to members of the left.
     Nancy Pelosi and the Mayor of San Francisco Jesus Arranguia, and certain other liberal University presidents and CEOs of important places have declared that Trump is correct.   In this case Trump agrees with me, not visa-versa.  The Progressives, however, have "come out" and said that the "Antifa" is a terrorist-type group driven by violence and by the suspension of discourse.They have suggested that many events including Charlottesville were provoke by "Antifas"
      It has become apparent to all that this group is not composed of "principled political activists" who are searching for the "common good".  They are criminal...many with records and warrants outstanding....and they have no political or social mission beyond nihilism, anarchy, and oddly racism.   Almost all are Caucasoid.   Almost all have had some relationship with the old Soros group know as the Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now! (ACORN).  These are the people who signed up Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe and similar for the voters' registry.   These are the people who dropped out of Occupy Wall Street because it was not anarchistic enough.

     WHAT IS MOST DISTRESSING....is that we had to listen to long and tortured blobs of rancid bologna and fungus-bearing, road-kill, goat-guts from King George I (George Herbert Walker Bush) and King George II (George Walker Bush) along with another person I once admired as a truly reasonable "moderate", Bishop Mitt Romney....etc.    This collapse of admiration began with Barbara Bush, whom I served as an "assistant" at a couple of fund-raising occasions.

      When she said that she felt as if Billy Jeff Blythe was like a son to her, my withdrawal began.     She has said it at various times and places since the first time.   When her husband and eldest son said that they favoured Soros Zombies over the obviously less-than-perfect Trump, it was 'The End'.

     And then, finally in the case of the Prescott family, and the super-clean Mormon Romney family.....they declared that Trump was a piece of garbage because he equivilated the nice, clean protestors against oppression and slavery with a group of rightwing KKK, Nazis, and Bad People.

     In the case of Charlottesville, both sides were delivered by the Soros group.  That entire matter was constructed and designed by the Soros Anarchy and World Socialist Movement  (SAWSM).    In other words, both sides were on the same side.

     They were hoping some white-trash young male or lost soul who had been given drugs during their lifetime that  psychogically might finally cause conditions that would cause "hyperactive young boys and  men" to come up and shoot, run over, or blow-up with a home-made bomb, any-or-all nature of "demonstrators".    There is never a shortage, it seems, of male juvenile/adolescent Caucasians who, after years of "hyperactivity medicine", decide that the most fun might be to go out and kill people or beat up little kids who are somehow "different".  This is how we lost nine of the most honourable people of the Old or New South in South Carolina the other day.....and the students at Columbine....and the children at Newtown.
       
      The Soros vermin, who have been well instructed in their tactics and strategies, come from this ilk.  In Europe it abounds.  Millions of Muslims, and non-Muslims on the dole....young men parasiting off of various girlfriends and their dole resulting from numerous birthings,   taking support payments from "the government"....like our AFDC.   In America it is found in what is called "...the immigrant community" as well as anywhere else in society that where parasitism is thought to be a "square deal" .
    In fact,  frequently they are not "immigrants".  They are invaders, entering illegally with illegal intentions.   The invasion by the Muslims in the UK, France, Germany, and the rest of Europe.   And the worst ones are British Angloids and Muslims who have had granddad, daddy, and self on the Queen's dole....50, 60, 70, or more pounds-sterling per week or fortnight.  For doing nothing.   Then consider that  all of Europe taken with this hemlock juice.   All of Europe.

      While bringing on Muslims who hate European peoples and culture...whatever is left of the little culture they had....we have the perfect soup.  The Bushes, the Budweiser - McCains, the pseudo-Republican moderates who "understand reality" and yet endure in the psychotic unreality of unbalanced budgets and government control and social deconstruction, we begin to see the shadow of America.    Shadow because it is no longer a solid thing, but an ephemeral thing that has no substance and dwells in the past.... a past  which will soon be erased...along with the tumbling down of statues of greater men than many we have now.  Testosterone and morality were once made of sterner stuff. 

