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July 7, 2020- by Steven E. Greer,
I watched the History Channel series on U.S. Grant. It was produced by Leo DiCaprio (my long-time neighbor in Lower Manhattan) and has blockbuster-quality special effects and acting.
I am from Ohio, where Grant was born and raised, and even I knew little of U.S. Grant. Few know much about him and there is a reason for that. After the Confederates and rednecks in the South were humiliated by losing the war, they engaged in a 100-year propaganda effort to rewrite history. Somehow, losing general Robert E. Lee became the hero and Grant was smeared as a drunk and corrupt president. Their new version of history has them fighting the war to preserve the rights of states and not to maintain slavery.
Grant pioneered modern warfare. As a West Point graduate fighting fellow West Point graduates in the Confederate Army, he invented siege warfare, naval maneuvers to skirt guns, and cleverly cut off supply chains. He also had a few needless massacres to his credit.
Before the Civil War, he helped defeat Mexico. The entire Western half of the United States exists because of Grant. He was then ousted from the military for drinking. He was a financially broke man having to sell wood to survive. He then got a lucky break and was brought back for the Civil War.
After the Civil War and through his two-terms, Grant was the most popular man in the world. Hundreds of thousands would gather to see him on overseas trips. His funeral was a big sensation. His memoirs, co-written by Mark Twain, were the best-selling book in America. Yet, because of the propaganda efforts, he has been banished to the bottom shelf of history.
I have wondered how we still see flagrant racist symbols all over the South, such as the confederate flag, statues to losing generals, etc. The same racist KKK artist who made Mount Rushmore also carved Stone Mountain, which honors three Confederate figures, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. Mind you, this monument to slavery was not made in the 1800’s. It was made in the 1940’s! Likewise, most of those confederate statues being torn down went up in the 1900’s.
It all makes sense now. The South is still suffering from denial and refuses to admit they fought the war for one reason: to keep slavery.
It also makes sense why the acting Governor of Virginia wore blackface in medical school. There is a secret culture to resist the memory of the lost war with a misguided sense of rebellion by keeping the plantation culture alive. This is how they maintain pride.
I found this interesting because I am fascinated at the transition from slavery to modern America, which is seldomly taught. Right after Lincoln’s death, under Grant, the black population took advantage of their new voting power and sent droves of elected blacks to congress and state government. But then the Ku Klux Klan engaged in an effective terror campaign and stomped it out for 100-years until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.
I have wondered why the murder of blacks is given this euphemistic name of “lynching” rather than public hanging. Lynching happened up into the late 1960’s. This is not ancient black-and-white-photos history. We had a man on the moon when this happened.
By the way, the Ku Klux Klan was not some fringe movement we see it as now. It was literally the reformed Confederate army. Lincoln accomplished nothing with the war itself. The South actively ignored his emancipation. It even ignored Grant’s constitutional amendments giving equal rights to former slaves and giving them a vote. Grant had to restart the Civil War with federal soldiers to fight the KKK.
Lastly, something completely swept under the rug by the Democrats, who control our educational system, is that the Democrat party was, literally, the party of racism. They were the Confederate party that opposed Lincoln before the war. After the war, when Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, took over from Lincoln, he actively tried to reverse the achievements of Lincoln. The House ultimately impeached him. When Grant was president, the Democrats took over congress in his second term and stifled him, as weak Republicans looked the other way (sound familiar?). The Democrats opposed the Civil Rights movement and LB Johnson barely got his laws passed. Long-sitting Senator Robert Byrd was a member of the KKK. He served in congress for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010. The Clintons proudly attended his funeral.
The old Democrats controlled blacks with brute force and slavery. The modern Democrats control blacks by economic engines of war. All of the policies seen in big cities that oppress blacks, such as welfare and poor schools, exist by design.
Today’s economic strategists have replaced the plantation owners. Those economists sit in Ivory Towers at Princeton, for example, where flagrant racist Woodrow Wilson taught.