Tag: Abraham Lincoln

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Part 1

Roosevelt on Reconstruction

Roosevelt takes aim at the idea, present in the standard story of American history, that the Union victory and subsequent Reconstruction was “a process of better realizing founding ideals, through the process of change set out in the Founders’ Constitution.” He instead argues that “We would do better to think of it as a revolution that destroyed Founding America.” (more…)

Sub-Saharan misrule during Reconstruction.

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Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

On the evening of April 14, 1865, the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth leaped onto the stage at Ford’s Theater and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis!”, followed by “The South is avenged!” Booth had just fatally shot President Lincoln. He was acting as part of a larger conspiracy to decapitate the Lincoln administration and was the only conspirator to successfully carry out any part of the overall plan — a plot that had been initiated by Booth, not the Confederate government. (more…)

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Kirkpatrick Sale
Emancipation Hell: The Tragedy Wrought by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
Columbia, S. C.: Shotwell Publishing, 2015

The emancipation of African slaves following the War Between the States is almost universally perceived as a great moral triumph, hence the enshrinement of Juneteenth as America’s newest federal holiday. While one will occasionally hear objections voiced to the way that then-President Abraham Lincoln conducted the war itself, the presumed righteousness of emancipation is rarely subjected to serious scrutiny. (more…)

The Confederate Memorial Day ceremony held in Arlington National Cemetery in 2014. (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

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You should do your duty in all things.
You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.
— Robert E. Lee

Several Southern states observe state holidays at this time of year to remember the men who died fighting for the Confederacy during the War Between the States. (more…)

US Civil War recruiting poster, 1863 (image courtesy of Picryl)

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

[The present constitutional crisis over slavery] embraces the fearful issue whether the Union shall stand, and slavery, under the steady, peaceful action of moral, social, and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation; or whether the Union shall be dissolved and civil war ensue . . . — William H. Seward, speech to the US Senate, 1850

Their vices are vices aped from white men, or that white men and bondage have taught them: improvidence and intemperance and evasion — and laziness . . . Promiscuity. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

The South could “win” the war by not losing; the North could win only by winning. — James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom

Like my father before me
I will work the land.
And like my brother above me,
I took a rebel stand.
He was just 18, young and brave,
But a Yankee laid him in his grave. (more…)

Abraham Lincoln debating Stephen Douglas during the campaign for the 1860 presidential election, when Lincoln expressed views on blacks that would end any politician’s career today. (Litho by American School, 1858)

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Jacques Derrida remarks that Hegel compared words used over time with coins whose inscriptions wear away with use, ultimately leaving two blank and valueless faces signifying nothing. Words change their meaning, certainly, but they also lose meaning through overuse. Our most obvious contemporary example is the word “racism.”

Racism is a perfectly natural response to the “Other” the hard ideological Left like to parade around like a show pony. It is hardwired into us and is a protective reaction, it being an evolutionary advantage to be with those like yourself, and is why from canteens in high school to canteens in penitentiaries, blacks will always sit with other blacks and whites with other whites. (more…)

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I am communing in my office with a sufficiency of Wild Turkey, the whiskey of the great Hunter Thompson. With its help I think curmudgeonly thoughts about America, which is over, done, surrounded by feeding leeches, ticks, hag fish, lampreys, and corporations. And Joe Biden. I find this deeply satisfying. (more…)

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Paul W. Callahan
When Democracy Fell: The Subjugation of Maryland During the U.S. Civil War
Pennsauken, N.J.: BookBaby, 2023

The impulse behind the colony of Maryland came from George Calvert, Lord Baltimore — a convert to Roman Catholicism. The Royal Charter for it was granted to his son Cecil in 1632. The colony’s purpose was to provide a refuge for English Catholics, and for a time Catholics dominated its government, although it was religiously tolerant toward Protestants. (more…)

You can buy Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto here.

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Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto is a groundbreaking, irreverent polemic against the stigmatization of the white working class in American culture. It was published by Simon and Schuster in 1997. In pugnacious and often hilarious prose, Goad shreds the racial and political taboos of the era and slaughtered many a sacred cow. The Redneck Manifesto brought a critical eye to then-radical terms like “white supremacy,” racial justice, and “anti-fascism” which had yet to reach widespread exposure outside of Left-wing universities, but would terrorize the American political landscape in subsequent decades. (more…)

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When I was a child, Thanksgiving was little more than midway point between Halloween and Christmas, lacking the magic of either. I didn’t much like the food (except pumpkin pie), I hated football (and still do), and I found my great-grandfather’s extreme old age somewhat disquieting. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate this late autumn feast, to the point that it is now one of my favorite days of the year.

In retrospect, I fondly recall making the drive to my grandparents’ country home on a cold and rainy day — that is how I always remember it — where my extended family had assembled and the scent of roasting turkey and sweet potatoes pervaded the house. (more…)

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Eric Burin
Slavery & the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society
Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 2005 (more…)

Charleston, 1865.

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Counter-Currents has some excellent authors. One of my favorites is Spencer Quinn. He can take the complexities of current events and type out an excellent summation of them and what they mean. In one article, Quinn states:

And now that we are in Year 1 AFE (After-Floyd Era), we must all realize that the United States has been irrevocably damaged, (more…)