     Bolshevik Socialism, Collectivism, National Socialism, Progressivism, and Liberation Theology all lead to moral and social death.   Nancy Pelosi and Jesse Arranguia apparently saw this a the very moment they were entering the tunnel to eternal death.   The Bushes, the Romneys, the McCain-types.....not so much.
     They used the opportunity to take a foggy, intentional misreporting of the Charlottesville "confrontation" to uselessly try to wound Trump...who is an impetuous jackass....but he a loveable jackass I guess, and a better man than those blue-bloods who deny the South, deny the Paladins, deny the competent blue collar class, deny the independent and true dirt farmer and rancher and small business person.
   McCain, the Bushes, Paul Ryan, the Romneys and other "enlightened Republicans" all sided with the Soros zombies.

A real shame.  Time to get rid of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War.  Time to get rid of all of the Country Club, Progressive, pro-abortion "Republicans" in the Trump administration.  These Secretaries are all nephews of Brutus.   

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More Later,

El Gringo Viejo

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Birds lighting onto the wires between the poles - What Trump should expect

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     "Do these pants make my butt look too big?" asked the Governorette Blanco. She really shone with concern for others, just before making her first outside appearance, five days after the New Orlenians brought a fairly minor hurricane hit in Mississippi into play, via their own avarice, corruption, and stupidity.

    The Obsolete Press also shone with splendour when they covered-up Blanco's stuporous response as well as the fact that Mayor Nagin did not have to worry about his family, since they lived in a rich district in Dallas, Texas. Nagin later was convicted of various crimes regarding corruption and fraud. So much for "a Chocolate New Orleans" (his words, not mine).

    I hasten to add that because I am a Confederate, not a racist, race-hustler like Nagin, Jesse Jackson, and Sharpton. Black lives did not matter to Nagin...or any other of the race hustlers....then....and still. So long as they can live in the hoity-toity, gated and walled, all-white, leftist, "neighbourhood", and not in the 'hood" with the common person of Black African ancestry and have their whores paid for with their "foundation" money or free "government" money, they're down with it.

     In Greensberg, Kansas, July 26, 2007 - FEMA Regional Administrator Dick Hainje hands an update on the progress in rebuilding Greensberg to Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Kansas Adjutant General and Director of Emergency Management, Major General Tod Bunting. The Kansas town is in the process of rebuilding after an F5 tornado in May. FEMA/Leif Skooforg.

     During a massive flooding event, Sibelius, at Rahm Emmanuel's urging (or insistence), that Sibelius should declare that she could not do anything about the impending flooding on the Missouri River ".....because George Bush took my National Guard and they had all the heavy equipment needed to bolster up the flood levees."

     But, of course, whenever a Democrat says anything, either multiply it all by (-1) or some negative number that is larger.   Her snarky, sneering remark about Bush (for whom I have lost all respect and/or loyalty) was typical of the Clinton / Obama posturing.  The problem?   The officer and gentleman shewn in the photo at the upper left, Major General Tod Bunting, the commander of the Kansas National Guard, and the overseer of public works, both scheduled and emergency, was forced by the Sword of Damocles, to correct the  issue, so to speak.

     In his statement some few hours after Sibelius flopped out that Jupiter-sized lie about Bush stealing her NG Heavy Equipment, the good Two-Star General, somewhat apologetically, had to correct the "record".  He advised a press conference that not only did they have the equipment to do the necessary repairs and restoration, well before the arrival of the flood-crest, but that his men also had already brought the work to completion.  He advised that all that remained was an inspection and a possible re-ordering of engineering, should defects or deficiencies be encountered.   That inspection is a necessity at all NG and USA engineering projects.  They are not like the Army Corps of Engineers.

     Her Honesty, Governorette Draculina Sibelius muttered something about...(and this is not a sarcastic joke), " ....Rahm Emmanuell told me to say that....".   Rahm is quite a guy.   Just think of all the good he has done in Chicago, Illinois.

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     Now enters Regis Donaldus.  He assumes that those beyond the moat will understand his intent.
         
