Civil War and Reconquista

High Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants

Threats from the 3rd World

Praise For Lee And Jackson

By Chuck Baldwin

January is often referred to as “Generals Month” since no less than four famous Confederate Generals claimed January as their birth month: James Longstreet (Jan. 8, 1821), Robert E. Lee (Jan. 19, 1807), Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (Jan. 21, 1824), and George Pickett (Jan. 28, 1825). Two of these men, Lee and Jackson, are particularly noteworthy.

Without question, Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson were two of the greatest military leaders of all time. Even more, many military historians regard the Lee and Jackson tandem as perhaps the greatest battlefield duo in the history of warfare. If Jackson had survived the battle of Chancellorsville, it is very possible that the South would have prevailed at Gettysburg and perhaps would even have won the War Between the States.

In fact, it was Lord Roberts, commander-in-chief of the British armies in the early twentieth century, who said, “In my opinion, Stonewall Jackson was one of the greatest natural military geniuses the world ever saw. I will go even further than that–as a campaigner in the field, he never had a superior. In some respects, I doubt whether he ever had an equal.”

While the strategies and circumstances of the War of Northern Aggression can (and will) be debated by professionals and laymen alike, one fact is undeniable: Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson were two of the finest Christian gentlemen this country has ever produced. Both their character and their conduct were beyond reproach.

Unlike his northern counterpart, Ulysses S. Grant, General Lee never sanctioned or condoned slavery. Upon inheriting slaves from his deceased father-in-law, Lee immediately freed them. And according to historians, Jackson enjoyed a familial relationship with those few slaves that were in his home. In addition, unlike Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant, there is no record of either Lee or Jackson ever speaking disparagingly of the black race.

As those who are familiar with history know, General Grant and his wife held personal slaves before and during the War Between the States, and, contrary to popular opinion, even Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves of the North. They were not freed until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed after the conclusion of the war. Grant’s excuse for not freeing his slaves was that “good help is so hard to come by these days.”

Furthermore, it is well established that Jackson regularly conducted a Sunday School class for black children. This was a ministry he took very seriously. As a result, he was dearly loved and appreciated by the children and their parents.

In addition, both Jackson and Lee emphatically supported the abolition of slavery. In fact, Lee called slavery “a moral and political evil.” He also said “the best men in the South” opposed it and welcomed its demise. Jackson said he wished to see “the shackles struck from every slave.”

To think that Lee and Jackson (and the vast majority of Confederate soldiers) would fight and die to preserve an institution they considered evil and abhorrent–and that they were already working to dismantle–is the height of absurdity. It is equally repugnant to impugn and denigrate the memory of these remarkable Christian gentlemen.

In fact, after refusing Abraham Lincoln’s offer to command the Union Army in 1861, Robert E. Lee wrote to his sister on April 20 of that year to explain his decision. In the letter he wrote, “With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the army and save in defense of my native state, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed . . .”

Lee’s decision to resign his commission with the Union Army must have been the most difficult decision of his life. Remember that Lee’s direct ancestors had fought in America’s War For Independence. His father, “Light Horse Harry” Henry Lee, was a Revolutionary War hero, Governor of Virginia, and member of Congress. In addition, members of his family were signatories to the Declaration of Independence.

Remember, too, that not only did Robert E. Lee graduate from West Point “at the head of his class” (according to Benjamin Hallowell), he is yet today one of only six cadets to graduate from that prestigious academy without a single demerit.

However, Lee knew that Lincoln’s decision to invade the South in order to prevent its secession was both immoral and unconstitutional. As a man of honor and integrity, the only thing Lee could do was that which his father had done: fight for freedom and independence. And that is exactly what he did.

Instead of allowing a politically correct culture to sully the memory of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson, all Americans should hold them in a place of highest honor and respect. Anything less is a disservice to history and a disgrace to the principles of truth and integrity.

Accordingly, it was more than appropriate that the late President Gerald Ford, on August 5, 1975, signed Senate Joint Resolution 23, “restoring posthumously the long overdue, full rights of citizenship to General Robert E. Lee.”

According to President Ford, “This legislation corrects a 110-year oversight of American history.” He further said, “General Lee’s character has been an example to succeeding generations . . .”

The significance of the lives of Generals Lee and Jackson cannot be overvalued. While the character and influence of most of us will barely be remembered two hundred days after our departure, the sterling character of these men has endured for two hundred years.

What a shame that so many of America’s youth are being robbed of knowing and studying the virtue and integrity of the great General Robert E. Lee and General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

When Records Are Sealed—A Meditation On Martin Luther King Day

“Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa,” wrote Lord Macaulay 168 years ago.

Well, they don’t anymore, if they ever did, (it was Cortez and Pizarro, respectively) but, boy, do they know a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Of course, there are many things about him that they don’t know. The NEA has a massive set of Curriculum Resources on Dr. King here—see if you can find the words plagiarism or Communism in there, let alone adultery.

