Monday, February 23, 2015

On Walter Cisco's Moving Volume, "War Crimes Against Southern Civilians"

I challenge anybody to read this book and then try and belt out the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" with the same level of verve as before. I can almost guarantee (provided of course that you have a soul) that it'll be hard for you.

Posted by at

8 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

Wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket-
"Walter Cisco is an ardent neo-Confederate from South Carolina. His entire career is dedicated to "defending South Carolina's position in the Civil War and highlighting the acts of South Carolinians in the struggle for state's rights". He is published, but he is not an academic. He is an amateur historian with a certain slanted view."
"His articles on this topic have appeared in magazines and journals such as Confederate Veteran, Civil War, and Southern Partisan."


February 23, 2015 at 5:06 PM
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I'm familiar with Mr. Cisco's views and am not at all surprised that there are people out there who are trying to belittle him with loaded terms like, "partisan", "amateur", neo-Confederate", etc.. You challenge the court historians, war industry, and government narrative and this is what always happens.

February 24, 2015 at 10:57 PM
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Here are a few more "eggs" - a) "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Thomas Jefferson, 1801.............b) "If any state in the union will declare that it prefers separation to a continuance in union I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate'." Thomas Jefferson, 1816.............c) "If the day should ever come when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collusion of interests shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will no longer hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint." John Quincy Adams, 1839.............d) "To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying State at war with a noncomplying State: Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another? Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself - a government that can only exist by the sword?" Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers.............e) "....the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." From the Virginia ordinances of ratification of the Constitution, 1789.............f) "It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases a
right to determine how they will be governed." William Rawle, 1825.............g) "I will rather anticipate a new confederacy, exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence of the aristocratic Democrats of the South....There will be a separation and the black and white populations will mark the boundary." Timothy Pickering, 1803 (as the New England states were considering secession in response to the Louisiana Purchase).............h) "....whenever its provisions are violated, or its original principles departed from by a majority of the states or their people, it is no longer an effective instrument, but that any state is at liberty by the spirit of that contract to withdraw itself from the Union." Public proclamation from the Massachusetts legislature, 1809 (as the state was contemplating secession in response to President Madison's Enforcement Act).............i) "During the weeks following the election (1860), editors of all parties assumed that secession as a constitutional right was not in question. On the contrary, the southern claim to a right of peaceable withdrawal was countenance out of reverence for the natural law principle of government by the consent of the governed....We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets. " Horace Greeley, 1860.............j) I have no idea that the Union can be maintained or restored by force. Nor do I believe in the value of a Union which can only be kept together by dint of a military force." James Alfred Pearce, 1860.

February 24, 2015 at 11:03 PM
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

k) "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, most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. ANY PORTION OF SUCH PEOPLE, THAT CAN, MAY REVOLUTIONIZE, AND MAKE THEIR OWN OF SO MUCH OF THE TERRITORY AS THEY INHABIT." Abraham Lincoln, 1848.............l) "To secure these rights (of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness), Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government." Thomas Jefferson, 1776.

February 24, 2015 at 11:06 PM
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

m) "The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality; nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of those states chooses to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.............n) To expect to hold fifteen States in the Union by force is preposterous. The idea of a civil war, accompanied, by a servile insurrection, is too monstrous to be entertained for a moment." Edward Everett, 1860.............o) "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty." Maryland Congressman, Jacob M. Kunkel, 1860.

February 24, 2015 at 11:09 PM
BB-Idaho said...

It is estimated by Civil War bibliographers, that more than
50,000 books have been written on the subject in its various aspects. So, the range in opinion
runs the gamut. IMO, the other end of the constitutionality argument would be that stealing
US property and using it to fire
the first shots would comprise
treason: III-3 "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them..
.." Personally, I hold neither view, but that the issues were
born before the Revolution and the
denouement was inevitable, tragic
and Americans great and small served their respective country
or individual states with both
nobility and dishonor; and a great
many never came home.

February 25, 2015 at 10:19 AM
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I have yet to find a single founding father or politician from the early 19th century who said that secession was illegal (even Lincoln as late at 1848 thought that). Even statists such as Hamilton, Clay, and Webster thought that it was legal and history shows that New England almost seceded 3 times during the early 19th century.

February 25, 2015 at 11:27 PM
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

As for the South firing the first shot, Lincoln provoked it by sending those ships to "replenish" (a totally unnecessary action in that the soldiers from the fort had been free up to that point to travel to Charleston for groceries, etc.) the fort with a threat that if the first ship was stopped the others would open fire upon the South.

February 25, 2015 at 11:33 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)