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Not long ago, we had the unfortunate opportunity to read about a group of males who are attending university…I believe at the sophomore level. The professor painted a very dim picture of Southern social order, especially as compared to the superior Northern social order. Suffice it to say that the victors are allowed to write history. It is left to the vox populi to dig up the slumbering truths…and we leave a few below.
With all due deference and appreciation for the efforts of the young men who valiantly established their case against Messrs. Lee and Davis, we would appreciate a moment of reflection about the truth.
The instructors encouraged the writers to divulge their true feelings about Lee and Davis. The students have reviewed certain narratives and seen certain recent events, and therefore they are experts in the present.
It might behoove the contributors, however, to gain a bit of truth before they begin to instruct. Jefferson Davis and his brother Joseph had back to back plantations in Mississippi. A "tough guy" Negro boy of 14 years of age came into their possession and began his tenure on the two plantations. After a couple of years, the young man's demeanour improved, and both of the Davis's declared that he should be moved up as a foreman, because of his loyalty, accurate work judgements, and honesty with considerable money. He was offered the position of overall Overseer (the highest non-inherited position possible) of the plantations of the Jeffersons.
The young Negro man declared that he would prefer to oversee both plantations since they were contiguous. That arrangement would last for for a score and a half of years. He supervised white blue-collar types who were very advanced in their trades, several high-skilled Negro men with families who had been manumitted and an overall work force of about 300 men and women.
After the War Between the States was settled, the Overseer who had stood in through the entire period of bellicosity remained and began the recovery of the agricultural empire of the Davis's small but impressive empire. When Jefferson was released from his detention following the War between the States, he and his brother thanked the young man who had "stayed-in" during the War and the Reconstruction. He remained a bit longer and then declared that he and two others Black men had determined to take considerable remuneration from appreciative "old blood plantation" employers and the three young men established a large farming and processing operation near Atlanta in Georgia
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Later, after a depression in the economy, and various Northern interests reneging on established contracts, the three Black men had to fold their cards, and head back west. Once the man who had worked with the Davis's arrived on the scene in Mississippi, and explained his and his friends' plight, the Davis brothers scraped up the shekels and backed their friend in a similar project up the Mississippi River…just south of Memphis.
Once closer to their old stomping grounds and among familiar people, and with the end of Reconstruction's outrages…the three Black men, backed by the Davis's and other "old White men" down in southern Mississippi, the three Black men from "days before", they became the three Black men of their "days of tomorrows". Their future secured and their families enjoying a wonderful future…things were good again and they contributed much to progress in Mississippi, the South, and America.
They even made linkage with another oft' misunderstood and maligned Southern General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had 42 Negro soldiers in his 1st unit. He gave them their Letters of Manumission early in 1864, instead of waiting until "after the War". It was pretty clear that the South stood to lose the War, and Forrest had guaranteed the men's Manumission. Incredibly enough, although facing direct fire and close combat in seven or eight major battles, and other contretemps, all those cavalry soldiers survived the War Between the States…always riding at or near the presence of their commander…a most dangerous position during battle. None ever renounced their position in Forrest's army, serving through the end of bellicosity.
Forrest also establish the first university level Law School in Memphis, Tennessee for Negroes in 1872…which long since was folded into the standard School of Law of the University of Tennessee.
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Finally, the Davis brothers, like Forrest, were not fans of slavery. They sought manners to facilitate Manumission (freeman citizen status) successfully, and understood the obvious looming on the horizon. That looming was the reality of the future, and the inevitable mechanisation which would cause an industrial change requiring people with the technical ability and disposition to handle such matters. In other words, or simply being blunt, picking cotton by hand and baling it up for the mills in Birmingham, England would not suffice as a future livelihood and forceful trade commodity in the American and foreign markets.
The crowd can howl loudly forever, but the social and demographic characteristics of the South are not as easily described as to-day's analysts might think. Follow the thought processes of Abraham Lincoln, responding to
the question of manumission or some other form of release from slavery. Please note that the letter is dated well into the depths of the War. To wit:
on, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln.
General Lee opined differently. Before the War, he wrote….To wit:
There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.
Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day.
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We shall leave these long forgotten passages and realities to flutter in the long forgotten winds of truth. One remembers the tale of Lincoln's wife, after learning her brother had been killed in action…that the kindly First Lady hurled a lamp at her servant (a Negro woman), while shrieking that she was the cause of her brother's demise. Yes, Virginia, Mrs. Lincoln, wife of the President and Commander in Chief of the entire Union Military, had a Southern Army son. Such was the nature of that hideous War.
The Negro woman continued in service to the Lincoln family. She was probably accustomed to Mrs. Lincoln's "coo-coo bongo brain condition". She would reincarnate twice in later times…once as the wife of Woodrow Wilson, and another time in the form of (Sir Edmund) Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Thanks to one and all for holding in with us. There is more to come.
EL GRINGO VIEJO
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