       He has been briefed 493 times about how to say, "The folks on the ground have done wonders.  Personnel and materiel are arriving by the minute at this time to do further rescue and evacuation here in Southeastern Texas.  The Texas - Cajun Navy has done wonders, as have the first responders who have had to deal with water moccasins, rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths.   The citizens who have helped citizens deserve much credit for keeping the casualty count low, although we all lament the losses of property, life, and limb.   Simply seeing the dogs and cats searching for their people is enough to darken the heart and soul.   Do not come to this area.  Send 20 dollars to the Salvation Army or any group whose record is known by you to be reputable.   And I as your President, urge all Texans to  follow the instructions of your local leaders, but especially of your Governor.  Your Governor, Mr. Abbot, has been exemplary in his management of this disaster. There will be no questions and there will be no answers.  Let's go to work."   (Would that he would follow my prescription, without wandering off to attack Rosie O'Donnell.)

     But!!  This is assured.  Before he finishes his words, Trump will be sneered at and discounted because he (1) waited too long, (2) did not wait long enough (3) is irrelevant, and (4) he is a nazi.

     The OROGs know that this writer is no fan of Donald Trump, but unlike Obama and Clinton and Carter, and Truman, and Roosevelt, and Wilson....Donald Trump has some, very few, redeeming qualities.  As an immigrant-descendant (Trump and his children are not "American Bluebloods"), Trump pretty much falls into the "huddled masses" trap.
     But, somewhere,      and somehow,  and like the Democrats, he has something of contempt for the colonial people....people who by the Grace of the Lord God Jehovah came to the New World during its colonial episode.  My wife (1570) and I (1643) are of these people.
     We readily accept especially Mexican and all foreign people who come into this country as legal immigrants and/or who have come to establish an American military record, by conscription or by volunteering to catch Nazi or Communist bullets.   Also, those who bring blue / white collar skills and / or investment with clean pesos or dollars in any legal venture certainly are welcomed. 

    The colonial people have been relegated by all thinkers and the media, left and right, as floor mats.  We are descended from the groups who have lived through the building of America....and more importantly.....of Texas.  And because of that it is time now to discard us.   We face contempt.  Can you imagine the value of a Confederate Negro now?   He/she would be ridiculed, not off the playing field, but finally out of the stadium and parking lot, banished never to return. 

    Thanks for your time and interest.   There will be much more to come, especially about our neighbour's apparently very successful lime planting.  We are not surprised, but it is good to know that his calculations, as a businessman, were correct.  We are encouraged.  Perhaps he will allow us to "glean" the orchard.
El Gringo Viejo

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Burn the Statues, Blow Up the Cliff Buddhas!! Let the insanity reign!!!! The Rise of the American Taliban

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     The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he already knows, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

TOLSTOY

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     We regret having to waste the OROGs (Order of Readers of the Old Gringo) time by having to "relive the litany" of facts.   Even Harriet Beecher Stowe, the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" included in her peculiar novel the fact that two of the three "massahs" were good guys.   They were fair-minded, confused by the "peculiar institution" they had been born into and had inherited.

     Lost in the confusion of this ridiculous destroying, removing, and defacing of monuments and obelisks is the fact that, while the South had its disgusting "peculiar institution", many Southerners could not comprehend the horrid working conditions of the textile and metal refining factories in the "north".

     We must remember that the Northern Capitalists, during those same days, thought nothing of scooping up Irish immigrant children, who had intelligence and nimbleness of fingers, and throwing them before the mechanical looms.   They would toil 12 hours per day...if they had the age of six years or more...and then receive their one dollar...per week. Because of the nature of the machinery, the Irish children tended to lose one or two fingers per year.   Once they had fewer than six fingers, it was out into the blackwater sewers of the immigrant slums of New York.  There the children were recruited as pick-pockets and thieves by organised crime elements.   This was the condition of things at the outbreak of the War Between the States.

Allow us to remind the populace:

     (1)    The United States of America did not have even one foreign or domestic ally.  The Confederacy had two allies, both domestic and sovereign and independent.   The Choctaw Nation and the Cherokee Nation formally declared War against Union force and authority.   Stand Watie, the head Chief of the Cherokee Nation raised a significant number of part-Cherokee and full- Cherokee warriors into a light cavalry division that served in the western theatre with considerable success.

