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History as a Tool of
Propaganda
by
Thomas J. DiLorenzo
 The
political left in America has apparently decided that American history must
be rewritten so that it can be used in the political campaign for
reparations for slavery. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Chicago inserted
language in a Department of Interior appropriations bill for 2000 that
instructed the National Park Service to propagandize about slavery as the
sole cause of the war at all Civil War park sites. The Marxist historian
Eric Foner has joined forces with Jackson and will assist the National Park
Service in its efforts at rewriting history so that it better serves the
political agenda of the far left. Congressman Jackson has candidly described
this whole effort as "a down payment on reparations." (Foner ought to be
quite familiar with the "art" of rewriting politically-correct history. He
was the chairman of the committee at Columbia University that awarded the
"prestigious" Bancroft Prize in history to Emory University's Michael A.
Bellesiles, author of the anti-Second Amendment book, "Arming America," that
turned out to be fraudulent. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory and
his publisher has ceased publishing the book.)
In order to accommodate the political agenda
of the far left, the National Park Service will be required in effect to
teach visitors to the national parks that Abraham Lincoln was a liar.
Neither Lincoln nor the US Congress at the time ever said that slavery was a
cause - let alone the sole cause - of their invasion of the Southern states
in 1861. Both Lincoln and the Congress made it perfectly clear to the whole
world that they would do all they could to protect Southern slavery as long
as the secession movement could be defeated.
 On
March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the
US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28)
that would have prohibited the federal government from ever
interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of
Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session,
The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments,
Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C.
U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment
read as follows:
ARTICLE THIRTEEN
No amendment shall be made to the
Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish
or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof,
including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said
State.
Two days later, in his First Inaugural
Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he
believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government
from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:
I understand a proposed amendment to the
Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal
Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the
States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction
of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular
amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be
implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made
express and irrevocable (emphasis added).
This of course was consistent with one of the
opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as
saying: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no
lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
That's what Lincoln said his invasion of the
Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to
New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what
the war was about:
My paramount object in this struggle is to
save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could
save the Union without freeing any slave, 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.
Of course, many Americans at the time, North
and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would
destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln,
"saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the
Jeffersonian political tradition of states' rights as a check on the
tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have
"saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the
country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic
of sovereign states.
On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a
"Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln's reasons for the invasion
of the Southern states:
Resolved: . . . That this war is not being
prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of
conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the
rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and
maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance
thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights
of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are
accomplished the war ought to cease.
By "the established institutions of those
states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying
the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery.
On March 2, 1861 - the same day the "first
Thirteenth Amendment" passed the U.S. Senate - another constitutional
amendment was proposed that would have outlawed secession (See H. Newcomb
Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson Law Review,
vol. 15, 1986, pp. 419-36). This is very telling, for it proves that
Congress believed that secession was in fact constitutional under the Tenth
Amendment. It would not have proposed an amendment outlawing secession if
the Constitution already prohibited it.
Nor would the Republican Party, which enjoyed
a political monopoly after the war, have insisted that the Southern states
rewrite their state constitutions to outlaw secession as a condition of
being readmitted to the Union. If secession was really unconstitutional
there would have been no need to do so.
These facts will never be presented by the
National Park Service or by the Lincoln cultists at the Claremont Institute,
the Declaration Foundation, and elsewhere. This latter group consists of
people who have spent their careers spreading lies about Lincoln and his war
in order to support the political agenda of the Republican Party. They are
not about to let the truth stand in their way and are hard at work producing
"educational" materials that are filled with false but politically correct
history.
For a very different discussion of Lincoln
and his legacy that is based on fact rather than fantasy, attend the
LewRockwell.com "Lincoln Reconsidered" conference at the John
Marshall Hotel in Richmond, Virginia on March 22.
Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com
  Thomas
J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor
of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. His book,
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an
Unnecessary War, will be published in February.
Be prepared for the amazement that occurs
when the dots begin to connect. All that is required is a few fundamental
principles and the beginning of a collection of "chaotic" events suddenly
fit into a pattern. Soon those connected dots point toward the next dots and
from there can be reasonably connected with still other dots. A matrix of
illusion and deception begins to take shape.
Not only do you have before you a growing pattern but you can look closer to
see who has been feeding you the wrong information and see who benefits by
this wrong information.
Then you can look at whatever else they have said or written and you start
to see the manipulators unmasked. If someone insists on Arab hijackers
flying commercial passenger jets into big buildings, you can look to
whatever else they said or wrote much more closely to see if there is
another pattern showing there.
As you begin to collect the names of the menagerie of liars another series
of connections begins to appear. 9-11 was indeed a wake up call for many. It
has provided a way to measure and discern truth and truth tellers from the
lies and liars. But so it is with other landmarks of our history.
History of Banking Fraud:
The Coming Battle
By M. W. WALBERT
The
Coming Battle documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports
and writings by the founding fathers and others a chronology of events long
forgotten that shaped our fledgling nation from 1776 to 1899. Read about the
manipulation of our money and its supply, the intentional creation of
recessions, depressions and panics, manipulation of the stock markets, and
the demonetization of silver.
Secrets of the Federal Reserve
by Eustace Mullins
Eustace Mullins' carefully
researched and documented treatise picks up from Walbert's expose' of
control of the money supply and the economy and brings it to the mid 1980's.
The
World Order
How control of the world's money has inexorably led to an ever tighter
grip on control of the world's people.
Uranium Wars by Leuren Moret
How control of the world's people has inexorably led to wider use of
depopulation methods which include spreading radioactivity in food,
water, air, and the human genome.
Taking Back Your Power
by Allen Aslan Heart
WHAT CAN YOU DO? Stop playing THEIR game. Take back
your power. Stop paying taxes that are not legal or lawful. Stop paying
bills you don't really owe. Stop using THEIR money. There ARE ways if you
open your mind and look for the gaps in their fences that keep the sheeple
in their pasture. Are you chattel or a real person? You are the one who
makes that choice.
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© 2007, Allen Aslan Heart / White Eagle Soaring of the Little Shell
Pembina Band, a
Treaty
Tribe of the Ojibwe Nation
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