Ancestors
From: VAPROTO@aol.com
To: davidjcate@comcast.net
Sir,
Your final comment shows just which of your ancestors you really honor – and it is not the one who fought for the Founding principles of freedom and limited government with the consent of the governed in the South. Furthermore, I don’t remember the American army in the Revolution committing atrocities against Tory civilians which is certainly what happened in the War of Secession.
A great deal was said about slavery those days because the Yankees had been using the "peculiar institution" from which they had made huge fortunes during their years of carrying on the infamous Triangle Trade
as a club to beat their former "customers" in the South.
Furthermore, had you any real knowledge of the history of the nation from colonial times to 1861, you would see that New England wished to secede frequently and nobody sent troops from the Capitol to stop them – yes, even when the President was a Southerner. As well, there was virtually an unending tirade of hatred emanating from New England and directed at the South and her people while the more populous North used tariffs to line the pockets of its own people while reducing the people of the South to penury. That is called stealing, sir, and it is not designed to make friends of the victims involved.
Slavery was a problem not because of the institution – there were also white and Indian slaves and slavery remained in the North (see Lincoln’s comment about the emancipation of slaves in New Jersey coming in about
1914!) but because of the race of the slaves. Northern states did not want blacks in either their states or any new territories because these were reserved for WHITES and thus you have the various "black codes"
forbidding blacks – slave or free – from entering (much less settling) in Northern states and new territories. This is a far cry from the nonsensical belief that the "noble, egalitarian Union" went to war to free the slaves! That is as wrong as the nonsensical belief that the "wicked, tyrannous Confederacy" went to war to keep the slaves – and everybody knew it then and used to know it until revisionist politically correct Marxist "history" became the only acceptable version of events.
Rabid abolitionists cared nothing whatsoever for the black man – slave or free. The first man John Brown killed in Virginia was a free black man. Brown wasn’t trying to free slaves. He took over an arsenal to arm them for servile insurrection in which they would kill whites and the army that came would kill them. That’s what the abolitionists wanted – servile insurrection and the death of white and black Southerners. Indeed, that is what Lincoln’s famous Emancipation Proclamation was intended to do – cause white Southern soldiers to desert in order to return to their homes to protect their families against the black mob of former slaves that Lincoln and his generals hoped to set loose upon the helpless civilian population. Only one problem: the slaves stayed loyal
to their masters and the soldiers stayed with Lee.
What you do not know about the War of Secession is alarming given that you seem so desirous to opine thereupon. I suggest that you stop reading all the standard p.c. hacks and start to read (and think) "outside the
box." Maybe then not only will you actually be proud of your Confederate ancestor, but he just might become proud of you.
Valerie Protopapas
Huntington, New York