     The fact that the driving out of the Cherokee onto the Trail of Tears was part of a Southern, racist, hill-billy, yahoo, white-trash re-action to having a bunch of "injuns" hanging around where only the White-folks ought'n to be must necessarily fall on deaf ears.  One of the reasons (albeit sometime before the statement) David Crockett left the floor of the United States House of Representative, stating, "I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas.", was the dislocation of the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw groups by collusion between Andrew Jackson and the New York banking cabal.  Some in Tennessee fell for the issue, but most resented the expulsion because among the Whites, almost all had Indians of the above groupings married into their genealogies.   As, therefore,  does your humble servant.
     Crockett had made a name for himself as an Indian Fighter, but over the years, and as the warring began to become less and less, he as many, and equally the Indian groups came to an amicable inter-relationship, generally speaking.  Andrew Jackson's collusion with bankers and other investors from New York and Massachusetts, designed to drive the Cherokee and related tribes away from their ceded lands was roundly opposed by many of the people of Tennessee.  It should be pointed out that many approved, for strictly selfish reasons, the dislocation of those well-settled and prosperous neighbours in exchange for a chance to become lackeys for the "investing class".   

     (2) No Jew served in the Cabinet or the Senate of the Union Government of Abraham Lincoln.  The Southern entity had Judah Benjamin.  This was not some fluke, but the nature of the peculiar area known as southern Louisiana.  One of the great generals of the War, Pierre Gustave Toussant Beauregard was of the Spanish / French Roman Catholic aristocracy, but he would not have made much rank in the North.  A Jew such as Benjamin could not be elected to the United States Senate by any "enlightened" Northern States in those times.

 (top) JUDAH BENJAMIN.
Attorney General, Secretary of War, and
Secretary of State of the Confederate
States of America

THEN,(below) GEN. SANTOS BENAVIDES
 long serving Colonel, and finally General
 of Texas forces on the integral section of 
the Rio Grande, keeping peace in the
area, winning every skirmish and battle
against his Union opponents, and
 guaranteeing correct delivery of many
 thousands of bales of Cotton to the port of
 Bagdad, Tamaulipas, Mexico

     No Jew served in the United States Senate from the North, before, during or after (for a long while) the War.  Louisiana had two before the War.  The second, Judah Benjamin, was probably one of the 100 top most intelligent men in the history of America, although, lamentably, he died in France after serving as a Barrister in England, some time after the War Between the States.
     Then as now, the Jew of origin or arrival in the South seemed to be seduced by that peculiar hospitality of the soil and waters of the South.  The South is a mystical  place.  There is evil, such as one might find in the Catskills and up to the County of Duchess along the Hudson...where Headless Horsemen ride...to behead the unsuspecting.   And, as in the North, we have our ghosts and hoop-snakes.....but we also have a mystique that truly is seductive.

     The South also had the only General Officer of Mexican / Spanish ancestry.  He was a brilliant private business person, public servant, and later an almost ghost like, light cavalry commander of the 33rd Regiment of Texas Cavalry, serving primarily along the "Cotton Route" led several regiments of mainly Mexican / Spanish troopers along with some Angloids in keeping the Cotton Trail open so as go gain a continuing flow of income to the Confederacy, even unto the end of the War, which ended, in Texas, over a month after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

     This is the nature of Southern bigotry and mistreatment of people who were enslaved.  We close this particular exercise with two points:

     (1)    Robert Edward Lee never owned a slave.  His wife Martha Mary (Mim) Custis Lee  held title to many Negroes who were slaves that had been inherited through her grandmother and her children, her grandmother being a  woman by the name of Martha Custis Washington.....wife of the first President of the United States.
     Martha and George were around twenty-seven years of age when they married.  Martha had been widowed a couple of years before marrying George.   She had had four children by her first marriage, and she bore none to the first President.  They did take in very young grandchildren, among them the girl who would marry the man who was considered by General Winfield (Fuss and Feathers) Scott to be '' America's finest soldier". 
     Mrs. Washington held much acreage and many slaves in trust for those children they had taken in, and she had a "dowerage" of a certain percentage of her children's estates that legally became hers.  She was easily the richest woman in Virginia.   The last wills and testaments of Martha and George were relatively beneficent towards the Slaves who were under their direct ownership, while those of the surviving Custis grandchildren who had not been raised in the Washington household (Arlington) were considerably more "businesslike".
     To the point, however, Robert Edward Lee never participated in the ownership of those "women's things" like presiding over essentially willed property in the form of human beings.

