Bart Maverick: Well it still smells of a con game but there’s too much money in the come-on.
Madame De Chauvrier: So?
Bart Maverick: Madame there isn’t a grifter alive who puts real gold in his “goldbrick” not over a million dollars worth.
Maverick Diamond in the Rough 1958
Now that the Civil war is suddenly in vogue thanks to Nikki Haley’s gaffe it’s worth noting a few things that are basic facts.
The south was fighting to preserve slavery, all you have to do is read the newspapers of the time to know this is true but if you really want to understand this, don’t take my word for it, take the word of the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens:
The new [confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.
Alexander Stephens: Crossroads speech
Keep an eye on that link we’ll be going back to that speech a lot in this post.
What would have been more accurate to say was that the North was not fighting to end slavery, although there were many in the union ranks who believed in its abolition. As Lincoln himself put it in his letter to Horace Greeley:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves 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; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
This believe it or not is something that even Nikole Hannah-Jones of the phony narrative of the 1619 project understands and states publicly showing that every now and again when a person is trying to sell a salted mine or a fake narrative it’s necessary for a person to make sure there is enough gold in their gold brick or a bit of truth in the come-on to be able to make the sale.
Of course Hanna-Jones likely had little use for the final sentence of Lincoln’s letter
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
And I suspect that she thought even less of Alexander Stephens words concerning what the founding fathers thought of Slavery and the black race in that same Crossroads speech:
But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
All emphasis mine
This completely contradicts the narrative of the left on what the founders thought. Furthermore unlike Hanna-Jones, Stephens was in a real position to know what the founders thought not only because the founding of the country was still in living memory at the time of this speech but because he was one of the most educated men of his time:
Take a note of what he says here. He not only states that Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen were opposed to slavery and considered wrong on every count and that said idea was the prevailing idea of the time, but that those founding fathers held that idea based on an assumption of the equality of the races.
It’s important to note here that his was not mere rhetoric. Stephens despite poor beginnings was not only well read in an age were illiteracy was common, but well educated (Top of his college class) a successful lawyer, married to the daughter of a Revolutionary war colonel but at the time of this speech had been an elected representative in the state of Georgia and congress for over a quarter of a century. Few men in the entire nation were in a better position to know the history and the sentiment of the Founders than he.
The real irony is that Hanna-Jones argues for advantages and reparations and special privileges for Blacks in education, and the workplace and by law because they can’t make it in the biased “white” world. Stevens would and did agree completely with this argument:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
And he not only stated this but he noted that their opponents in the North arguments against slavery would be correct if they did not subscribe to what he considered a false premises of racial equality.
One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men.
emphasis mine
Is this not the same argument that the Nichole-smith and folks from DEI are making? Blacks must have separate graduations, gays must have separate graduations, they must have separate spaces, all of this is pretty much the argument that Stephens made that Blacks can’t complete on a level playing fields.
George W. Bush called it the: Soft bigotry of low expectation.
I call it “racism”, racism for fun and profit. Well fun and profit for those who make a living off the DEI grift, but for the vast majority of actual students of color who are going to have to make it in a world that doesn’t give a damn about DEI but skills and results It’s a sentence to failure, that ironically will be blamed on racism.
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