The following article appears in the current issue of The Barnes Review, a national news magazine with factual revision of suppressed history. Any seeker of Truth will be motivated to subscribe to and support this educational periodical. See: www.BarnesReview.com

A Revisionist Look at the War of Federal Intervention

Argues author Pat Shannan, The War of Federal Intervention – misleadingly known as the “War of Northern Aggression” – did not end in 1865 but has expanded to attack the North as well as the South and continues to this very day. Lincoln was not the best president but most likely the worst. And Jefferson Davis was possibly the best of all our American presidents. Here Pat takes us on a whirlwind tour of uncensored “Civil War” history.

No books supporting the Confederate side of history regarding the misnamed “Civil War” are used anywhere in American public or private schools, and far too few are even in circulation. However, the truth is out there, and what follows are a few of the often overlooked facts that historians have left out.

When I was growing up in the Deep South in the 1950s, I thought “damyankee” was one word. Then I found out I was one myself, having been born in Illinois but escaping before I was hung with that funny accent. The term, of course, was spawned by what had happened 90 years earlier when the South was invaded by something they referred to as “the War of Northern Aggression.” But that was a misnomer. Those white Christians from the North had nothing against their white Christian brothers in the South and were duped into making war against them. More accurately, it was “The War of Federal Intervention.” It continues today and is not limited anymore to only the Southern states.

Although slavery was never high on the legitimate list of the causes of the war, the Mockingbird media and public education, over the past few decades, have managed to establish it as the absolute and singular impetus for the agony and misery brought upon the South, leading to the deaths of 650,000 Americans. And while we have been inundated with the fabled atrocities perpetrated by the white plantation owner against the poor, helpless slave of the era, the whole myth was born from the popular but fictional novel of the day, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Logically, the whole idea borders on the absurd when one considers that a good slave in the 1850s cost a “pretty penny,” from about $1,000 to as much as $2,500; and what kind of fool is going to mistreat that kind of an investment?

Less than 6% of the plantation owners held slaves, and only half that many—less than 3%—of those who later donned a Confederate uniform on the battlefields did so. It is certain that even those few could not have been motivated to risk their own lives and kill others in order to preserve the tradition of slavery in the South.

Nor was secession anywhere near anything to be linked with a “treasonous act.” The founders had outlined that with the escape from England by placing these words in the Declaration of Independence in 1776: “[T]hat whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these [aforementioned] ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government.” And 11 years later, at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, the matter was discussed at length with all the representatives of the 13 states where it was agreed that any and all joining the united States of America also maintained the right to secede at any time it chose to do so.

Even Rep. Abraham Lincoln (R-Ill.) concurred in 1847 from the floor of Congress with:

“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”

British historian Goldwyn Smith later wrote that Southern secession could not have asked for a clearer support than this statement by Lincoln.

And a generation earlier, in 1806, New England grew insanely enraged at the thought of Louisiana being admitted into the union. New Hampshire Sen. Plumer said,

“The Eastern states must and will dissolve the union and form a separate government of their own, and the sooner they do this, the better.”

And Massachusetts Sen. Pickering screamed:

“I rather anticipate a new Confederacy exempt from the corrupt influence of the aristocratic Democrats of the South. . . . There will be a separation. . . . The British provinces (of Canada), even with the consent of Great Britain, will become members of the Northern confederacy.”

Did we hear that right? Never saw that in our schoolbooks, did we? A Northern Confederacy. Fifty-five years before the shots at Fort Sumter, the roles of the unionist North and the secessionist South were threatening to be reversed in history.

The idea surfaced and was seriously considered again at the Hartford Convention of 1814, and then again in 1845. The New Englanders, led by former president John Quincy Adams, so opposed the admission of Texas to the union that they were publicly threatening again to secede. So when the South finally acted on it 15 years later, might we suppose that the people were merely further carrying out a great suggestion from their New England brothers?

The slave issue is an ugly matter and one that even generals Lee and Jackson and President Jefferson Davis, among many other leaders of the Confederacy, wanted resolved. Few people know today, due to the ongoing distortion of fake news and fake histories, that any further slave purchase was already written into the Confederate Constitution as being unlawful and plans for the total abolition of slavery over the next 10 years were also on the Confederate planning boards.

Article I, Section 9
C.S.A. Limits on Congress, Bill of Rights

 1. The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.

2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.

Unfortunately, the vicious attack and eventual overcoming of the Confederacy by Lincoln’s legions stopped the Confederate separation and plans for freedom for all.

And one longtime unobserved fact should be recognized by all, especially those so deluded by mal-education that they want to tear down Confederate history: No slave was ever transported by any ship sailing under a Confederate flag.

Which leads us to ask, then how did the slaves get here? The slaves all sailed under some form of a flag from both a pre-founding and post-founding of the united States of America, and the motivation was always the same old thing—money. So where did they land? Savannah? Mobile? Biloxi? New Orleans?

