The South Was Right

by James Ronald Kennedy

  QUESTION NUMBER TWO

  Who First Attempted to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves?

  ANSWER

  The Southern State of Virginia

  Now let us pose the third question:

  How Was Slavery Abolished in the North?

  Any fifth-grade school child will tell you stories of the wonderful Underground Railroad. We are told that it led the poor, downtrodden slave from the Southern land of slavery to the Northern land of freedom and equality. Such anti-South poison flows from every new television program dealing with the subject of slavery. Again and again—like Pavlovian dogs—Southerners are forced to watch, read, and study about the righteous North struggling to improve the plight of man and save the glorious Union while fighting off vicious attacks of hate-filled Southerners. Yankee myth, Yankee lies, and Yankee propaganda; read on and we will explode these inflated social egos!

  Yankees are quick to pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves on freeing their slaves voluntarily. They are quick to inform us that it did not take an invading army to force them to do the “right thing.” Lest Mr. Yankee boast too much, we should remind him that at the signing of the Declaration of Independence there were slaves in every American state. Not one Northern state rushed to free its slaves after signing the Declaration of Independence.

  The system of African slavery was never very profitable in the North. If the Yankees have an eye for anything, they have an eye for profits. Soon after the end of the American War for Independence, the Northern states began a gradual removal of their slave population. The modern Yankees would have us believe that their ancestors were acting upon principles of morality in decreasing their slave population. The truth is that the only thing that motivated the Yankee was the principle of profit. This is clearly seen by the way in which the North granted freedom to its slave population. No law was ever passed in the North that granted freedom to a person already in slavery. In other words, the property rights of the Northern slave holders were always protected by the Northern states (something they must have forgotten to do when they came down South). After a certain date and after a child reached a given age, he or she would be free. All people who were slaves when the law was passed would remain slaves. For a slave to become free, in New Jersey, for example, he or she would have to be born after 1804 and have reached the age of twenty-one years. A slave woman who was fifteen in 1804 would remain a slave for life. If, at the age of thirty (the year then being 1829), she gave birth to a child, that child had to live in bondage until the age of twenty-one years (in 1850) before it would be free. Now remember that the mother was still a slave in the good ole land of Lincoln. As a matter of fact, just ten years before the War for Southern Independence there were 236 slaves for life in New Jersey.56

  If the North was indeed the land of equality and freedom that it claims to have been, why did it not just do away with slavery in one quick step? Surely, if slavery was wrong in the South, it was just as wrong in the North. Or did Northerners think that a little evil was acceptable, and not as evil as slavery down South? Why didn’t they use the same method to reduce the Southern slave population to a number equal to that in the North? The answer to these questions is both simple and sobering. The North used the method of granting gradual freedom to the unborn for two reasons. One motive was greed, and the other was racism.

  By freeing only the people born into slavery after a certain time and age, the Yankee protected and thereby recognized the master’s right in his property. No Northerners were deprived of their slave property that they owned at the time the law was passed. Also the law did not prohibit the slave owners from removing their property from the state to be sold in other parts of the country. Even if the children of a slave mother were nineteen or twenty years old, just a few years before the law granted them freedom, their master could remove them from the Northern state and sell them in a Southern state where they would remain slaves. Shocking as it may seem, under the Yankee system there could have been slaves in the North until 1873.

  With only one exception, every Northern state of the original thirteen states abolished slavery in this manner. The state of Massachusetts never repealed its law on slavery.57 One can only speculate as to how many slaves were actually allowed to obtain freedom under this arrangement, but it was a profitable way to emancipate slave property. If the Yankees are nothing else, they are profit-minded.

  Other than allowing the Northern slave owners to cash in their slave property, the method of gradual emancipation also allowed the Yankees to rid themselves of a people they did not want to keep in Northern society. It had the effect of preventing a large increase in the numbers of free blacks in the state. The pious and righteous Yankee did not want the Negro in his state.

  In 1788, eight years after the state of Massachusetts started its judicial emancipation of its slave population, it passed a law ordering every black, mulatto, or Indian who came into the state and remained two months to be whipped publicly.58 This punishment was to be repeated if the black, mulatto, or Indian did not leave. This law remained in effect until 1834, by which time it had done its work of purging Massachusetts of “undesirables.” While this law was in force the people of Massachusetts were hard at work in the slave trade, from which the state collected large tax revenues. It should now be easy to understand that the people of the North were not driven by humanitarian or egalitarian desires to free their slaves. Their emancipation process was driven by the vile impulse to remove, for profit, a people with whom the Yankees had no desire to associate.

  QUESTION NUMBER THREE

  How Did the Yankee Abolish Slavery in the North?

  ANSWER

  By a System of Gradual Emancipation That Allowed the Northern Slave Owners to Remove Their Property to the South, Sell the Slaves, and Thereby Divest Themselves of the Human Responsibility While Making a Handsome Profit.

