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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".
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.
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
 |
 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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