(2)    Unlike the factories in the North, the plantations of Jefferson and Joseph Davis had slaves, not children with nimble fingers.  The two plantations were back-to-back, and had a compound wherein was to be found a school, a clinic / hospital for birthing, surgical interventions, and other medical purposes.  There  was a church which had alternating services from Methodist and Baptist preachers and authority.  There was also an administrative building where dances and celebrations could take place, as well as jury trials operated by the Slaves themselves.   It should be pointed out that, at times, administrative level personnel would have to "amend" a sentence, such a the time the judge and jury agreed that one particular chicken thief had to receive 500 lashes.
     What might be of interest further is that Benjamin Montgomery, the Manager of Jefferson Davis's plantation was also a Black man, and a slave, and yet held sway over the entire oversight of the operation.  He also oversaw, in large part the adjacent operation of Jefferson's brother Joseph.  Although a slave, he had the authority to sign for deliveries, write bank drafts, assign all work duties, issue visitation permits for Slaves needing to go somewhere with written permission, essentially entire authority.  He executed those services during the war, and afterwards during Mr. Davis's detention.  He remained faithful to his duties and conducted them well.


     These stories could go on and on.   We place them here to show that the times related to the antebellum period and the War were much more culturally and sociologically complicated that what people have been taught, especially during the past 30 years or so.   That 96% of all the people involved militarily during the Southern War effort owned no slaves is another basic matter that is overlooked.

    As a statement of disclosure, I had two great-uncles who died in service to the 96th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Army of the Potomac, and five Confederates who died in service to their units of the surnames of Neal, Limbaugh, and Grant who were blood relatives of direct or collateral connection.

More later,
El Gringo Viejo

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Back from down South - Not doing so well

Manage

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A PRAYER TO THE RULER OF THE COSMOS and all things

     

     Almighty Father, Keeper of all Souls, Minder of all Trusts, Watch over us, Thine unworthy servants  as we grieve our near and distant cousins....keep those who remain ever content in your faith....all of us who share the blood of the Holy Iberian Peninsula, the United States of America, and then the  Republic of Venezuela, the Republic of Texas, and all nations and peoples in distress brought upon them by the forces of Satan.
     We include in our prayer especially those who are belaboured and burdened.  Let them be now  comforted by the knowledge that You, Your Son, and powers of the Holy Ghost will conquer this injustice and insult which has been visited upon our people. We trust that our travails will be lifted from us and that there will be a  reunion of hope and goodwill.  We hope that our relief can  be perpetual, and feel secure that our candles are not lit in lightheartedness or obligation but in the sincere belief that our present misery will be vanquished.   We leave these matters to Your good hands and in the hope of the World to come, Amen.

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Old Anglicans will understand this construct of a lamentation rendered from Earth to the  Firmament of Heaven.

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Brief Observations:

     WE have struggled over the past three or four days with the matters besetting this and other nations.  It would seem that all is unravelling, although I sincerely know such is not the case.  We have seen worse, and this onslaught by those attempting to destroy the fabric of the Nation is ultimately fail.

      The purposeful distortions of the events and causative factors of the events at Charlottesville, Virginia, once underway, were predictable.  The entire event was controlled, from beginning to end, by the Obsolete Press, the insidious Soros cultural destruction empire, and the hordes of mindless "young people and students" who have decided to back anarchy mixed with pro-communist sloganeering .   This time, even FOX News decided to weigh in in favour of the "protestors" who are "against things that are bad".

     The tactic of setting up faux-Klan and Arian Nations types supposedly to "protect" racist monuments associated with the Confederacy is a racket that the anarchists and leftists have used since the 1920s in the United States.   The deployment of the "racists" and those true racists who might be attracted to the faux "leaders" provides the target for the "protestors" to vent, confront, chant, and charge....usually devolving into an episode of private and public property destruction and a few or many people being injured or even killed.