  We will now move on to the fourth question in our discussion of slavery:

  How was the Freed Black Treated in the North?

  From the prior discussion, you can imagine that the life of the free black in the North was not all that the Yankee would have us believe. In the North, for instance, the free black was not allowed to vote or in many cases to testify in a court of law. Even in Lincoln’s home state of Illinois, blacks were banned from moving into the state! In reality the North offered blacks only semi-freedom somewhere between a white man and a slave, but they were always in an inferior social and legal position.

  One way to judge the quality of life in those times is to look at the rate of population increase by comparing the number of live births with the number of deaths for a given year. Surely if the evil South was as bad and the North was as wonderful as the Yankee myth-makers would have us believe, then the percentage increase of the black population in the North would be greater than in the South. According to the 1860 census records, the percentage of increase in the black population in the South was twenty-three percent. The increase in the North was a bleak 1.7 percent.59 A race of people who have proven themselves fruitful under slavery and the present-day welfare system were nearly annihilated by Yankee emancipation!

  The returns from the 1850 census show that of white Northerners and Southerners, one person in every thousand was either deaf, dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic. For the free blacks of Yankeedom, one in every 506 was afflicted with one of these conditions.60 If the North was such a better place for blacks, then it would be natural to assume that the Southern blacks would be in worse condition. Not according to the 1850 census records. It demonstrates that only one in 1,464 had a condition as previously described.61 To put it bluntly, according the United States census records, the Negro slave in the South was in a better mental and physical condition than his free black brother in the North. Let us look at the numbers once again:

  Ratio of persons with disability (deaf, dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic)

  White Northerner and Southerner..…1 out of every 1000

  Fre
e Northern black…………………1 out of every 506

  Southern slave………………………1 out of every 1464

  ANSWER TO QUESTION NUMBER FOUR

  How was the Free Black Treated in the North?

  ANSWER

  The Free Northern Black Was Living as a Second-Class Citizen in Conditions Which Were in Many Ways Not as Good as Those for the Southern Slave.

  Who Deserved to Bear the Burden of Guilt for Slavery?

  From the facts presented here, it is clear that the Southern people do not deserve the burden of guilt they have been forced to bear. There is guilt enough to go around. The blacks in Africa who kidnapped and sold their own kind into slavery and the Yankee merchants who traded rum and guns for black slaves in North and South America all deserve—yet do not receive—the larger portion of the guilt.

  Why is it that the Southern people have been singled out for criticism and guilt? This question has already been answered in Chapter 1, “The Yankee Myth of History.” The North needs this myth and other lies to justify its war of conquest, and to continue its oppression of the legitimate rights of the Southern people.

  In a world as complex as the one in which we live, it is amazing how often people demand a quick fix or a simple solution to complex problems. For instance, scientists today tell us that the ozone layer of the atmosphere is being destroyed. This ozone layer is responsible for protecting us from cancer-causing radiation and is being eaten away by fossil fuels. There is a simple answer to the crisis; quit using those fuels. But how many of us are willing to stop driving cars and trucks? How many of us are willing to stop using electricity generated by coal? This is just a small example of how complex a “simple” solution can be. The same is true with the issue of slavery. Most Americans, from their simplistic point of view, will say that the South should have freed the slaves. But men such as Thomas Jefferson who stated that “these people are to be free” also said “once free we cannot live in the same government.”

  A perfect example of how complex the problem of ending the slavery issue was is seen in how John Quincy Adams dealt with the question of British naval vessels in search of slave traders on the high seas. He would not allow the British to stop slave vessels, even though that would result in many slave traders being protected by the United States flag.62 Remember that the United States had just fought a war with the British over the very question of British naval power as it related to the sovereign rights of America. The United States had made its point that, as a sovereign nation, its commerce was secure on the high seas. Because Adams would not allow the British Navy to stop vessels flying the United States flag, many slavers were allowed to carry on this trade. This does not mean that Adams was in favor of that trade, only that he held the view that, unless both nations had a treaty to police each other’s vessels, one nation could not force its right of search upon the other. According to international law, one cannot break one good law in order to pursue a pre-eminent good. Now when the people of the South make the statement that they were against slavery, but that they could not end the system unless it could be done in such a way as to safeguard the rights of all Southerners, Northerners set up a howl. It seemed natural and right for the Yankee (future President) Adams to say the same thing in relation to the slave trade, but never would the North allow Southerners to act in the same manner. The issue of how to end slavery and the slave trade needed time and cool heads more than anything else. Unfortunately the Yankee Abolitionists would allow neither. Those in the North who sought political gain saw in this issue a weak point. They used the South’s stand for State’s Rights then and continue to use it now as a political weapon against the South.