It’s not only what they don’t know, it’s the things they know that aren’t so—when I read this, ten years ago, I could kind of tell that the author decided he didn’t care if he went to cocktail parties with liberals:

“To take just one example, I gnash my teeth when conservatives argue that ‘affirmative action’ violates ‘the spirit of Dr. King’—’color-blind justice,’ and all that. Nonsense. If King were alive today, he’d certain support state-imposed racial preferences. He was a Marxist, always moving leftward. Liberals are right to claim him as their own; conservatives who appeal to his ’spirit’ only make fools of themselves.”[Media and Mythology, By Joe Sobran, SOBRAN’S, November–December 1998]

This is true. A new article by Benjamin J. Ryan in American Renaissance points out that Dr. King was calling for hard quotas:

“King has been praised, even by conservatives, as the great advocate of color-blindness. They focus too narrowly on one sentence in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, in which he said he wanted to live in a nation ‘where [my children] will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’ The truth is that King wanted quotas for blacks. ‘[I]f a city has a 30 percent Negro population,’ King reasoned, ‘then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30 percent of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas.’” [The Unknown Martin Luther King, Jr., January 2008]

At VDARE.COM, we’ve featured a lot of coverage of undercovered issues in the Martin Luther King saga. For example, we’ve featured Jesse Helms’s speech on the proposed MLK Day in 1983, which was read on the Senate Floor. ["Remarks of Senator Jesse Helms." Congressional Quarterly 129, no. 130 (October 3, 1983): S13452-S13461.]

Part of that speech was based on research by the late Sam Francis, who reported that his research was not only read on the Senate floor, it was thrown on the Senate floor and stomped on by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who characterized it as “a packet of filth.”[The King Holiday and Its Meaning |The origins of our national celebration of multiracialism and political correctness]

Much of the hatred for anyone who criticizes Dr. King comes from the fact that some of the criticism concentrates on his sex life, which resembled Bill Clinton’s. People seem to feel that an investigation that uncovers that kind of detail must be evil. And there may be something in that.

Of course, the only reason Barack Obama got elected Senator was because, as Ann Coulter points out in her new book, Guilty “his media and campaign surrogates ripped open the court-sealed divorce records of his two principal opponents in his Senate race in Illinois.”

First there was Blair Hull, who was Obama’s Democratic primary opponent, and then there was Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan were attacked by Democrats in the mainstream media who managed to get a judge to release the sealed records of their divorces. The records of Ryan’s divorce from Jeri Ryan, (Star Trek’s Seven of Nine) contained accusations of sexual impropriety against Ryan. I won’t detail them, but they lack credibility, and as Ms. Coulter says “there’s a reason you never hear the expression ‘As true as claims made by an ex-spouse in divorce papers.’“

But my point is that Obama became a Senator because of the same kind of investigation that J. Edgar Hoover conducted on Martin Luther King—the difference being that the Democrats in the media (possibly with the help of David Axelrod) went public with the details, unlike Hoover.

Oh, and unlike Hoover, they didn’t have a lot of embarrassing facts on tape—just a lot of accusations. But it was enough to get Obama in the Senate.

And from there to the Presidency was just a short step—one that a freshman white Senator with his record couldn’t possibly have made.

And so, when you hear that Obama’s Presidency represents the triumph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., you now have a different perspective on what that means.

If you’re one of the 29 percent of Americans who gets off work on MLK Day, enjoy it! In the words of Chris Rock, “You gotta be pretty racist to not want a day off from work.”

If you are stuck at a computer, take some time to look at these.

• VDARE.com: 01/17/05 – Mexicanizing Martin Luther King, by Terry Graham
  
• VDARE.com: 01/16/05 – Random Reflections on Martin Luther King Day By Steve Sailer
  
• VDARE.com: 01/30/04 – Free At Last—To Celebrate Immigration On Martin Luther King Day
  
• VDARE.com: 01/18/04 – MLK Day: The Martin Luther King Cult By “Southern Sympathizer”
  
• VDARE.com: 01/18/04 – Martin Luther King Day: The Rise Of The New Feudalism By Paul Craig Roberts
  
• VDARE.com: 01/05/04 – Martin Luther King Day: A Preview in Rocky Mount N.C. By Sam Francis
  
• VDARE.com: 01/19/03 – Did Pre-MLK America Really Need Redemption? By Paul Gottfried
  
• VDARE.com: 12/07/03 – The View From MLK Street by Steve Sailer
  
• VDARE.com: 01/23/02 – Washington Down, King Up – GOP Out By Sam Francis
  
• VDARE.com: 07/26/01 – Abolishing America (cont.): Rename FBI Building After Who? By Sam Francis