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Huey Long, Democratic Governor and then U.S. Senator from Louisiana, 1928 to 1935, is typical of the Bad Southern politicians produced by Northern-imposed cultural distortion of Southern society. Huey Long held harsh racial attitudes that were an accepted part of the progressive movement. His tactics and economics were more in line with Fascism than classical Southern conservative thought. As governor he raided gambling establishments26 to gain support and votes from Christian fundamentalists, while using such raids to gain protection money from the remaining gambling establishments. He appointed a censor for the Louisiana State University’s student newspaper Reveille. When students protested, the Dean chastised the students, telling them “you students value your principles too much.”27 Race-baiting was not his strong point but Long used the technique when necessary. He would often accuse his opponents of working with “niggers.”28 While in Congress he opposed anti-lynching laws, declaring such laws were not necessary because “we just lynch an occasional nigger.”29 Such was the type of politician produced post-Appomattox in a culturally distorted South.
Compare Long’s views to those of former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest when, well after the war, he was invited to speak to a group of black Southerners and he told them:
we were born on the same soil, we breathe the same air, live in the same land, and why should we not be brothers and sisters....I want you to do as I do—go to the polls and select the best men to vote for....Although we differ in color, we should not differ in sentiment.30
Compare other post-Reconstruction Southern politicians such as “The Great White Chief” James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, who was an outspoken white supremacist, to another former Confederate officer, P.G.T. Beauregard, who advocated civil rights for the freed slaves, including the right to vote, and declared:
The Negro is Southern born; with a little education and some property qualifications he can be made to take sufficient interest in the affairs and prosperity of the South to insure an intelligent vote.31
Huey P. Long (courtesy LOC)
From the end of Reconstruction to 1965 the South was beset with a continuing stream of bad politicians. The progressive era gave us men such as Huey Long, James K. Vardaman, and eventually Lyndon Banes Johnson. What caused this change from Southern statesmen to unprincipled politicians who used black and white Southerners for their own benefit? Yankee-imposed cultural distortion is the only legitimate explanation for the radical change in the way Southern political leaders approached black voting and civil rights post-Reconstruction.
Nothing distorts a people’s natural or native culture (its society as opposed to its government) more than invasion, conquest and occupation. An alien invasion will quickly turn a peaceful and trusting social order into an oppressive, suspicious, and unnatural society. For example, who today would blame modern Frenchmen or Norwegians for the deaths of French or Norwegian Jews that resulted from the actual or tacit cooperation of the French Vichy or Norwegian Quisling governments during Nazi occupation? Overnight old friendships and neighborly social relations that had lasted for generations prior were corrupted and destroyed. This was not the natural order of French or Norwegian society, but it was the new, culturally distorted, society that resulted from Nazi invasion, conquest, and occupation. The same type of cultural distortion occurred in the states of the invaded, conquered and occupied Confederate States of America. To be clear, the destruction of good Southern statesmanship, the development of bad social order by bad post-Reconstruction Southern politicians, and the continuation and exploitation of the current ugly political system by current Southern politicians is due to Northern-imposed cultural distortion that arose from the invasion, conquest, and continuing occupation of the Confederate States of America by the evil forces of the Federal Empire. This evil Empire bears the name, symbols, and flag of the old United States of America, but it is void of the substance of that original republic of republics. It has become an empire that bears the name and flag but none of the attributes of America’s original constitutionally-limited Republic of Republics.
Subsequent to Lincoln’s death, the control of the newly created Federal Empire passed to the Radical Republicans who controlled Congress. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, Republican of Pennsylvania, was the leading actor in the charade of government in the post-War United States. During the War, while the United States of America was busy invading the Confederate States of America, Congressman Stevens proudly proclaimed that the military forces of the United States of America had “a sword in one hand and shackles in the other.”32 Empires’ use the sword to conquer free people and shackles to enslave the people of the conquered and occupied nation. His plan for the South was as simple as it was brutal:
The future condition of the conquered power [the Confederate States of America] depends on the will of the conqueror [the United States of America, i.e., Federal Empire]. [The Southern States are] conquered provinces they must...eat the fruit of foul rebellion.
His plan was to keep the South under Republican domination until the Republicans had amended the Constitution (the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments) so “as to secure perpetual ascendancy to the party of the Union”—that is the Republican Party. His chosen method was to disenfranchise a large portion of the South’s leadership as well as rank and file white voters, to mobilize battalions of newly enfranchised, mostly illiterate, freedmen under strict Republican control, and thereby create a harsh and angry division between black and white Southerners. Republicans would then use hatred to energize their battalions of angry, mostly illiterate black Southern voters, who would march faithfully to the polls and cast their vote for anti-white (white Southern) candidates. He declared: “I think there would always be Union men enough in the South, aided by the blacks, to divide the representation and thus continue Republican ascendancy.”33 And what were the results of this “Republican ascendancy” for we the people of the conquered and occupied states of the formerly free and prosperous Confederate States of America?