      Soros people see such things as a small price to pay in order to conduct the United States finally into its "proper place" as a secular, atheistic, "socially democratic", Orwellian "Republic".

     We were especially disappointed, but not surprised, to note that George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush decided to jump on early, and perhaps even often, in favour of the "protesting" Soros-led disciples.  It was obvious to those of us who have studied these artificial and carefully choreographed and scripted "confrontations" that the whole matter was one of Kabuki Theatre.  The Charlottesville city administration had obviously decided to keep the police and other forces of order out of the fray until it was time to count the dead and wounded and level of destruction.

     This pretty much underscores, in my opinion, that there is neither rudder nor wheel nor helm on the ship of State.   With a buffoon for a president, a Republican control-group that is Democrat Lite, and a Democrat presence that is completely devoid of any sense of morality or propriety....we have pretty well driven the wrong way as far as anyone can against the one-way traffic going against us.   Social democracy and deficit spending is now accepted, custom de riqueur, and inevitable.    Perhaps Nancy Pelosi can come out and say, " Things will be much better once we all jump off the cliff."

    Actually, it might sound a little better than having to listen to the Fox News folks saying things like, "We just all have to get together and work together to get the things done that America needs."   Profound....truly profound.....(?)

El Gringo Viejo
More to-morrow.....but primarily stuff that is going on down at our little mud hut.

_____________________ 

Re-Posting to underscore that We are not un-studied Klanners or in any wise "Deplorable".

Sunday, 28 April 2013

SAN JACINTO - 21 April 1836

This is a reprint from a previous post.  We had a new set of commentaries about San Jacinto that suffered from an electrical problem during editing.   We are attempting to either resuscitate or re-write the lost submission.

San Jacinto Day - 21 April 1836. Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad. May they all Rest in Peace.

General Vicente Filisola

The gentleman pictured above was many things.   He was a Spaniard with an Italian name.  He was a veteran of the Napoleanic Wars, and a distinguished Spanish soldier.   He came to New Spain late in the colonial period and served during the transition from Spanish to Mexican control of that area which now would include all of Mexico, Central America, western Canada, and most of what would become the western half of the United States of America.    For a brief period during the rule of Emperor Agustin de Iturbide I of the Mexican Empire 1821 - 1823, General Vicente Filisola served his Emperor as Governor of Central America.

      The good General served only briefly, however, due to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Mexico in 1824.   He did provide for an orderly transition from Mexican control to local governance and order, and withdrew his Imperial Army back into Mexico and joined the re-organised Army as a brigadier.

      It is said that Filisola was probably the one who inspired Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to think of himself as...."The Napoleon of the West"....because of Lopez de Santa Anna's fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte and the legends associated with that Corsican.   Filisola was one of the few people in anyones army who had officer level dealings on a Napoleonic field of battle.

    Vicente Filisola is important to Texans because he was one of those Generals immediately

under the command of the all important, self-consumed, pompous Generalissimo Presidente

Lopez de Santa Anna.    Along with Filisola, and Perfecto de Cos, the Presidente's

brother-in-law, and old Castrillon, and Ramirez y Sesma....all Spaniards  by birth

and world view, there was also Brigadier Jose' Urrea, the Indian Fighter, a Davy

Crockett figure, at once both rough-cut, and aristocratic, and oddly one of only two

Mexican general officers fighting in the Texas War of Independence who were born

Mexicans.

    The commander in chief Lopez de Santa Anna, and the lowest ranking general

officer were Mexicans.   Lopez de Santa Anna had moved three large elements from

all parts of the country from January up to mid-February to do battle against a crafty

bunch of scrappers in a place called "nowhere" by some and Texas by others.   Urrea

moved a third of the Army along the Texas Coast, aiming to unify with the main body

of the Army around a place called San Jacinto.   Urrea also moved quickly, like an early

form of blitzkrieg, although he had five major battles against Texian units numbering

from 100 to 500 combatants in each case, and several significant skirmishes which

tested his 2,400 effectives severely.   He is best remembered, however, as the Mexican

general who left orders to deal fairly and well with the Texian Colonel Fannin and the

440 Texian prisoners, only to have his orders countermanded by the Generalissimo

Presidente.   So while Urrea had moved up to Victoria del Rio Guadalupe a few miles

from Goliad, his subordinate received orders underlining the existing orders from the

High Command that all found holding arms against the government would be executed

for treason.

