July 25, 2015
Reality Check
The North Won the Civil War, the South Won the War’s History
By A. Peter Bailey
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Finally, amidst all the commentary in the so-called “mainstream” press on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the recent flap over the Confederate flag, White historianl, James W. Loewen, wrote in the Washington Post, “Confederates lost the war but won the history.”
Having had the life-changing, mind-expanding experience in my twenties of personally listening to and learning from brilliant, committed intellectuals/activists such as Dr. Harold Lewis, who taught me history at Howard University, Brother Malcolm X, who taught me about the pervasiveness of white supremacist psychological attacks on our minds and Professor Mahmoud Boutiba, who taught me propaganda analysis, I am well aware of the whole lies and half lies presented to the world as true American history.
One of the most persistent of these self-serving falsehoods is that the terrorists who had enslaved African people for nearly three centuries launched the Civil War mainly to protect states’ rights. Keeping Africans enslaved was not high on their list of priorities, insists the defenders of the enslavers who, in every possible sense of the word, were traitors to the United States. Any person who presents that lie is ignorant, probably willfully so, of the declarations of secession by the legislatures of states such as Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. The following are those declarations:
Georgia:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation.
For the last 10 years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have ... persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.
The party of Lincoln …is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. …anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. …Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation… The prohibition of slavery in the Territories … the equality of the black and white races …were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. … The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
Mississippi:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
South Carolina:
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact that without it that compact would not have been made. We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States ... have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
... A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
... On The 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
... We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled ... have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved.
Texas:
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution know as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
... We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave–holding states.
The White supremacists/racists fought for the states’ rights, alright—the rights of their states to continue enriching themselves, economically and psychologically, by enslaving African people.
And that, my readers, is the TRUTH.
A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..