No, not nearly close. The Massachusetts Puritans first captured their Pequot Indian neighbors and sold them into slavery in the West Indies. Then, in due time, the slave traders discovered that for a paltry few bottles of rum, they could purchase a Negro slave in Africa and transport him to the Massachusetts shore in exchange for huge profits. From 1755 to 1766, more than 23,000 African captives were deposited on the Massachusetts shore. Consequently, more slaves were sold to the Northern farmers than to the Southern.

In 1808, the practice having been made illegal had little impact, and certainly, the increased black market prices made the missions even more enticing. By 1820, the smugglers were bringing in over 40,000 Africans a year and, by 1860, there were 3,500,000 African slaves firmly planted in the South for which the Southern planters had paid the Northern pirates millions of dollars. However, there were even larger numbers of slaves residing and working on Northern plantations than on those in the South, and for that reason, “the abolition of slavery” was nowhere near the top of the list as the cause of the War of Federal Intervention. It would be more than a year after the shooting started that Frederick Douglas would impress upon President Lincoln that this idea was a far better public relations idea with which to pluck the emotional heartstrings of Americans and convince the masses that they were fighting for something honorable—especially when the South had done nothing dishonorable in the first place by following Lincoln’s 1847 advice to “shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.”

Thus, the bogus but politically correct “Emancipation Proclamation” was issued for public pacification by the deceptive “Honest Abe.” It also prevented the British from assisting the South in the war.

Why was the proclamation deceptive? Because Lincoln didn’t even attempt to free the Negro slaves in the Northern states but rather attempted to apply it to a foreign nation (the C.S.A.) This had the equal amount of impact of legality on the Confederacy as it would have had on the foreign nations of China or Afghanistan.

(We should note, too, that Lincoln even exempted the neutral states of Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland. Could this have been because his own father-in-law was a wealthy land owner in Kentucky and possessor of a large contingent of slaves?)

So the alleged cause of the war being blamed on “slavery” was no more than a giant piece of politically correct subterfuge that has grown to be far more widely accepted in the past 50 years than it did in the first 100.

WHO BEGAN THE WAR?

Lincoln spat another wad of politician’s blabber on December 6, 1864, when he wrote, “In stating a simple condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.”

Let’s check that out. Everybody knows that the South (thoughtlessly) fired the first shot, but not many know the prelude to that overture.

When South Carolina seceded the previous December, it reclaimed the small island of Fort Sumter as its own and ordered the occupying foreign troops to evacuate. However, for humanitarian reasons and with courteous consideration for the currently strained relationship, South Carolina’s governor agreed to supply the Union defense force with meat and vegetables for a reasonable time until they could be evacuated. Ever since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, his Secretary of State William Seward had solemnly sworn to do so, but the official order never came down.

The Carolinians’ temptation to take the fort and throw out the squatters was overcome by the better judgment of not wanting to start a war, but four months had passed since the state had claimed possession by seceding and more than a month of having made welfare cases out of the Union Army was making the tiresome effort grown old.

Finally, in early April, instead of complying with Union promises to remove the troops, Lincoln assembled a fleet of war vessels containing provisions, guns, ammunition and more troops and ordered it to Charleston. Even Union Maj. Robert Anderson, commander at Fort Sumter, when notified from Washington that “the expedition will go forward,” without anyone hearing his opinion, said on April 7, “We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is thus to be commenced.”

Maj. Anderson knew five days beforehand who would really be firing the first shot and that the war would start because of it.

Instead of constructing a blockade, which would have forced the Union troops to either turn around or fire the first shot at the Confederate ships, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard ordered his troops on the Charleston shore to fire on Fort Sumter, thereby giving Lincoln his desired headline about the South firing first on the Union troops. He had successfully lured them into it. There was no doubt that the media cry of “The South has fired on the flag” would inflame the hearts of the North, and it worked.

LINCOLN ONE OF THE GREAT VILLAINS?

Every year for the past couple of decades or more fake news polls have ranked the top U.S. presidents of all time, and Abraham Lincoln wins every year. This reflects another chapter of the biased press in that if the truth be known when it comes to the part of the constitutional oath of “defending against all enemies both foreign and domestic,” Lincoln was the greatest constitutional violator of all (at least until Barry Soetoro came along).

Still recognized as a “great hero” a century and a half later, Lincoln was far more a great villain of history. He suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus (without the consent of Congress), which then prevented the release of people unfairly imprisoned without a trial. Next, he jailed enough of the Maryland members of the state’s legislature to prevent a forum in case they should be leaning toward a vote for secession. Had Maryland joined the Confederacy, D.C. would have been surrounded on all sides.

Nevertheless, 20,000 of Maryland’s own managed to escape the Union occupation of their mother state and follow their hearts to Virginia in order to join and fight for the Confederate Army.