     Here, El Gringo Viejo enters a well-documented but rather neglected fact about the

the issues of personality, strategy, tactics, honour, and the business of war that the

Mexicans were undergoing even as they were winning, fairly easily against the

insurrectionists.  To wit:

Gen. Jose' Urrea

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words of the hapless Colonel Nicolas de la Portilla        "I was unable, therefore, to carry out the good intentions dictated by my feelings, overcome by the difficult circumstances that surrounded me. I authorized the execution, of thirty adventurers taken prisoners, and setting free those who were colonists or Mexicans      "These orders always seemed to me harsh, but they were the inevitable result of the barbarous and inhuman  decree which declared outlaws those whom it wished to convert into citizens of the republic,  I wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.       "They doubtlessly surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last. I had due regard for the motives that induced them to surrender, and for this reason I used my influence with the general-in-chief to save  them, if possible, from being butchered." Diary of the Military Operations of the Division which under the Command of General José Urrea Campaigned in Texas February to March 1836 Translation from Carlos Casteñeda's The Mexican Side  of the Texan Revolution (Some headings added by  current editor, WLM) For Biographies, Search Handbook of Texas Online (Extract from the Diary of Col. Nicolás de la Portilla)   In a Letter Portilla to Urrea....."I feel much distressed  at what has occurred here; a scene enacted in cold blood  having passed before my eyes which has filled me with  horror. All I can say is, that my duty as a soldier, and  what I owe to my country, must be my guaranty...." March 26. At seven in the evening I received orders from General Santa Anna by special messenger, instructing me to execute at once all prisoners taken by force of arms agreeable to the general orders on the subject. (I have the original order in my possession.) I kept the matter secret and no one knew of it except Col. Garay, to whom I communicated the order. At eight o'clock, on the same night, I received a communication from Gen. Urea by special messenger in which among other things he says, "Treat the prisoners well, especially Fannin. Keep them busy rebuilding the town and erecting a fort. Feed them with the cattle you will receive from Refugio." What a cruel contrast in these opposite instructions! I spent a restless night. sdct   March 27.   At daybreak, I decided to carry out the orders of the general-in-chief because I considered them superior. I assembled the whole garrison and ordered the prisoners, who were still sleeping, to be awaked. There were 445. (The eighty that had just been taken at Cópano and had, consequently, not borne arms against the government, were set aside.) The prisoners were divided into three groups and each was placed in charge of an adequate guard, the first under Agustin Alcerrica, the second under Capt. Luis Balderas, and the third under Capt. Antonio Ramírez. I gave instructions to these officers to carry out the orders of the supreme government and the general-in-chief. This was immediately done. There was a great contrast in the feelings of the officers and the men. Silence prevailed. Sad at heart, I wrote to Gen. Urrea expressing my regret at having been concerned in so painful an affair. I also sent an official account of what I had done, to the general-in-chief. [Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 26 1836 and Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 27, 1836] ______________________        El Gringo Viejo and many old timey Texans know these stories, but they are not well-known any longer.   Newly arriving people with Mexican backgrounds assume they know all and newly arriving people from the United States and elsewhere have seen Davy Crockett on Disney or some variation, and are certain in their knowledge of the issues involved with the period from 1829 through 1846 and the Texas situation.        This is not said with any particular arrogance.   It is known that what El Gringo Viejo knows from his own research is now useless information. Nothing matters in the course of human conduct that cannot be compressed into a six-word phrase to put on a bumper sticker.   What is past is no longer prologue, but rather simply useless white-noise on the left side of the time line.       But as an enemy the man pictured below is known among the old, last remaining Texans who know what Texas really was, as an honorable enemy....a good and patriotic man involved in a grisly profession.     Something like Rommel, perhaps. Manuel Fernández Castrillón (1761–1836) Fought Texians both at the Battle of the Alamo and at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Castrillon was Santa Anna's ally through much of their working relationship, but Castrillón often took exception to Santa Anna's decisions during the Texas Revolution. He opposed the hurried assault on the Alamo. Yet when he received his orders to lead the battle's first column of troops, he did so with expert efficiency.

