The 'reconstruction' of the South [actually deconstruction] after the War of Northern Aggression is, perhaps, one of the most depressing and shameful periods of this country's history. Many revisionist 'historians' have sought to portray it as a glorious period of enlightenment, but in light of all that happened during that time you really have to 'strain at a gnat and swallow a camel' to do that.
We might wonder where the term 'reconstruction' came from. It is worth noting that, in 1865, when Karl Marx issued his praise of Abraham Lincoln, part of that praise was for Lincoln's "...reconstruction of a social world." Obviously Marx had no problem with the term when used in this fashion.
Professional South-hater Thaddeus Stevens made a speech in September, 1865 in which he said of the South: "But reformation must be effected; the foundation of their institutions - political, municipal and social - must be broken up and relaid or all our blood and treasure have been in vain. This can only be done by treating and holding them as a conquered people." Note that both Marx and Stevens [kindred spirits] talk openly about changing the social institutions and foundations of the South. Since the South's social institutions and culture have been based upon orthodox Reformation Christianity since around 1830, what these men are really talking about is the destruction of orthodox Christianity in the South.
Frank Conner, author of the excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 has noted 'reconstruction' policies in the South that concur with what Marx and Stevens envisioned. Mr. Conner has written: "In 1865, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner created the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Under its aegis they developed a long-range master plan for impoverishing, subjugating, dominating, and humiliating the Southerners, while destroying their culture and brainwashing them into third-rate copies of the Northerners."
Mr. Conner has noted that a culture war, of which the War of Northern Aggression and the subsequent 'reconstruction' were a major part, has gone on against the South since the 1830s. He says: "Actually, this cultural war has raged unabated since the 1830s, when Northern liberals decided to supplant Christianity with secular humanism as the official religion, and they selected the religious South as their battleground...the present-day vilification of the Confederacy is part of a long-term ideological war being waged against the conservative white South for the purpose of destroying the Southerners as a people and rendering them socially, politically, and economically impotent."
Conner notes the main objectives of this ideological war. They are: "[1] to discredit white Southerners; [2] and thereby discredit Southern Christianity; [3] which would clear the way for them to discredit Christianity throughout the United States; and [4] replace it with their own religion of secular humanism as the official religion of the U.S."
'Reconstruction' in the South after the war was intended to tax what little was left in the South, to put the South under Northern military rule and fill all the political offices with Northern carpetbaggers and their friends, to make sure the blacks got the vote and to make sure they all continued to vote Republican so the pillage could continue as long as possible, and to destroy the white Southern value system [based upon Christianity] and to enforce this destruction with a powerful central government in Washington.
Mr. Conner has noted some of the more degrading aspects of the 'reconstruction.' He writes: Although many ex-Confederates owned no clothes but the patched uniforms they had been wearing at the surrender, it was now unlawful for them to wear those clothes. They had to cut off all the buttons stamped 'CSA' and to fasten their clothes as best they could with pieces of string. Ex-Confederate parolees had to carry their paroles on their persons at all times, and display them to any U.S. soldier upon demand. Woe unto any Southerner who displayed - under any circumstances at all - a Confederate flag or any other symbol of the Confederacy; he would be arrested immediately.' Does that sound familiar in light of the continuing cultural genocide going on in the South today?
What we have today, and have had since the 1830s, is an ideological [religious] war against Southern Christianity by apostate Northern liberals, be they Unitarians or of some other persuasion, but all united in their efforts to stamp out the Christian faith, first in the South and, if that is finally successful, in the rest of the country. You can howl all you want about slavery or about 'preserving the Union' and all the rest of it, but ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the war and the ensuing 'reconstruction' were, in the final analysis, theological issues first and economic issues second. This truth is something we need to begin to grapple with, otherwise we will never have a true understanding of what the war or 'reconstruction' was really all about.
Copyright ©, 2003 Al Benson Jr.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
P.O. Box 55
Sterlington, LA 71280
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