Howdy folks. Here you'll find the talk I gave On Lincoln at the College Of Complexes in Chicago April 8, 2006 . It is a blend of personal memories of growing up in the south after living in Japan and other parts of Asia - as segregation ended in the south. Here are some of the people you will be reading about:
To this day the victors of the war between the states have said Jefferson Davis was caught and arrested dressed as a woman. This is propaganda, and is false:
Jefferson Davis was caught dressed in men's clothes and was surrounded and beaten by Northern soldiers. His adopted Black child threw himself on Davis and the soldiers were shocked.But they continued the beating. The child was kidnapped and taken around the country, put on display as a slave of Davis. Davis advocated the full integration of Blacks into white southern life, thus the adoption. Lincoln advocated sending all Blacks (whom he called the "N" word) back to Africa. Tell me, who in the long run was correct?
Here is the actual Jefferson Davis:
Here is Robert E. Lee, who freed his slaves before going into battle so that no one could say he was fighting for slavery
Here is the Northern General Grant, who took his wife's slaves into battle with him (many states in the North were allowed to keep their slaves all through the war!).
Here is General Stand Waite. Like most Indians (most notably the Lakota's) he supported the South. His unit was comprised of Indians and white Southerners who all took orders from him. He was the last Confederate unit to surrender. The Indians would pay a terrible price in the Indian Wars for having supported the South. How did they come to support the South? They had been promised all the treaties the North was breaking, would be enforced. Just as they were in Canada.
While Sherman's troops burned, raped, slaughtered both free Blacks, women left to run the plantations and slaves he was planning to use the same tactics- against the Indians after the war. It worked.
After the war Jeff Davis was held without charges in solitary for over two years. The Pope Pius IX made a crown of thorns and sent it to the President begging for Davis' release. He wrote:
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."
This was partly in response to the fact that when Pope Pius himself was in exiled in Gaeta, fleeing the revolutionaries of Garibaldi's Roman republic, Jefferson Davis corresponded with him consoling him in his tribulation.
So by now you realize what you are about to read is a story never told before. The story of the losing side.
So if the Civil War wasn't over slavery, what was it for?
Let me give you something to ponder as you read the speech. You have heard of the EU? Nations can join it freely, and leave anytime they want.
In our Democracy, states can't leave. Or freely join.
How are the two economies doing?