A humane and honorable soldier, Castrillón also pleaded clemency on behalf of the seven Texian fighters who survived the Alamo siege. Castrillón's arguments for mercy were ignored, and the men were executed. Castrillón again stated his protest when Santa Anna ordered the execution of the Goliad prisoners.

Castrillón's compassion was a sign of kindness, not weakness. When the Texians roused Mexican forces from their afternoon siesta on 21 April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was one of the few Mexican officers to stand his ground. 

His bravery was recorded in the memoirs of Texian second lieutentant Walter Paye Lane: 

"As we charged into them the General commanding the Tampico Battalion (their best troops) tried to rally his men, but could not. He drew himself up, faced us, and said in Spanish: 'I have been in forty battles and never showed my back; I am too old to do it now.' 

He continues: "Gen. Rusk hallooed to his men: 'don't shoot him,' and knocked up some to their guns; but others ran around and riddled him with balls. I was sorry for him. He was an old Castilian gentleman, Gen. Castrillo."

Honored on both sides of the Texas Revolution—except by Santa Anna, who blamed the loss at San Jacinto in part on Castrillón—he was even buried in the family graveyard of Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president of Texas.

     So, all these major footnotes are added into the blog in order to celebrate the victory tomorrow, the 21st day of April, 1836 of the Battle of San Jacinto.   Normally creditted to the efforts of Gen. Sam Houston, who truly was a bigger than life figure, the truth is that Houston was painfully wounded at the beginning of the battle, by a musket ball to the right foot.   It was Gen. (then Lt. Col.) Somervell, commander-in-charge, and the surprize rush of the limited cavalry of the Texian force of a bit fewer than 700 men.....attacking on a Sunday morning.   The head of cavalry squadron in the thickest of the fight  was Capt. Juan Seguin, an arch-enemy of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   Major Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar was the overall commander of the mounted part of the Texian force, and he would later become a President of Texas for a term.
     The resolve of the Texian force to gain Independence, avenge the atrocities of Goliad and the Alamo allowed the inferior force to pin into a peninsula surrounded by a snake infested bayou, and then essentially destroy the effective force of an Army of 2,500 with superior munitions, armament, artillery, cavalry, stores, and so forth.
 

     Going back to Gen. Vicente Filisola, it was he who took control of the Mexican Army as it withdrew from San Jacinto.   Lopez de Santa Anna remained under arrest and would later be tranferred to Washington D.C. as an oddity and war-trophy of sorts.   He had been the best general in the field, but also the one most prone to err through arrogance and hubris.   Some say his membership in the Scottish Rite Masonic order saved him from a rough and ready gallows at San Jacinto, since Houston and Somervell were both brother Masons.

     Filisola was met with his columns by Urrea, who forced control from Filisola, and took command of the withdrawal.   The two men would argue and write accusations against one another, and each would write interesting, if self-serving accounts of their experiences during the War.   It is the opinion of El Gringo Viejo that Urrea was the better soldier and was truthful concerning his wishes for the good treatment of the Goliad prisoners of war.

      Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna blamed both of them for everything;  Urrea for arriving too late to San Jacinto, Filisola for not mucking through the mud with cannons and stores any faster (he actually moved 2,000 men, animals, and stores faster than Santa Anna had moved his Army away from San Antonio in pursuit of Houston's Army.)   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a lot like Obama in his ability to blame everything on everybody but himself.

Committed to the dull truth, which always seems to wind up being far more interesting than the false legends or any fiction.....El Gringo Viejo resigns the evening and promises to return to more tales that interest him, and he hopes, the OROGs everywhere.

El Gringo Viejo

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Thanks for spending your time with us.