The military conquest of the Confederate States of America ended early in 1865 but by 1866 it was clear to the London Telegraph what had actually happened. In a report to their readers, the Telegraph noted that the United States of America “may remain a republic in name, but some eight million of the people are subjects, not citizens.” 34The “shackles” promised by Republican Thaddeus Stevens were now firmly placed upon we the people of Dixie, and from that moment forward those “shackles” would never be removed—at times they would be loosened but never removed. Empires do not voluntarily release their captive nations, and never forget that the Confederate States of America was the Federal Empire’s first but not its last captive nation. Added to this unspoken truth is that when people of a conquered nation are led by “bad” and “ugly” politicians even the hope of true local self-government is prevented from emerging. The reason is that if hope of freedom was to emerge it would spell the end of the careers of those “bad” and “ugly” politicians. We the people of the South are held captive by our political rulers who enjoy the perks, privileges and power granted to them by the Empire’s ruling elite. The perks, privileges and power thus granted are the compensation paid by the Federal government to Southern politicians for keeping “we the people of the South” in line. A Judas payment Southern politicians eagerly accept and a burden we the people of Dixie have become accustomed to enduring— like the dog that licks the boot of his master moments after the master kicks the poor trembling dog. We keep re-electing politicians who enlarge their fortunes but do nothing to reclaim our inherent right to be the masters in our own homes. Local self-government via real States’ Rights is the first step in the process of exchanging Southern poverty for a prosperous Southern economy.35 Restoring local self-government is also the first step in reclaiming a moral society in which we order our social relations on the Christian principle of “do unto others as ye would have them do unto you.”36
In order for the post-war Republicans to maintain their control of Congress and the Electoral College they had to devise a method to prevent the conquered Southern States from joining forces with the national Democratic Party. The Republicans did this by (1) dissolving legitimate,37 post-War, Southern State governments and thereby making the states of the former Confederate States of America (less Tennessee which the Republicans firmly controlled) into conquered and occupied provinces; and (2) by destroying the friendly working relationship between black and white Southerners— which was a source of great surprise and embarrassment to the Yankees during their invasion of the Confederacy. The Radical Republicans would thereby create an unnatural social environment in which black and white Southerners feared and hated each other. After creating this fear and hatred, the Republicans then used black votes to further Republican political ambitions on the national level. Republican-instituted Reconstruction in Dixie became the vehicle to establish the false premise that black and white Southerners are natural enemies. Even the German socialist and former Union military officer Carl Schurz recognized the natural friendly relations between white and black Southerners—even though as an outsider he did not understand it:
Instances of the most touching attachment of freedmen to their old masters and mistresses have come to my notice. To a white man whom they believe to be sincerely their friend they cling with greater affection even than to one of their own race.... Centuries of slavery have not been sufficient to make them the enemies of the white race. 38
What centuries of slavery could not do (create hatred and mistrust between white and black Southerners) Republicans accomplished in a few years of Republican-imposed Reconstruction.
Review for a moment the conditions in Republican-imposed Reconstruction state legislatures that white Southern taxpayers were forced to subsidize: Often in Mississippi pistols and knives were used to settle “points of order;” in Virginia, disagreements were often settled with fists; in Florida, legislators puffed cigars while watching fistfights that would determine issues before the legislature. A large percentage of the members of Dixie’s Reconstruction legislatures had no property to speak of and therefore little if any taxes to pay. Free from the personal burden of taxation, they spent taxpayers’ money with lavish prodigality. Each Southern state suffered under the tyranny of the Federal Empire’s minions who controlled the North’s conquered Southern provinces. Mississippi prior to the War had been a rich and prosperous state, but post-War and even today she is the poorest state in “our” gloriously reunited nation—a new nation “with liberty and justice for all” except Southerners.
Taxes established by Mississippi’s Reconstruction legislature exemplify what was happening across the South. In 1871 taxes were four time greater than in 1869; in 1872 taxes were eight-and-a-half times greater than in 1869; in 1873 twelve-and-a-half times greater; and in 1874 taxes were fourteen times as great as they had been in 1869.39 Such was the gift given by the “one nation indivisible” to the people of Mississippi and the South.
State legislatures became scenes of vulgar comedy and engines of fraud and corruption. The white people of Northern states would never have allowed such a lawmaking body to rule their states but these same Northerners were more than willing—actually eager—to impose such rule upon the conquered people of Dixie. Ohio’s Cincinnati Commercial was forced to declare: “My God! The whites have borne and borne until forbearance ceased to be a virtue and almost became a crime.”40 White Southerners’ fear of black rule was produced by Republicans in Congress. It was the genesis of the current black/white political divide in Dixie. This is a culturally unnatural divide that greatly benefited first the white Republican Party (during Reconstruction), then the white Democratic party (during the era of white supremacy). Today both national political parties rely on black or white Southern votes to maintain the ruling elite’s control of the Federal Empire as the elite in Washington dispense perks, privileges and power to their crony capitalist allies.