In total, historical records show that by war’s end, Lincoln’s orders had sent 14,401 Northern civilians to prison as political prisoners, some for the duration and without having been formally charged. Secretary of State Seward helped confirm all this in an off-the-cuff conversation one day with Lord Lyons, the British ambassador to the United States, when he boasted:

“My lord, I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch a bell again, and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power on Earth, except that of the president, can release them. Can the queen of England do so much?” (Secretary Seward to Lord Lyons, courtesy of the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum)

Not only did Lincoln shut down newspapers, even in his own home state of Illinois, which had editorialized unfavorably against him, but one of the most egregious attacks of all was on Ohio U.S. Rep. C.L. Vallandigham. In the middle of the night, Union troops broke into the home of the civilian-elected official and arrested him. The sitting congressman was then hauled before a military court, tried, convicted and banished from the United States. Vallandigham’s crimes? He was outspoken about the administration’s unconstitutional policies. And let us not forget, Honest Abe launched a four-year war against his former countrymen that was never declared by Congress, a blatant violation of constitutional law.

As do so many multi-generational Americans, I have ancestral ties to both sides of that war— some of which I am proud, one not so much.

He was a tough old coot by the name of Henry Alonzo Pratt and was my great-great-grandfather (by marriage, I am always quick to add). Born in Minnesota in 1822, he was twice the age of most of his fellow soldiers (and reportedly twice as tough) when he marched on the murderous, barbarous rampage through Georgia and South Carolina with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. It has been often reported that Sherman, a hater of everything Southern, uncaringly turned his head the other way when defenseless women both black and white were raped and sometimes murdered, their homes and crops burned and their children rendered homeless. I have neither signed confessions nor evidence of Grandpaw Pratt’s actual participation, but the logical assumption of implication and circumstantial evidence are more than enough to make one wonder where Grandpaw might be spending eternity.

On the other hand, I had a six-great uncle, Maj. Thomas Hinds, who was a generation ahead of the forming of the Confederate States of America but was Gen. Andrew Jackson’s right-hand man at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 and at a few other, earlier fights. When Mississippi became an official state in 1817, Hinds County, home of the capital city of Jackson, was named after him.

My Uncle Tom did have one tie to the future Confederacy that later made his family proud. In 1815, he was asked by his close friends, the Davis family in Mississippi, to transport their seven-year-old son to a private military school in Kentucky, and Maj. Hinds agreed.

Traveling more than 400 miles northeast up the Natchez Trace by horse and wagon with the youngster, Maj. Hinds had made plans to stop and rest a few days with his old boss and mentor, Andrew Jackson, before finishing the tedious and wearisome journey over the remaining miles into Kentucky. It was there at the Hermitage Plantation that the future U.S. representative and senator, secretary of war and the eventual president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, met the first of many U.S. presidents that he would know over his exciting lifetime.

THE ABUSE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS

Shortly after Lee’s 1865 surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, President Davis was captured in south central Georgia, traveling with his wife toward Florida. He was taken to Fort Monroe, Virginia on trumped-up charges of treason. He was shackled like an animal and suffered torture born of the media-created hatred for the leader of the Confederacy.

Encyclopedia Britannica wrote, “During the early part of his imprisonment, he was manacled and subjected to severities that impaired his health.”

Davis’s incarceration continued for over two years while he was charged with treason in the U.S. federal court system. However, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, whose heart was on the side of the accused, felt that the former American stalwart had been abused enough and supplied the Davis defense team with the out needed.

There was no such thing as a U.S. citizen at the time, as all citizens were citizens of their respective states; therefore, Davis could not be tried for treason against the United States. It was a crime that did not exist. Possibly an official of the U.S. government could commit treason, but not a regular state citizen, nor a president of a foreign nation. A key element of the crime of treason is that the person must owe allegiance to the United States. The United States had no citizens under the Constitution. Chief Justice Chase preferred to dismiss the treason charges and release Davis, but another judge, John Underwood, would not agree to it.

So Chase supplied the defense with another idea. Under the 14th Amendment, as of then passed but not yet ratified, anyone who had taken an oath of allegiance to support the Constitution and later engaged in insurrection against the U.S. cannot hold public office. According to the defense team now, thanks to Chase, that inability to hold public office under that restriction of the 14th Amendment constituted punishment for his “rebellious actions,” and to further prosecute him for the same “crime” would constitute double jeopardy under the 5th Amendment. The court finally agreed, and Jefferson Davis was released.

And that is how Jefferson Davis avoided the likelihood of being hanged for treason and was allowed to live out his days in New Orleans and, from 1876 to his death in 1889, at his beloved Beauvoir estate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

In 1903, Beauvoir became a home for indigent and/or disabled Confederate veterans and their wives and widows, the last ones passing away there in 1957. Today it is a Confederate museum and tourist attraction housing some 12,000 books from the Davis Presidential Library and the remaining 65% of the treasures and artifacts that managed to survive the last major attacks on the Confederacy: hurricanes Camille (1969) and Katrina (2005). How long that museum will be allowed to stay open remains to be seen, as does the fate of the true history of the War of Federal Intervention against the South.

 Beauvoir as it appears today on its original location facing the Gulf of Mexico but after its second reconstruction following the 2005 devastation by Hurricane Katrina.