  This discussion of the African slave issue has been offered not to belittle anyone, North or South, black or white. It has been made necessary because the American people have been brainwashed by misinformation about the nature of the issue of slavery. In particular, Southerners have been told that they and their ancestors are responsible for this most vile of institutions, and that the noble North was fighting the war to end slavery and promote equality. It has been shown that the North did not free its slave property for any other reason than to rid itself of a people who had become unprofitable to keep and with whom it desired to have little or no social contact. In both the North and the South, there were different views on the issue of slavery and how to end it. The only difference is that the North had the opportunity to end slavery without disrupting its economy or social fabric. This was a luxury the Yankee never allowed the South.

  Elias Murphy, a native of Kentucky, moved to Louisiana with his family as a child. Murphy enlisted in Company I, Sixteenth Louisiana Volunteer Infantry, in 1861 and went back to Kentucky with his unit. Murphy fought in his native state during the campaign of 1862.8 It was said of Murphy that he could stand in the line of battle and shoot Yankees with the calmness of a man shooting squirrels. (Image courtesy of George Jacob, Castor, Louisiana)

  What is the message that these Southerners are trying to send to future generations? In word and deed Southerners have proclaimed to the world that they were fighting for the right of self-determination during the War for Southern Independence. (Image courtesy of Confederate Memorial Hall, New Orleans, Louisiana)

  “Johnny Reb was not just a white man, he was black too. Blacks were at home, the only land they knew. Black and white women encouraged their husbands to fight.”7

  Dr. L. L. Haynes, black educator

  Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  (Image courtesy of The Institute of Texas Cultures, San Antonio, Texas; Bruce Marshall, artist)

  William D. Bryant, Randolph County, Georgia, enlisted in Company H, First Georgia Infantry, on September 26, 1861. Bryant was appointed second corporal in Company G, Fifty-Fifth Georgia Infantry, on May 5, 1862. Corporal Bryant died of typhoid fever while on duty in Knoxville, Tennessee, on December 29, 1862. He was married with five children. (Image courtesy of Robert G. McLendon, Jr., Gainesville, Florida)

  Hispanic defenders of Dixie, members of the Benavides Texas Cavalry, left to right are Refugio Benavides, Atanacio Vidauri, Cristobal Vidauri, and John Leyendecker. These Hispanic Confederates were part of Brig. Gen. Santos Benavides’ Texas Cavalry. The area protected by General Benavides and his men became known as “the Confederacy on the Rio Grande.” (Image courtesy of Bruce Marshall, Austin, Texas)

  Lt. Col. James T Adams and wife, Lucy Beckwith Adams. There is no way to calculate the sorrow and tragedy that befell an unknown number of young families like the Adams as they answered the call of their country. The soldiers of the Confederacy were sent off to war by the women of the South like heroes, and in defeat these noble ladies nurtured the broken soldiers back to health and with floral and marble tributes continued their defense of Southern rights. God bless the ladies of Dixie! (Images courtesy of Tulane University Libraries, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, New Orleans, Louisiana)

  Andrew M. Gooings, Company I, Thirty-First Louisiana Volunteer Infantry. Gooings was also a veteran of the Mexican War, having served in the First Alabama Volunteer Infantry. Gooings served with his Confederate comrades of the Thirty-First during the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, suffering two wounds from which he never fully recovered. Vicksburg is approximately a hundred miles from Gooings’ home in Union Parish, Louisiana. Lhiring the siege, the people of that area could hear the boom of the big guns. No Southern family was ever far removed from the sounds or effects of Yankee invasion.6 (Image courtesy of Richard Ballard, Ruston, Louisiana)

  James Dinkins, Madison County, Mississippi. After taking part in the Battle of Big Bethel as a member of the North Carolina Military Institute corps of cadets, Dinkins joined Company C, Eighteenth Mississippi Volunteer Infantry, under the command of Colonel, later General, William Barksdale. In 1863 Dinkins was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and transferred to Gen. James R. Chalmers Division of Gen. N. B. Forrest’s cavalry. (Image courtesy of Tulane University Libraries, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, New Or
leans, Louisiana)

  Warning! Cultural bigots at work. The destruction of the Confederate monument at Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, North Carolina, is just one example of anti-South bigotry that has become so commonplace today. (See stoiy in Chapter 13.) (Image courtesy of North Carolina Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans; Dave Davis, photographer)

  James H. Trezevant served as first lieutenant and adjutant of the First Regiment Regulars, Louisiana Infantry, and later as captain of one of the companies of the unit. Trezevant, like so many Southerners, had a strong affinity for his dog. This one was very special to him because the dog came to his rescue one evening in Neiv Orleans during a late-night altercation. (Image courtesy of Tulane University Libraries, Hovvard-Tilton Memorial Library, New Orleans, Louisiana)